You are complete. It is time to organize all the behavioral changes and choices that you've made these past three months into a Monday through Friday style of living that you can sustain over the long term. As with each of the weekly challenges you've engaged, your weekends are celebratory. Don't binge, but do enjoy the things that you normally restrict during the week.
This final week of the Never on Sunday program, we'll track our behavior in much the same way that we did in our first week's exercise, "Written in Stone". We'll apply all that we've practiced thus far and record our success at each of this week's meals. So you'll once again need to carry a little notebook or electronic recording device. In addition to noting the time you eat, the particular foods and the quantity of each, you'll add a fourth column in which you'll record any of the eleven numbers below that pertain to that meal (you will need to carry a copy of this list so that you may make the appropriate entries):
1. If you're logging this information while eating rather than waiting until after the meal, enter the #1.
2. If you put down the fork between bites
3. When you count your bites until full and stop eating at that point
4. When you give a mental satisfaction rating to each component of your meal
5. If you make a deliberate attempt to reduce external stimuli at the meal
6. When you divide the meal in half and delay eating the second portion
7. Add the #7 when the meal is part of a palm-size only portion in a day of grazing
8. When your only beverage at the meal is water
9. Vegetarian
10. When the meal omits starches and dairy
11. When the meal is primarily liquid.
For example, here's what my lunch looked like today.
7/4/10 1:00 PM 1 1/2 cups Fried Calamari, 1 pint beer
#s 1,2,3,5,10
The #s indicate that I wrote it down (1), put my fork down between bites (2), counted my bites and quit when full (3), sat outside and kept quiet (5), ate no bread or dairy with the meal (10).
Make it Real:
If you want to relax your discipline for Friday night repasts, then you could call Friday at sundown the beginning of your weekend. However, in that case, your more carefully studied and controlled weekday eating begins at sundown on Sunday.
If this kind of awareness and regulation of your weekday diet is going to stick with you, what changes to the diet or to your usual eating behavior have to be made?
Food for Thought:
Review the #s at the end of the week. Which tasks or changes did you avoid? Are there some that might contribute to your weight loss success?
Is there a behavioral eating challenge that you'd like to add to the dozen listed on this blog? You can create your own and offer it as a suggestion, addition or improvement to those described here.
Consider giving this diet system a rest period and then trying it again, perhaps with a friend or group of friends who might support, inspire and team up with you in your effort. Your will power can increase with every twelve-week round of effort.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Week XI: Starved for Clarity
A weight loss goal is a problem of luxury, a matter of abundance. The poorest people of the world would love to have the problem. This week we will get to know real hunger. We will fast on clear liquids only. Now that's an extreme and unhealthy experiment, so the value will come with our choice of modifications. Short fasts are used as spiritual practices and as ways to cleanse the body of toxins. Besides gaining control over our hunger, our purpose here is to disrupt our eating patterns by taking a break from food. You may want to schedule a periodic day of fasting as a way to regularly renew your volition.
Make it Real:
The first modification is to broaden the definition of clear liquids. Soups are excellent examples. The question is how far to vary from the extreme of drinking only the broth. Vegetable soup makes sense, but the addition of noodles or rice detracts from our aim.
Next, you could chose to consume mostly clear liquids, but allow small quantities of solid food alongside the watery main course. This becomes a matter of thinking ahead and making a list of acceptable supplements. A small portion of protein will lessen the sense of urgency about your hunger, but crackers with your soup? Not a great match for this challenge.
The other alterations to the full week of fasting are to engage the diet only every other day, say Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or to shift into the clear liquid diet for only one or two meals a day rather than abstain from solid food all day long. If that is your choice, dinner rather than breakfast is the better option as a replacement for weight loss.
Looking at my week ahead, I plan to make Monday's dinner liquid. On Tuesday I'll omit solid food at lunch. Wednesday I'll eat sensibly but I won't participate in the challenge. I'll make both lunch and dinner a liquid only fast on Thursday; and my only full day of fasting will be Friday.
Food for Thought:
How and when does hunger get the best of you? Preparation is key. When you're going to give in to it, do you have plentiful healthy foods at hand?
Does the experience of real hunger increase your awareness or control of too frequent snacking?
If you decide to replace only one or two meals with liquid on any given day, do you overeat at the remaining meal in order to compensate?
Do you add fried foods, sugar, or alcohol to an empty stomach?
Make it Real:
The first modification is to broaden the definition of clear liquids. Soups are excellent examples. The question is how far to vary from the extreme of drinking only the broth. Vegetable soup makes sense, but the addition of noodles or rice detracts from our aim.
Next, you could chose to consume mostly clear liquids, but allow small quantities of solid food alongside the watery main course. This becomes a matter of thinking ahead and making a list of acceptable supplements. A small portion of protein will lessen the sense of urgency about your hunger, but crackers with your soup? Not a great match for this challenge.
The other alterations to the full week of fasting are to engage the diet only every other day, say Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or to shift into the clear liquid diet for only one or two meals a day rather than abstain from solid food all day long. If that is your choice, dinner rather than breakfast is the better option as a replacement for weight loss.
Looking at my week ahead, I plan to make Monday's dinner liquid. On Tuesday I'll omit solid food at lunch. Wednesday I'll eat sensibly but I won't participate in the challenge. I'll make both lunch and dinner a liquid only fast on Thursday; and my only full day of fasting will be Friday.
Food for Thought:
How and when does hunger get the best of you? Preparation is key. When you're going to give in to it, do you have plentiful healthy foods at hand?
Does the experience of real hunger increase your awareness or control of too frequent snacking?
If you decide to replace only one or two meals with liquid on any given day, do you overeat at the remaining meal in order to compensate?
Do you add fried foods, sugar, or alcohol to an empty stomach?
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Week X: White Out
The next two diets are extreme examples of will power. Neither are realistic or long term ways of eating. Instead they represent opportunities to demonstrate your volition and to modify challenges in ways that will work in your present life. Since adherence to the absolute discipline proposed by this week's diet "White Out" is unlikely to work, might even be unhealthy, you must alter the challenge and adopt it to your needs.
This week we omit all white foods, specifically dairy, starches and sugar. A list of white foods includes: milk and all milk products however colored they might be by fruit or later processes, potato, rice, pasta and anything made with flour or sugar. The point is to avoid refined carbohydrates and milk fat.
Make it Real:
The important part of this week's challenge is your choice of modification. It is important to the success of this endeavor that you take a moment to foresee possible pitfalls and decide beforehand how you'll meet them. Compromise is not failure if you've made it part of your strategy.
One modification for this extreme diet is to only undertake it every other day of the week, three days out of the five weekdays.
Another strategy is to choose just one or two white foods that most impacts your current diet. For instance, if you know that your downfall is french fries, remove that item. If it's bread that is usually the undoing of your best laid plans then take that one food out of this week's meals.
Yet another possible adjustment to the White Out diet is to limit the time of day in which you will engage the diet rather than hold to the challenge for every meal. Breakfast foods are typically composed of cereals, breads and dairy, so rather than fight to find an alternative to that meal, you might take on the White Out challenge only from noon onward.
Food for Thought:
As the week begins, have you a plan in mind that tailors this diet to your life, or are you improvising your modifications? Chances are, diet compromises grasped at the last minute haven't worked well or consistently in your past.
Have you selected the most difficult or the easiest white foods to eliminate from this week's meals?
Conversely, have you taken on more than you can handle? A slide into failure is more damaging than commitment to a smaller but more attainable task.
Notice on which side you find yourself when a food is "almost" white. Bread that appears dark, but is made from white flour for instance. Do you eat it or do you tell yourself, "When in doubt, leave it out"?
This week we omit all white foods, specifically dairy, starches and sugar. A list of white foods includes: milk and all milk products however colored they might be by fruit or later processes, potato, rice, pasta and anything made with flour or sugar. The point is to avoid refined carbohydrates and milk fat.
Make it Real:
The important part of this week's challenge is your choice of modification. It is important to the success of this endeavor that you take a moment to foresee possible pitfalls and decide beforehand how you'll meet them. Compromise is not failure if you've made it part of your strategy.
One modification for this extreme diet is to only undertake it every other day of the week, three days out of the five weekdays.
Another strategy is to choose just one or two white foods that most impacts your current diet. For instance, if you know that your downfall is french fries, remove that item. If it's bread that is usually the undoing of your best laid plans then take that one food out of this week's meals.
Yet another possible adjustment to the White Out diet is to limit the time of day in which you will engage the diet rather than hold to the challenge for every meal. Breakfast foods are typically composed of cereals, breads and dairy, so rather than fight to find an alternative to that meal, you might take on the White Out challenge only from noon onward.
Food for Thought:
As the week begins, have you a plan in mind that tailors this diet to your life, or are you improvising your modifications? Chances are, diet compromises grasped at the last minute haven't worked well or consistently in your past.
Have you selected the most difficult or the easiest white foods to eliminate from this week's meals?
Conversely, have you taken on more than you can handle? A slide into failure is more damaging than commitment to a smaller but more attainable task.
Notice on which side you find yourself when a food is "almost" white. Bread that appears dark, but is made from white flour for instance. Do you eat it or do you tell yourself, "When in doubt, leave it out"?
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Week IX: Faceless Food
Last week we pumped up our intake of water. This week we increase our fresh fruit and vegetables. For the next five days we become vegetarians. People choose the lifestyle for a variety of reasons. There's the global/political rational that the resources devoted to raising food animals would feed all the world's hungy if everyone ate plants instead of animals. Some folks decline to eat animals on moral grounds, "I never eat anything that used to have a face," and others don't eat meat for health and hygiene reasons.
Farmed animals may live and/or be slaughtered under unsanitary conditions. Medications that are used to accelerate growth or to combat disease in animals may end up on your plate. Toxins present in cows and chickens pass the poisons to their mild and eggs. Dietary cholesterol is found only in animal products.
To know the vibrancy and healthy skin of a true vegetarian, we'd have to adhere to the diet everyday until the toxins from consumed animal products dissipated from our bodies. Here we experiment with the discipline for only five days; and for that reason we will refrain not only from eating beef, but from anything that used to have a face.
Make it Real:
As these diet plans progress, we face more and more difficult challenges that require greater preparation and change in food choices. Therefore, if you are already a vegetarian, this wee become a vegan and quit all animal products altogether, including milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, butter and any baked goods that list dairy among their ingredients.
If you can foresee meals at which you are likely to slip and eat an animal, consider minimizing the compromise. Perhaps becoming a pescatarian (fish eating) this week is enough change and challenge for you.
When you find yourself giving in to temptation and eating meat, at least make sure that you also include a large quantity of vegetables in the meal.
Food for Thought:
Consider how you feel after your meatless meal. Lighter than usual? Less drowsy?
Does the grocery or restaurant bill decrease?
With regards to preparation, how do you approach this challenge? Do you ready yourself with vegetarian cookbooks and include tofu and tempeh or other alternatives when shopping? Is advanced planning lacking from other commitments in your life?
Farmed animals may live and/or be slaughtered under unsanitary conditions. Medications that are used to accelerate growth or to combat disease in animals may end up on your plate. Toxins present in cows and chickens pass the poisons to their mild and eggs. Dietary cholesterol is found only in animal products.
To know the vibrancy and healthy skin of a true vegetarian, we'd have to adhere to the diet everyday until the toxins from consumed animal products dissipated from our bodies. Here we experiment with the discipline for only five days; and for that reason we will refrain not only from eating beef, but from anything that used to have a face.
Make it Real:
As these diet plans progress, we face more and more difficult challenges that require greater preparation and change in food choices. Therefore, if you are already a vegetarian, this wee become a vegan and quit all animal products altogether, including milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, butter and any baked goods that list dairy among their ingredients.
If you can foresee meals at which you are likely to slip and eat an animal, consider minimizing the compromise. Perhaps becoming a pescatarian (fish eating) this week is enough change and challenge for you.
When you find yourself giving in to temptation and eating meat, at least make sure that you also include a large quantity of vegetables in the meal.
Food for Thought:
Consider how you feel after your meatless meal. Lighter than usual? Less drowsy?
Does the grocery or restaurant bill decrease?
With regards to preparation, how do you approach this challenge? Do you ready yourself with vegetarian cookbooks and include tofu and tempeh or other alternatives when shopping? Is advanced planning lacking from other commitments in your life?
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Week VIII: How Dry I Am
The primary point of this challenge is to disrupt your automatic eating pattern, but instead of mounting a direct attack on your preferred foods, we'll enter through the back door, via your choice of beverages.
Every diet advocates drinking plenty of water, to help fill you up, to flush toxins from your system and to hydrate your cells. This week we address the fluids you consume. We replace all your beverages with just one -- water. The big three liquids that we want to avoid this week are coffee, soda and alcohol. Alcohol is the first beverage to replace with water. If you don't like the taste of alcohol and it already doesn't figure in your diet, then take aim at replacing coffee or soda.
Make It Real:
You may want to begin with replacing just one of your favorite beverages instead of all three. Start with alcohol.
It's okay to flavor the water with citrus or tea. If you go this route, omit sweeteners like sugar and honey, and thickeners like milk.
If you have a beloved ritual such as a couple sharing coffee in bed, allow yourself one cup to celebrate the morning together.
If an entire day of foregoing your favorite drink feels impossible or destined to fail, try shifting to water replacement for just half the day.
As an alternative to eliminating a specific beverage, you could simply add water in great quantity to your other fluids. Nine glasses a day is not too much to ask.
Food for Thought:
Do you associate pleasure or luxury with your favorite drink? "The meal just isn't the same without my glass of wine." Has becoming a connoisseur of certain kind of beverage made you associate your self-image with a certain drink?
Does this exercise help you recognize how little plain water you consume on average?
Could it be true that the bulk of your excess calories are not found on your plate, but in your glass?
Are you surprised by how difficult it is to limit your drinking to water for just five days and evenings?
What other elements of your life might benefit by a week of doing without?
Every diet advocates drinking plenty of water, to help fill you up, to flush toxins from your system and to hydrate your cells. This week we address the fluids you consume. We replace all your beverages with just one -- water. The big three liquids that we want to avoid this week are coffee, soda and alcohol. Alcohol is the first beverage to replace with water. If you don't like the taste of alcohol and it already doesn't figure in your diet, then take aim at replacing coffee or soda.
Make It Real:
You may want to begin with replacing just one of your favorite beverages instead of all three. Start with alcohol.
It's okay to flavor the water with citrus or tea. If you go this route, omit sweeteners like sugar and honey, and thickeners like milk.
If you have a beloved ritual such as a couple sharing coffee in bed, allow yourself one cup to celebrate the morning together.
If an entire day of foregoing your favorite drink feels impossible or destined to fail, try shifting to water replacement for just half the day.
As an alternative to eliminating a specific beverage, you could simply add water in great quantity to your other fluids. Nine glasses a day is not too much to ask.
Food for Thought:
Do you associate pleasure or luxury with your favorite drink? "The meal just isn't the same without my glass of wine." Has becoming a connoisseur of certain kind of beverage made you associate your self-image with a certain drink?
Does this exercise help you recognize how little plain water you consume on average?
Could it be true that the bulk of your excess calories are not found on your plate, but in your glass?
Are you surprised by how difficult it is to limit your drinking to water for just five days and evenings?
What other elements of your life might benefit by a week of doing without?
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Week VII: Time After Time
Last week you divided your portions in half. This week we go one step further, shrinking our portions so that we can graze. Our challenge is to eat a palm-sized portion of food every two hours. For those who start their day around 6:00 AM and finish about 8:00 PM that means eating eight small meals.
The intention here is to experience dieting not only as avoiding certain foods, but also as a commitment to eating at regular intervals so that you don't binge. Our aim is to balance the consumption of food evenly throughout the day, not eat a standard portion-sized meal and then a snack two hours later. You may find yourself deliberately eating when you're not hungry.
You could execute this challenge with pre-packaged convenience foods, but you know that isn't a proper way to eat. Thus, this week involves a great deal of preparation, and for some of you, a great many to-go, plastic containers. At restaurant meals, you will be ordering only an appetizer and beverage. Even the side salad will be too large a portion.
Make it Real:
Look at your week in advance. This exercise may not be realistic every day of this week. You can elect to omit certain days from the challenge. Perhaps three days Monday, Wednesday and Friday, rather than the full five will give you enough of a sense of grazing as an eating lifestyle.
You will have to go shopping for foods that will keep in small containers and you will have to store them somewhere near your person. Most work places do not support such frequent eating breaks. If eating on the job is not possible, you will have to consider where you'll go to eat your mini-meals.
If you can't master the change of schedule the first day you try it, please don't throw up your hands and quit. Modify the challenge and try other food options the next day. Think of this challenge as an experiment rather than a test.
Food for Thought:
Do you eat full meals even though you know you'll be eating again in two hours? Obviously this challenge can take you in the opposite direction from your intended weight loss.
Do you count a bag of chips or an ice cream as one of your meals? Now you KNOW that's ridiculous.
When you forget or get too busy to eat at the two-hour mark, do you double up on the next meal, allowing yourself a full portion because you erred earlier?
Do you see the advanced planning and food preparation as drudgery, or as gaining skills that will contribute to a new and healthy eating habits for years to come?
The intention here is to experience dieting not only as avoiding certain foods, but also as a commitment to eating at regular intervals so that you don't binge. Our aim is to balance the consumption of food evenly throughout the day, not eat a standard portion-sized meal and then a snack two hours later. You may find yourself deliberately eating when you're not hungry.
You could execute this challenge with pre-packaged convenience foods, but you know that isn't a proper way to eat. Thus, this week involves a great deal of preparation, and for some of you, a great many to-go, plastic containers. At restaurant meals, you will be ordering only an appetizer and beverage. Even the side salad will be too large a portion.
Make it Real:
Look at your week in advance. This exercise may not be realistic every day of this week. You can elect to omit certain days from the challenge. Perhaps three days Monday, Wednesday and Friday, rather than the full five will give you enough of a sense of grazing as an eating lifestyle.
You will have to go shopping for foods that will keep in small containers and you will have to store them somewhere near your person. Most work places do not support such frequent eating breaks. If eating on the job is not possible, you will have to consider where you'll go to eat your mini-meals.
If you can't master the change of schedule the first day you try it, please don't throw up your hands and quit. Modify the challenge and try other food options the next day. Think of this challenge as an experiment rather than a test.
Food for Thought:
Do you eat full meals even though you know you'll be eating again in two hours? Obviously this challenge can take you in the opposite direction from your intended weight loss.
Do you count a bag of chips or an ice cream as one of your meals? Now you KNOW that's ridiculous.
When you forget or get too busy to eat at the two-hour mark, do you double up on the next meal, allowing yourself a full portion because you erred earlier?
Do you see the advanced planning and food preparation as drudgery, or as gaining skills that will contribute to a new and healthy eating habits for years to come?
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Week VI: Half Way There
We have arrived at the mid-point of our twelve-week diet program. It is time for assessment and an intermission. This week your assignment is to divide your portions in two and then wait a full ten minutes before eating or drinking the second half of your meal. Yes, the soup will get cold. The ice cream will melt. Our intention is to reduce portion size for good. You may elect to eat all or just a small amount of the second half, but your aim during the intermission is to confirm that you've already eaten enough. Instead of just cleaving the single plated portion in two, dirty an extra plate right from the start. Set the second half aside for later. It makes the decision to eat the remainder of your meal clear and dramatic.
Thus far the Never on Sunday diet has targeted your awareness but has not demanded any change in what you eat. The desired effect is a shift in attitude so that you are prepared for permanent behavioral change. The remaining six diet challenges test your control and ask you to alter your food choices. Advanced planning and preparation will be necessary in order to assure your success. Modifications to this week's challenge, also made in advance, will likewise sustain your sense of control.
Make it Real:
When rushed at meal time, you can abbreviate the intermission to five minutes instead of ten.
Having a to-go container at the table, before you sit down, is a smart addition.
Breakfast foods don't divide or travel well. You may want to allot yourself only half a bowl of cereal or half a cup of coffee at a time.
Food For Thought:
After the ten-minute intermission, once the dish gets cold, do you finish the entire portion anyway?
Do you cheat by giving yourself an extra large portion at the start so that eating half still assures you a lot of food?
Have you discovered a growing sense of control? Are you eager to apply your skills toward diet modifications that might reduce calorie consumption?
Does the addition of exercise now appeal?
Thus far the Never on Sunday diet has targeted your awareness but has not demanded any change in what you eat. The desired effect is a shift in attitude so that you are prepared for permanent behavioral change. The remaining six diet challenges test your control and ask you to alter your food choices. Advanced planning and preparation will be necessary in order to assure your success. Modifications to this week's challenge, also made in advance, will likewise sustain your sense of control.
Make it Real:
When rushed at meal time, you can abbreviate the intermission to five minutes instead of ten.
Having a to-go container at the table, before you sit down, is a smart addition.
Breakfast foods don't divide or travel well. You may want to allot yourself only half a bowl of cereal or half a cup of coffee at a time.
Food For Thought:
After the ten-minute intermission, once the dish gets cold, do you finish the entire portion anyway?
Do you cheat by giving yourself an extra large portion at the start so that eating half still assures you a lot of food?
Have you discovered a growing sense of control? Are you eager to apply your skills toward diet modifications that might reduce calorie consumption?
Does the addition of exercise now appeal?
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Week V: The Silent Treatment
Last week you savored and rated the taste, smell, temperature and texture of your food. This week you'll appreciate its sound. Snap, crackle, pop! The challenge is to eat in silence.
This exercise makes the meal a meditation, a mini retreat. You will take a moment each day to step away from a world where the pace of change frequently accelerates. Not only will you not talk while you eat, you'll not listen to anything else, just your own chew and swallow, no television, radio or other auditory stimuli. Silence.
Make it Real:
Not every meal may accommodate silence this week. You'll have to choose your battles, the meals in which you can realistically keep quiet. How many times per day, and on which days of the week, can you arrange to be silent in a place without auditory stimuli? Three meals a day in silence may be impossible for those of you who do business over lunch. Can you manage (commit) to two or even just one a day for five days? If not, decide ahead of time which meals on which days can engage this challenge.
Total silence may not be possible, but that doesn't mean you can't limit conversation or those sources of sound over which you have influence. The greater point is that you must make a change, assert yourself and go beyond convenience. You could eat your main dish prior to a social meal or shortly after, and just enjoy an appetizer and beverage during the conversational rendezvous.
If breakfast and lunch require a noisy environment, and you typically eat with a family or spouse at dinner time, you may have to excuse yourself and eat alone in another room this week. Whether you explain your diet program or not, leaving the family table, or turning off the stereo or television, (even if it's only thirty-minutes to an hour), may prove to be a helpful practice and demonstration of declaring your personal boundaries.
What do you notice about the qualities of the meal and your eating behavior when you have nothing else upon which to focus?
What happens when you assert yourself in a way that requires change in your lifestyle and impacts others? Who complains the loudest?
This exercise makes the meal a meditation, a mini retreat. You will take a moment each day to step away from a world where the pace of change frequently accelerates. Not only will you not talk while you eat, you'll not listen to anything else, just your own chew and swallow, no television, radio or other auditory stimuli. Silence.
Make it Real:
Not every meal may accommodate silence this week. You'll have to choose your battles, the meals in which you can realistically keep quiet. How many times per day, and on which days of the week, can you arrange to be silent in a place without auditory stimuli? Three meals a day in silence may be impossible for those of you who do business over lunch. Can you manage (commit) to two or even just one a day for five days? If not, decide ahead of time which meals on which days can engage this challenge.
Total silence may not be possible, but that doesn't mean you can't limit conversation or those sources of sound over which you have influence. The greater point is that you must make a change, assert yourself and go beyond convenience. You could eat your main dish prior to a social meal or shortly after, and just enjoy an appetizer and beverage during the conversational rendezvous.
If breakfast and lunch require a noisy environment, and you typically eat with a family or spouse at dinner time, you may have to excuse yourself and eat alone in another room this week. Whether you explain your diet program or not, leaving the family table, or turning off the stereo or television, (even if it's only thirty-minutes to an hour), may prove to be a helpful practice and demonstration of declaring your personal boundaries.
Food for Thought:
How will you find silent surroundings for your meals this week? The challenge becomes a threefold task. 1.You must endure a silent meditation. 2.You must consider potential pitfalls and plan ahead. 3.You'll also have to declare your intention, go public, in other words, ask for support for this effort.
Compromise and enlisting allies is a good strategy whenever you dare a sizable goal.What do you notice about the qualities of the meal and your eating behavior when you have nothing else upon which to focus?
What happens when you assert yourself in a way that requires change in your lifestyle and impacts others? Who complains the loudest?
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Week IV: Vote with Your Fork
This challenge is about satisfaction, recognizing and defining your pleasure. Every time you eat, rate the food and beverage on a scale from 1 to 10, the higher the number the better the meal. Rate not only the overall quality of the meal, but each part of it (i.e. salad was okay but nothing special = 5, main dish was delicious = 8, dessert was stale = 3).
Define what gives each eating experience its value: taste, smell, presentation, texture, temperature, color, ambiance of the room. Don't miss the flavor at the end of each bite (the lingering after taste of chocolate is my favorite part of candy). Locate the primary physical area of the pleasure in your body (i.e. coffee in your nose, salty foods along the roof of your mouth, sweet at the tip of your tongue). Then look for patterns in your habits.
Most importantly, don't forget the sensation in your torso. When your hunger is getting gratified, the feeling may start out as a ten. Watch for the moment the satisfaction level in your belly drops to below 5.
Make it Real:
It is okay to eat something that is less than pleasing because you're hungry and it's all that is available at the moment. Indeed, this is a circumstance forced upon most of the people on this planet. In our case it's a choice, so let's set a limit to this compromise. Know how much mediocre food you'll consume to forestall hunger and STOP there.
You can realize that a familiar food is no longer satisfying, eat it and plan on changing the flavor or the situation later.
If writing the rating down helps your focus then use your notebook from the Week I challenge: Written in Stone. Your host or hostess doesn't need to know what the low number rating on the page signifies.
Food for Thought:
Do you usually give highest marks to breakfast foods, dinners at home or lunch out?
After assessing a food with less than a rating of 5, do you eat all of it anyway? Do you keep eating beyond your delight? Will you drink a second glass of bad wine?
Does the food or flavor become less interesting or satisfying as you chew or after several bites, dropping from a high rating at the beginning of the meal to a lower number by the time you finish?
.
Define what gives each eating experience its value: taste, smell, presentation, texture, temperature, color, ambiance of the room. Don't miss the flavor at the end of each bite (the lingering after taste of chocolate is my favorite part of candy). Locate the primary physical area of the pleasure in your body (i.e. coffee in your nose, salty foods along the roof of your mouth, sweet at the tip of your tongue). Then look for patterns in your habits.
Most importantly, don't forget the sensation in your torso. When your hunger is getting gratified, the feeling may start out as a ten. Watch for the moment the satisfaction level in your belly drops to below 5.
Make it Real:
It is okay to eat something that is less than pleasing because you're hungry and it's all that is available at the moment. Indeed, this is a circumstance forced upon most of the people on this planet. In our case it's a choice, so let's set a limit to this compromise. Know how much mediocre food you'll consume to forestall hunger and STOP there.
You can realize that a familiar food is no longer satisfying, eat it and plan on changing the flavor or the situation later.
If writing the rating down helps your focus then use your notebook from the Week I challenge: Written in Stone. Your host or hostess doesn't need to know what the low number rating on the page signifies.
Food for Thought:
Do you usually give highest marks to breakfast foods, dinners at home or lunch out?
After assessing a food with less than a rating of 5, do you eat all of it anyway? Do you keep eating beyond your delight? Will you drink a second glass of bad wine?
Does the food or flavor become less interesting or satisfying as you chew or after several bites, dropping from a high rating at the beginning of the meal to a lower number by the time you finish?
.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Week III: Good Till the Last Bite
In this, our third behavioral experiment we will count the number of bites until we feel full. For our first day, let's just count the solid food. Feel free to go beyond that bite when you register fullness. Just note when it occured and eat all that you want.
Then let's begin to count swallows of liquid, even water, while we're eating a meal. You'll certainly feel full drinking a glass of milk sooner than you would a thinner beverage. Let's even count swallows of water until fullness.
Finally, admit that you usually fill up around a certain numbers of bites, and discontinue eating when you reach that number.
Make it Real:
If you require a little notebook to tally bites, then use one.
Watch out for meals where you drink alcohol. It's harder to keep count when you're drinking.
Food for Thought:
Notice which meal, and the hour of the day that requires more bites of food than at other times to satisfy your hunger.
Do you reach that moment sooner with some kinds of food than others?
Do you scheme to beat this exercise by taking larger bites than normal?
On the weekends, when you're free to eat as you wish, in this case without counting, are you more aware of that moment when you achieve and then go beyond a sense of satisfaction?
Then let's begin to count swallows of liquid, even water, while we're eating a meal. You'll certainly feel full drinking a glass of milk sooner than you would a thinner beverage. Let's even count swallows of water until fullness.
Finally, admit that you usually fill up around a certain numbers of bites, and discontinue eating when you reach that number.
Make it Real:
If you require a little notebook to tally bites, then use one.
Watch out for meals where you drink alcohol. It's harder to keep count when you're drinking.
Food for Thought:
Notice which meal, and the hour of the day that requires more bites of food than at other times to satisfy your hunger.
Do you reach that moment sooner with some kinds of food than others?
Do you scheme to beat this exercise by taking larger bites than normal?
On the weekends, when you're free to eat as you wish, in this case without counting, are you more aware of that moment when you achieve and then go beyond a sense of satisfaction?
Monday, March 1, 2010
Week II: Look Ma, No Hands!
"Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art." - Leonardo da Vinci
This week, put down the fork after every bite. Fork, spoon, knife, chopstick, sandwich or burrito...put it down until you swallow. It's the ideal way to eat in polite company anyway, civilized dining instead of brandishing knife and fork over your plate like a sentry guarding the treasure. After all, you are not a hunter warding away other predators from your kill.
While chewing, chew. Do not multi-task by preparing your next morsel. Our intention is to bring habitual behavior to consciousness.
Perhaps part of the reason that we eat fast is because we get nervous and embarrassed when we don't know what to do with our hands.
Make it Real:
If there is a time of day when you must rush through a meal or balance too many objects in your hands (i.e. eating lunch on the road while driving with several misbehaving children in the car), omit that meal from your challenge.
If all you're drinking at your meals is water, don't bother counting sips.
Food for Thought:
What is your posture like at table, your breathing, and how does it compare with those around you?
When you take the time to be more deliberate about your movement and remain still while eating, do people eating nearby appear barbaric, shoveling their food without pause?
You may notice other activities that due to frequency or familiarity you perform automatically. Let's bring awareness to detail. What other tasks to you take for granted while executing them?
Perhaps part of the reason that we eat fast is because we get nervous and embarrassed when we don't know what to do with our hands.
Make it Real:
If there is a time of day when you must rush through a meal or balance too many objects in your hands (i.e. eating lunch on the road while driving with several misbehaving children in the car), omit that meal from your challenge.
If all you're drinking at your meals is water, don't bother counting sips.
Food for Thought:
What is your posture like at table, your breathing, and how does it compare with those around you?
When you take the time to be more deliberate about your movement and remain still while eating, do people eating nearby appear barbaric, shoveling their food without pause?
You may notice other activities that due to frequency or familiarity you perform automatically. Let's bring awareness to detail. What other tasks to you take for granted while executing them?
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Week I: Written in Stone
The rules for this challenge are extremely simple: If you put it in your mouth, write it down.
A fitness trainer will typically ask a client to note their food intake for an entire week. Here you are just recording your consumption for five days. The idea is just to document, not alter, your behavior or add a goal of eating less than usual. Of course you could cheat and NOT write down everything that you eat or drink. Ridiculous as that sounds, people do it. Here, in Never on Sundays, you have no one to whom you must report. This is for your eyes only, but notice if and when you're tempted to omit one of your food items.
How much information you want to write down is up to you. This is your adventure. Make it as fun and as easy as you can. That means carrying a little notebook with a pen or an electronic recording device at all times Monday through Friday. The minimum information is commonly three things: content, quantity and hour. Notice not only the food choices that you make, but your attitude when you write them down.
Most important, observe how knowing that you're going to write it down alters your food choices. Does the food diary impact your eating behavior through the weekend as well?
"If you observe well, your own heart will answer." - R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz
Make it Real:
The "Make it Real" section of each week's challenges offers you an opportunity to identify potential pitfalls in your attempts to meet the challenge and omit the diet where appropriate or change it to fit your life. We want to set you up for an experience of success, and if that means reducing the challenge, or tailoring it to your life and schedule, then so be it. Just do it ahead of time. The important thing is to prepare for obstacles in advance. Avoiding self-sabotage and feelings of failure is key. No throwing up your hands and abandoning the effort because you couldn't follow a specific diet rule at one meal.
Look at each week's challenge and think about your meals that week. If you can see that compliance with any specific direction is unlikely or extremely difficult for certain meals or for specific, special occasion days (i.e. "I cannot be writing in my food diary at luncheons with my Board of Directors.") then take those meals out of the challenge. ("Okay, I can still log my breakfasts, snacks and dinners.")
When you forget your food diary, write the information on a napkin and log it in your journal later.
Food for Thought:
The "Food for Thought" section of each challenge is intended to make you think beyond the immediate eating behavior task so that you can realize lifestyle changes. Writing about the experience of mastering your eating will keep you focused on it, hopefully even over the weekend when you are no longer tasked with the challenge. Your answers can be posted here. They will be read by other weight loss participants as helpful comments.
For the purpose of this challenge, the desire to hide your behavior (i.e. not logging your wine consumption in your food diary) or the guilt you associate with it, is much more informative and important than whatever it is you've eaten. After all, it's only five days of food but a lifetime of habits.
Are you rushed and annoyed while writing in your food diary, or excited and hopeful? Do you scrawl the details as though you shouldn't be bothered, or do you print proudly?
How many meals or hours of added awareness do you enjoy before you lose the wakefulness engendered by journaling?
A fitness trainer will typically ask a client to note their food intake for an entire week. Here you are just recording your consumption for five days. The idea is just to document, not alter, your behavior or add a goal of eating less than usual. Of course you could cheat and NOT write down everything that you eat or drink. Ridiculous as that sounds, people do it. Here, in Never on Sundays, you have no one to whom you must report. This is for your eyes only, but notice if and when you're tempted to omit one of your food items.
How much information you want to write down is up to you. This is your adventure. Make it as fun and as easy as you can. That means carrying a little notebook with a pen or an electronic recording device at all times Monday through Friday. The minimum information is commonly three things: content, quantity and hour. Notice not only the food choices that you make, but your attitude when you write them down.
Most important, observe how knowing that you're going to write it down alters your food choices. Does the food diary impact your eating behavior through the weekend as well?
"If you observe well, your own heart will answer." - R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz
Make it Real:
The "Make it Real" section of each week's challenges offers you an opportunity to identify potential pitfalls in your attempts to meet the challenge and omit the diet where appropriate or change it to fit your life. We want to set you up for an experience of success, and if that means reducing the challenge, or tailoring it to your life and schedule, then so be it. Just do it ahead of time. The important thing is to prepare for obstacles in advance. Avoiding self-sabotage and feelings of failure is key. No throwing up your hands and abandoning the effort because you couldn't follow a specific diet rule at one meal.
Look at each week's challenge and think about your meals that week. If you can see that compliance with any specific direction is unlikely or extremely difficult for certain meals or for specific, special occasion days (i.e. "I cannot be writing in my food diary at luncheons with my Board of Directors.") then take those meals out of the challenge. ("Okay, I can still log my breakfasts, snacks and dinners.")
When you forget your food diary, write the information on a napkin and log it in your journal later.
Food for Thought:
The "Food for Thought" section of each challenge is intended to make you think beyond the immediate eating behavior task so that you can realize lifestyle changes. Writing about the experience of mastering your eating will keep you focused on it, hopefully even over the weekend when you are no longer tasked with the challenge. Your answers can be posted here. They will be read by other weight loss participants as helpful comments.
For the purpose of this challenge, the desire to hide your behavior (i.e. not logging your wine consumption in your food diary) or the guilt you associate with it, is much more informative and important than whatever it is you've eaten. After all, it's only five days of food but a lifetime of habits.
Are you rushed and annoyed while writing in your food diary, or excited and hopeful? Do you scrawl the details as though you shouldn't be bothered, or do you print proudly?
How many meals or hours of added awareness do you enjoy before you lose the wakefulness engendered by journaling?
Welcome
"Michael, this is not the body that we hired," one ballet company director scolded me, "You are under contract and I expect your extra weight gone by the end of the month. Are we clear?" Today I'm in another career reliant upon a sleek public image. A fitness trainer must look the part of the service he sells; it is a vocation for the young and sexy. Sometime around age 45 I found myself wrestling with the same body fat annoyances as my clients. A man with a business called Volition Fitness cannot just blame his love handles on a taste for cabernet and call it a day. Temperance is essential.
"No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now." - Alan Watts
Let's begin with acceptance. No, not resignation to a dissatisfying body size, but rather acceptance of the fact that nothing lasts forever, that the pattern of our diet attempts is cyclical and repetitive. It's the same for most people. So what? If that's the way it works then let's make the best of it, even have fun with it. The trick to sustained effort, until and beyond our goal, is keeping our endeavors fresh and creative. There is no final, diet quick fix, just a fascination with and exploration of our behavior.
This program is called Never on Sunday because we only commit to diet challenges during the week. Our weekends are about freedom and discovery. On Saturday and Sunday we eat when and whatever we want and see if the focus we held during the prior week alters our behavior even after the effort. Twelve (three month's worth) of weekly strategies follows. No one is suggesting that any of these diets will be sufficient calorie reduction to lower our weight or size. Indeed, the point is that diets don't work because they are not sustainable; but diets DO have value as reminders. If we play it right, a diet, silly as it is, can be a useful prompt. We're in this for the long haul, seeking a way to adjust our whole point of view when it comes to food.
If you'd like to gain the support of other participants in this program, feel free to comment on this post. Perhaps sharing your experience will contribute to the success of someone else.
"No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now." - Alan Watts
Let's begin with acceptance. No, not resignation to a dissatisfying body size, but rather acceptance of the fact that nothing lasts forever, that the pattern of our diet attempts is cyclical and repetitive. It's the same for most people. So what? If that's the way it works then let's make the best of it, even have fun with it. The trick to sustained effort, until and beyond our goal, is keeping our endeavors fresh and creative. There is no final, diet quick fix, just a fascination with and exploration of our behavior.
This program is called Never on Sunday because we only commit to diet challenges during the week. Our weekends are about freedom and discovery. On Saturday and Sunday we eat when and whatever we want and see if the focus we held during the prior week alters our behavior even after the effort. Twelve (three month's worth) of weekly strategies follows. No one is suggesting that any of these diets will be sufficient calorie reduction to lower our weight or size. Indeed, the point is that diets don't work because they are not sustainable; but diets DO have value as reminders. If we play it right, a diet, silly as it is, can be a useful prompt. We're in this for the long haul, seeking a way to adjust our whole point of view when it comes to food.
If you'd like to gain the support of other participants in this program, feel free to comment on this post. Perhaps sharing your experience will contribute to the success of someone else.
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