For years it was a constant struggle to keep my weight down. I tried numerous diets beginning in my teenage years in the 1980s, including the Beverly Hills diet (in which you eat only pineapple and two bananas the first day), but when all else failed, my go-to method was simply calorie counting. I would limit my daily calories to 1200 or 1500, depending on how ambitious I felt.
During my days of dieting, I would think about nothing but food. I would go to sleep thinking about food and wake up thinking about food. I would worry about the fact that the crackers I had at lunch had cut into too many of my remaining calories, and indeed they had. I would negotiate with myself: if I ate too many calories one day, I would cut back the next.
I could last, almost like clockwork, for 21 days. But by that twenty second day, I couldn't take it anymore. I would go on an out-of-control binge on chocolate and peanut butter candy bars or potato chips (or both), and wonder why I was such a glutton.
I couldn't understand how my skinny friends were able to say "no” to seconds or even (gasp) leave food on their plates. We could be at an event or a party, and I'd be barely able to concentrate on the conversation, as I'd be thinking about the brownies on the corner table. I'd be doing some rough brownie calorie calculations in my head, thinking how I wanted another one, and how I really shouldn't. My skinny friends didn't seem to be thinking about the brownies at all, and if they actually ate one, they appeared to soon forget all about the rest of them. I admired their discipline and their amazing self-control. Well, I kinda did. Truth was, I mostly envied it. I wished I had their tremendous willpower.
I was overweight, but never terribly so. So I was all the more baffled why I couldn't get a handle on this. It didn't make sense.
It wouldn't be until my 40s that I would finally understand what was going on. Little did I know, but my skinny friends were NOT pushing themselves away from the table. They didn't have tremendous willpower; in fact, they weren't relying on any willpower. They weren't so disciplined, and they didn't have amazing self-control. They weren't making a conscious effort to ignore the brownies; they really did forget about them.
And, likewise, I wasn't out of control. Nor was I a glutton. The truth is that my skinny friends weren't hungry, but I was. They declined seconds because they were full. On the other hand, I was eating multiple brownies because I was experiencing sincere hunger. The difference between my skinny friends and me wasn't a moral failing on my part; the difference was hunger.
Through these Chapter 2 newsletters, I'll explain why my skinny friends weren't hungry and why I was. I'll teach you how you can successfully lose weight and sustain weight loss — without hunger.
Best wishes to you, and welcome!