A Day Eating With A Thin Mentality

I get a lot of people asking me to “model” thin mentality eating.  Here is today.

This morning, I woke up around 7:30 and was really thirsty, and not at all hungry.  I drank an orange soda.  I put it on ice and the delicious sweet bubbles were fantastic and made me so happy.   I have orange juice too, which I realize most people would say is a “better choice.”  But I didn’t want orange juice.  I wanted bubbles and a thinner drink.  It is completely reasonable to drink that soda instead!  It isn’t going to hurt me.  I loved it.  Anyway, it doesn’t matter to me why I craved the soda, but when I think about it, I probably craved it because I ate a late, kind of salty dinner last night at a new hibachi place that just opened near me.

By 11 am,  I wanted coffee with cream even though it was hours later than I usually drink coffee.  I am not a huge caffeine drinker, so I was fine waiting.  When I drink coffee, I pour half and half into it until it becomes a really pretty caramel color.  I enjoy it so much.  If I had to drink black coffee, I wouldn’t drink it.

Anyway, by around 12:30 I was hungry.  Again, I had eaten a late dinner, which is probably why it took me a while to work up an appetite.

I was working at home and tuna sounded good to me.  Yes, I use all of my senses when deciding what to eat:  the sound of it, the look of it, the smell of it, everything.

I keep tuna in the fridge so when I make it, it will be cold.  So I saw that nice blue package and realized that some tuna fish with mayonnaise, celery and onion would really hit the spot.

So I looked at the bread and realized I didn’t feel like eating bread with it.  And that is unusual for me.  I love sandwiches.  Now, this is a really important part of a thin mentality:

Allow for the possibility that on any given day, at any given meal, you will want something that you don’t usually like.  I usually wouldn’t like tuna on lettuce, I would usually always prefer a sandwich.

But, not today.

So, I made tuna on lettuce.  See photo.  Notice the coffee with cream and the bread that I usually like, right there, but again, I didn’t use the bread because I just didn’t want it today.  I wasn’t being “good.”  I was simply being me.

Okay, so after I had the tuna, I craved something sweet.  I put three oreos on a little plate and took to my desk.  Again, I wasn’t trying to be good or bad.  I was just being true to my voice.  After I ate two of the oreos, I realized that I was perfectly happy and that the third oreo wasn’t going to be fabulous.  Of course, it wouldn’t have been terrible or anything, it would have still been tasty.  But that is not good enough for me.  I would so much rather wait, even and hour until I wanted it again, and then really enjoy that cookie.  Or, something else, by that time!

As it turned out, I didn’t want it later, and I put it back.  (I know  to those of you with diet mentalities that this sounds strange.  When I had a huge diet mentality,  I would never have believed that I would put a cookie back.  Now, that I have a thin mentality,  though, it is normal and no big deal at all.)

By 5:30, I was really hungry.  I had made chicken stew yesterday, with potatoes and carrots and a bunch of other stuff.  It was so great- hearty and warm.  And, I craved bread with butter too.  So even though earlier I was not interested in bread, by 6 I was.  Why?  Who cares?

The day isn’t over, so I may eat again.  I don’t know, I will see how it goes.  Will I want licorice? Another bite of chicken? A bit of carrots from the stew?

Do you see the themes here?  I ate what I craved when I was hungry.   And when I wasn’t hungry anymore, I delayed eating anymore.  No judgments, no guilt.  This is how it feels to reconnect eating with hunger.

It makes eating a wonderful, angst free part of LIFE.