My brain is screaming at me to go eat something. I woke up at 3am with hunger pangs. A rarely felt sensation. I took me a minute or two to identify the feeling. I doubt I've been actually hungry in decades.
The main problem for me with diet, exercise and weight loss is that it feels unnatural. It's like swimming upstream against a strong current. Whereas eating what I want, when I want is like floating down stream on a tube with a beer. This mindset is deeply ingrained.
Ya see food is my drug. A drug that works every time. It has never let me down, it ALWAYS makes me feel better. Food is also love. Being fed or feeding people is the main demonstration of love in my family. And it goes deeper, like a lot of BFG's I'm a decent cook. People in my life whom I've fed lavish me with praise. "oh my God Skip, this is amazing!". Food meets all my needs.
My food choices, while meeting my in-the-moment needs, are killing me. I understand this in the abstract but high blood pressure and the strain on my heart caused by obesity are all long term problems. I want to feel better now! This one cigarette is not going to give me COPD and I need this one cigarette, now!
I'm very self indulgent, admittedly mostly in small personal ways, but I rarely do anything I don't want to. And mostly I don't want to feel bad. I've been lucky in life to the extent I've never had to go without. So I feed every minor urge and feel the endorphins rush thru me. In the full harsh light of self awareness it is a sad and weak way to live.
The short term distress I experience seems so intense, wait I'm lying. I don't experience any short term distress because I don't let it get to that point. I'm eating prophylacticly ... I often say WTF and gobble down 3,000 calories of Ramen noodles with Velveta (crazy delicious btw) without hunger or anxiety. If I'm always all full up with carbs and fat I won't feel bad ever.
So how to choose to swim upstream? How to break the habits if a lifetime? Well putting the whole thing out there is a part of it. Creating a potential for public disgrace or public success is a motivator. I know I'm weak and slothful and now anyone reading this does too. So if I succeed I'm that guy who lost 100lbs and did the Iron man. If I fail I'm that BFG who made all the fuss and quit like a loser.
This is why I am on this extreme jump start psuedo fast. I know myself. I need to change the direction of a river. To do that I need to feel hunger and ignore it. Hunger is not the worst feeling there is. Especially when its self induced and a choice and easily remedied. And as they say in over eaters anonymous "no one ever starved to death between dinner and breakfast"
The funny thing is I know exactly how to shop, cook and eat a healthy diet. I can make 1500 calories a day look and taste great. I just have to make the choice to eat to live, not live to eat.
All that being said I gotta stop writing about food for a while, I am so damn HUNGRY!
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