“Eat to fuel your body, not to feed your emotions.”
Anonymous.
Hello, young Padawan
You have already started a lot of diets, and it has always given the same result: gaining pounds in the end, with self-esteem lower than your socks. In the beginning, it worked well, so what happened?
As we talked about in previous articles, especially here, it’s not just about will. An overweight person has no less willpower than a thin person. Otherwise, all thin people would succeed in their life and no overweight people will. However, the ones who succeed at the professional level, for example, are not all thin, it is even far from being the case. Many millionaires, business leaders, lawyers, inventors, artists, or scientists are overweight. So it’s not a question of willpower.
The difference between a thin and a fat one is that the fat guy thinks of food all day long, sometimes obsessively, while the thin guy doesn’t care at all. The difference is that the fat guy does not put down his fork when he is no longer hungry, he finishes his meal. The difference is a matter of hormones. I repeat it here so that it prints in capital letters: manage your insulin and you will manage the size of your panties.
So, what do we do?!
In today’s post, we are going to share a little self-experience that will certainly not bring you the recipe for the miracle diet to lose 30 pounds in 2 days, but in any case, the keys to success to adopt a balanced and healthy diet for your health. And above all, to make long-term peace with yourself. This is priceless, wherever you have weight to lose or you are in perpetual control to maintain your weight. The day your hormones are regulated, you can even lose weight by eating a pizza, because you will eat it in peace, put down your fork at the right time, like a naturally skinny guy, and it will balance over your week without you even there pay attention.
We don’t succeed in an emergency (unless you’re a firefighter)
More difficult to say than to do when you are motivated, or when you can no longer stand yourself. Despair drives us to make the wrong choices. Motivation is a good thing; haste is dangerous. Often we confuse the two, and it’s a shame. No sooner have we decided to lose weight than we would already want to get into those jeans, barely the second day past that we would already like our scale to show 10 pounds less, … This is the wrong path.
The right way is to use this motivation to change your life forever because that’s what it is all about if you want to lose weight permanently and become a slim person for the rest of your life. Often we think that this is a momentary period during which we will have to make efforts; this is wrong. Choosing to lose weight is a commitment to a radical and total change of life. I’m not talking about saying goodbye to chocolate, but about saying goodbye to unsuitable quantities, even too much salad or too much broccoli. Forever. You put the fork down. Never eat again if you are not hungry, even if it skips a meal, and stop when you are no longer hungry, even if it is steamed vegetables. These kinds of habits a naturally slim guy never pays attention to but it makes the one in perpetual control, or the overweight one raises eyebrows.
Motivation can be a real help in adopting the right behaviors that you will follow for the rest of your life because you know why you are overweight: at one point in your life, you ate more than your body needed. 100 kcal too much, whether they are salsify, cucumber, or chocolate, that’s 100 kcal stored. So, motivate yourself to put your fork down, while adding stuff, wait, let me explain, lol.
Start by adding rather than removing
The best way to adopt good habits, or even rediscover hunger for those who are no longer familiar with it, is to fool your brain. If you starve yourself with a restrictive diet, you will undoubtedly rediscover what hunger is but also frustration. And it is, therefore, your willpower alone which will manage this scheme. That’s why it crashes—our will to its limits, thin guy, or fat guy. We do not wake up in the morning with a new stock of fresh willpower when we have been fighting tirelessly for three months long.
How do you fool your brain? By starting your process by adding good nutrients, while leaving the wrong quantities and the wrong food choices available, for the moment. And then manage the quantities, then bad habits, or vice versa.
By starting by adding, for example, mineral-rich vegetable juices in the morning before breakfast, you will see your quantities of breakfast drop visibly. I bet you will quickly divide them.
By adding raw vegetables as a starter, before the meal, miso soup, or a little lactic acid fermented tofu before dinner, a fruit before your snack … Do you see the trick? I think you do.
Then, when you feel it, you put your fork down when you’re no longer hungry. It doesn’t matter if you are eating the raw vegetables or the double fatty burger. Not hungry anymore? You stop. Of course, you can eat a little bit an hour later if you had mistaken yourself and you are still hungry, it’s a little tricky at the beginning but always start again with good nutrients, like vegetables.
What if one day you crave a cake? Make it yourself, homemade only. Prepare it with good organic products, brown coconut sugar, dark chocolate chips, or good organic lemons, do it with love, style, and beauty. And when you want to eat it, start with pieces of apple or fruit of your choice before your piece of cake.
These additions of good nutrients will be perceived as profusion by your brain, even though you eat less and less junk food and/or less in terms of quantities. Also, by providing these good nutrients and multiplying them, you will reduce inflammation in your body, produce less insulin, and therefore reduce your cravings for the dark side of the force.
Relearning our feelings of hunger is the key to success. And if you are tired of constantly keeping control of what you eat to maintain your weight, this is also for you, especially the concept of putting down your fork when you are no longer hungry. You can also consult this article on the glycemic index or the one on how to differentiate desires from needs.
Focus on what you gain rather than what you lose.
Rather than motivating yourself in army mode, like “no pain, no gain,” even if I like the principle, there is another solution which helps you find a flawless motivation: to open the eyes on what you have gained, rather than the weight you lose.
By regularly adding more and more good nutrients to your previously anarchic diet in terms of quantity or quality, you see almost immediate effects in the daily: you are more dynamic, more serene, you have a better mood, you sleep well, you are no longer constipated, less stressed, you smile more – your general well-being will surprise you.
It’s crazy what less insulin and more vitamins in the body can do on your mood and energy!
We are not in this post to know what to eat. If you have already read a few articles in the “eating” then “food and health” section, like the one on anti-inflammatory food or the one on overweight and its mysteries … or not, or the one about the intestines, you know what to do. There are also a number of recipes here, the index of recipes being classified by type of dish (starter, snack …) and according to seasonality.
Eating in season is essential because nature has its reasons that your body knows about.
Much more powerful than motivation or a wish to return to a hypothetical zero size (which will not reveal anything about your health, ed), this concrete so precious well-being will lead you not only to want to take care of it, but to want even more. Like, starting a physical activity, for example.
Waking up energized after a good night’s sleep, being dynamic during the day, and calm down at night. A good mood in all circumstances, being clear-headed to find solutions of the daily challenges of your life with cold blood, a strong immune system making you go through winters after winters without catching a cold, this should be the norm if you eat what your body needs in quantity and quality, that’s what you will get if you try.
You will just have to glimpse this well-being to be as addicted as when you eat French fries twice. These will have less flavor over time, for the better of your physical and emotional health.
Let’s start treating your body by giving it the serenity it needs, by giving it more vitamin, fresh and seasonal veggies, good fats like oilseeds, for example, fermented products like miso, sauerkraut, or lactic acid fermented tofu for your intestines, and then it will take you away from the old demons.
So, are you ready? How about we start at the beginning?
XO 🍋
