asking different questions: reader's thoughts on the journey to eating competence

Occasionally I want to share a particularly powerful exchange from the comments section here is one in response to the last post.Jennifer: I guess I’m more eating-competent than I thought, because I also plan to eat what I enjoy (within the constraints of my budget and schedule) while considering the after-effects of what I eat. I’ve been working on this since I quit Weight Watchers.I recently realized that one of my old “trigger” foods, Fritos, isn’t a trigger anymore. (For people who were never in WW, a trigger food is something that you find yourself eating until it’s gone regardless of what you planned to eat or whether you are even hungry.) For years I struggled whenever it was in the house. I tried repackaging a standard-sized bag in serving sizes and allowing some every day, but it simply didn’t work–I ate every bit, even though I felt bloated, my mouth hurt from the salt, and everything tasted like corn oil for the rest of the day.Then I stopped dieting. I quit the endless dance of “I planned to eat a good meal–I’m eating Fritos instead–I feel so guilty but it tastes so good–I’m pleasantly full but so ashamed–I’m never buying Fritos again–might as well indulge now–urgh, there goes the last of the bag.” Instead I asked myself as I ate, “So, is the enjoyment you are feeling right now worth what you know is going to happen if you keep going?” Most of the time the answer was “No.” Sometimes it was “Yes, because I am ravenous, I don’t have time to fix myself something because I have three kids and a house to keep, and this is here and quick and filling, corn oil aftertaste be damned.” I kept on eating Fritos, but I found myself stopping after smaller and smaller servings, and eventually just nibbling a handful and feeling done. The bag in my cupboard right now has gone stale. This never happened before.Nothing is indulgent anymore. It’s tasty, filling, nicely creamy, piquant, hot and satisfying, crunchy, cold, chewy, savory, or sweet. And now that the indulgence factor is gone from the Fritos, I have discovered that I would rather have a nicely salted hard-cooked egg if I had time to make some earlier in the week, or some peanut butter on toast if I didn’t.Me: how did you do it? What were your resources that helped you make that leap? For me, Coke and any kind of chips were the same way. I’m happy to say that I too have gotten to the point where it’s just food, not indulgent or “bad” and that bag of tortilla chips often hangs around for a month… Yay for permission and tuning in!Jennifer: I lurked here and at other sites around the Web as I studied fat acceptance and HAES. I mulled over what I read, slept on it, struggled with it.

At some point a passage from one of C.S. Lewis’s books floated into my consciousness and stuck. The gist of it was that the root of right action is asking the right questions and the questions we ask are themselves rooted in the premises we accept–so we had better be clear about what premises we accept. He was talking about religion, but I realized that his argument applies just as well to self-care.If I accept the premise, “The number on the scale (barring rapid gain or loss without apparent cause) is not a measure of anything meaningful,” then the questions I ask myself as I decide what to eat have to change. The questions I had been asking myself were, “How little can I eat without being driven out of my mind by hunger pangs and headaches? How can I eat something I really want without deviating from the assigned eating system? How do I cope with the guilt of once again having been too busy or sick to prepare the correct meals? When O when will I be thin?” But they came from a premise that was doing me good only tangentially–teaching me to pay attention to hunger cues and stay hydrated, for example, but always in the service of the number on the scale. So I slowly hammered out a list of new questions.What questions are you asking?