My 'A-Ha!' Moment

About a year ago I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to count calories for the rest of my life. I determined I’m one of those people who must keep a log of what I’m eating in order to ever be successful at weight loss and eliminating binges. Honestly, when I am stringent in my food/calorie logging, I do see legitimate results. I also see myself getting resentful of the fact that I have to do such a practice. However, after a frustrating year of counting, and then getting so resentful of needing to count (which inevitably leads to a binge) and so on and so forth, the cycle made me think that maybe there is more to it than originally met the eye.

Then I had an “a-ha” moment. Epiphanies are rare for me, so when one comes along it entirely consumes my mind. I suppose that’s a part of my all or nothing thought process. Every day when I make myself count calories, and log food, and be aware of every single thing I put in my mouth, it leads to a day where I think about food constantly. It’s a never ending thought pattern of what I have had… and what I can still have… but if I have this then I can’t have that.

It leads me to situations where I have to bring my own food, so I’m thinking about food before I go to bed. What do I have time to prepare in the morning before work? How many cups of food fit in this Tupperware? It leads to inner monologues along the lines of: “If I have this for a snack, then I can’t have that for lunch… but if I want to go out for dinner I have to choose the restaurant so that I can look up the nutritional values for each option in advance and then plan out where I can go and what I can have before we get there. What if the person I’m meeting wants to share an appetizer? How do I say no without going into a diatribe about why I have to count calories. They’re naturally thin, they won’t understand. Oh, if they want to share a bottle of wine, I might get drunk which would lead to more eating, and when I’m tipsy my math skills aren’t so sharp and I might not add everything up correctly. And there's all those empty calories in alcohol that I'll never be able to burn off. I’ll say I’m on antibiotics. Crap, I said that last time. Will they remember? But even antibiotics won’t get me out of sharing a dessert… Will I remember everything I ate so that I can write it down? Did I weigh myself this morning? I can’t weigh myself when I get home because that will be inconsistent. Maybe I just won’t go out for dinner. Maybe I can say I have to work late, and then when I go home I’ll just eat something with a label on it so I know for sure. Ice cream has a label on it… I hate this.”

Losing weight has a very simple, specific and proven formula. Burn more calories than you consume. If I don’t log everything, and just make healthier choices, will that help? If I free myself from logging will I be able to not think about food every second and rediscover what it feels like when hunger makes me think of food as opposed to always having food in the back of my mind?

My first attempt at logging what I ate was when I was ten years old. It was a New Year resolution. I distinctly remember being pleased by how reasonable the calories were in minute white rice, and with barely any calories in soy sauce. That lasted about six weeks. Keep in mind, I started doing the Jane Fonda workout when I was four. I would lay a towel on the floor and use that as my exercise mat. My whole life when I would see family that I hadn’t seen in a while the first thing they would do was hug me, and then look at me up and down and tell me whether I had lost or gained weight. I wish that one day, I will live a life where this isn’t at the forefront of my self-image and worth.