#2 Eating what you want / a summary

Today I have some time. Between writing random stuff about the joy of having left another couple pounds along the way or writing another rule, I decided the rule would have been less inconclusive. I hope to manage to be concise without forgetting anything.

Therefore, here’s the second, wonderful rule: What to eat [everything!]

Notice: start reading and following this rule only after you’ve used the first for at least a few day, or even better a week. It’s easier to assimilate the concepts one at a time.

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How to /

1 • Before eating, during the meals or between meals, drink 1 or 2 glasses of water and wait. Especially if you’re between meals, this helps recognizing if you were really hungry or just thirsty (the signals sometimes get mixed), or even if it was a nervous hunger. In that case a glass of water and breathing help you to calm down. 

2 • You can eat anything you want to eat. Except obviously in case of allergies, spoiled foods, with dubious ingredients or anything that common sense advises against (like a light bulb).

3 • There are no lists of permitted or forbidden foods, things that should be eaten a given amount of times a week or magical fat-burning ingredients.
We are perfectly aware of what’s too fat and what’s healthy, and practically everyone knows the food pyramid. Therefore there’s no need of a list to remind us fruit and vegetables are light and nutritious and chocolate mascarpone is heavy to digest and quite caloric. Common sense will tell us that’s not advisable to eat a whole wedding cake alone.

4 • If we really crave wedding cake (or any delicacy), we can eat it, provided we follow the first rule, Slowing down. Thoroughly enjoying the much awaited food, till the last particle, will help fully appreciate the flavour that fuelled that craving, and you’ll only need a little to get your satisfaction and move on.

5 • It’s important not to feel on a diet, so there are no limitations, but eating what you want doesn’t mean only eating the foods that are normally off-limits, or you’d end up following a (fattening) diet anyway. What It does mean is that if you have a specific craving, you can satisfy it with no worries.

Benefits /

6 • Body: drinking before you eat and waiting a few minutes often averts emotional eating episodes, and helps distinguish thirst from hunger. During the meals it simply helps feeling full faster, without saying that drinking water is good for your health, it helps getting rid of toxins and a hydrated body works better (and slims down faster).

7 • Mind: forbidden things are more attractive and with time they become temptations, taboos and sacrifices. Not giving yourself such limitations stops you from craving a food so bad to demand willpower to resist, with consequent binge eating when such will fails. If you enjoy what you want, you won’t need much of it to satisfy the mind, and you won’t consume as much as you would were it forbidden. If you consider a break to the rule to eat some chocolate, you’ll feel guilty and probably fall back in the vicious circle of I can’t do it anyway that so often causes diets to be dropped. And this one is not a diet.

8 • Spirit: forbidding something implies a lack of judgement and control. Without prohibitions food becomes less alluring, and we take away its power over us.

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Little personal suggestions /

9 • It happens that, opening the fridge, we see something we like. It could be a strawberry, some chicken or pasta. If I really want some, I take a bit (a strawberry, a macaroon…) and I shut the door of the fridge. Keeping it open always gives me the idea of a relationship yet not concluded, a possibility of future dialogue. But no: just a bit and that’s it, goodbye fridge! I don’t need you!

10 • If you have brothers or pets, it can be very helpful to take something packaged, like a packet of crackers, and split it. You scratch the itch and get rid of the leftovers, so you aren’t tempted to finish the package… But in fact, any food you share becomes less important and also tastes better.

Like everything else in this process, it’s about your mind.
It’s not necessary to impose oneself anything, and every suggestion, from drinking more water to not falling into “food traps”, can require lots of time and practice. But if you want to change so that you’ll never have problems with eating again, you can’t expect to do everything at once: patience will turn the rules (or better, the suggestions) into healthy habits. In the meanwhile, enjoy the trip…


Moon [-5.1]