on hunger

3 ravioli with sauce (130 calories). Daily total now at 949.

I am so hungry I could eat a horse.

Trying to hold off for supper.

Maybe water or diet soda will quell my appetite.

All of this reminds me of the process I went through in the Weigh Down Workshop: learning what "hungry" really is. It was a long, hard process. In general, the top of my "reasons to eat" does not contain actual hunger. It looks more like:

*I eat because I thought of something that would taste good, and I just gotta taste it.

*I eat because I am angry. Sad. Happy. Used to eat from boredom, but boredom got kicked utterly out of my life a number of years ago. Mood eating is big though.

*I eat because it's time to eat.

*I eat because it's a comforting ritual.

*I am a very sensual person. Eating is a very sensual process. If readers find that disgusting, I apologize.

*I eat because someone else is eating.

*I eat because I'm stuck on something, and eating is a momentary change of routine which might unstick that something.

So we went through this long process of exploring what actual physical hunger feels like, and identifying all of its impostors. I learned that if you only eat when you are hungry, you get on people's nerves. You're not eating when they want to eat, and they are uncomfortable eating in front of you (I REALLY learned about that when I was fasting for spiritual reasons a number of years back). You find yourself ready to eat when it's "not time." You don't clean your plate...or at least you don't until you gain some sort of notion of the actual food it takes to stop hunger, and not the pile it takes for utter satiation of all the other reasons for eating. I learned to start with the food I like, which ran counter to my practice of eating the "yucky stuff" first and saving the best for last. When you only eat till you're just precisely full, you don't wast time/room on the "yucky stuff" at all.

Now mind you, I've unlearned all of that since and am back at feeding the beast within.

Ahh learning.

I know I'm spending way too much time and energy focusing on this whole food thing, but I'm doing for real change that goes all the way through me. So I think I'll go ahead and make the investment.