W44, Day 6: Voracious

Sometimes you just have one of those days.  You wake up, tired and only vaguely alive, and you realize that you are deeply, voraciously hungry.  Or maybe that's just me.  It's the type of hungry that no amount of yogurt and apples, peanut butter or low-fat cheese sticks will fill.  Why does this happen?  I've been working on this lifestyle change for months, almost a year and I eat more calories now than ever before while dieting.  Yet all I wanted to do yesterday was eat and eat and eat as if I would never be full.

Much of this was self-soothing behavior, I'm sure, since I was feeling so tired and weighed down (figuratively here, the literal is a given).  But I wanted to eat everything under the sun.  Yesterday was one of those days when I rail against the confines of my calorie limits, when I feel the overwhelming frustration of the constant need for control.  What's up with that?  I mean, really, I understand the need for control and I feel happier with myself and my body as the scale tips downward, so why would I let myself sabotage that?

Recently I read an interesting newspaper article "Maintaining Weight Loss After Dieting--A Ghost of a Chance" about how weight loss triggers hormones in our bodies (see link below).  Researches found that when obese people lose weight, they produce hormones that stay in our blood for up to and over a year and cause hunger.   (How crazy is it that the body doesn't like us to lose weight even though it's what more healthful for us??)  I was rather discouraged to read that in a study mentioned in the article, people who had been dieting for a year reported that they felt as hungry or hungrier than when they began.  What the heck?! I guess that's frustrating because I can identify with it.  I don't want to be fat and I don't want to eat, but there are times when I yearn for food, heart and soul.  It makes me angry at my own weakness and lack of will.  Maybe that's the positive part of this article, the 'it's-not-really-your-fault' absolution that we all want to hear.  If one can't control what their body does, are they really to blame for its weight gain?  To quote the article:

This new study may dishearten many people hoping to lose significant weight, or anyone venturing on yet another diet. But it may also allow some frustrated dieters to feel a little saner and less self-judgmental, given the known hormonal sabotage at work.

The new findings may also promote a more compassionate and educated understanding about people who struggle so hard -- and unsuccessfully -- to lose weight.

As the researchers suggest, " ... the high rate of relapse among obese people who have lost weight has a strong physiological basis and is not simply the result of the voluntary resumption of old habits."

In the end, it doesn't really matter if I'm to blame for my weight or not because it's up to me to change it.  I have to do better, one day at a time.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_19217872