How bad am I?

[Guest]

Hi, for several weeks, maybe a month and a half now, I've been going to the gym for a good 2 hours a day, about 5 days a week. I have also read about the paul mckenna weight loss programme and I am trying to apply those rules to my lifestyle. For those who do not know, they are

1/ When you're hungry, eat
2/ Eat what you want
3/ Eat consciously

and

4/ stop when full

I have been applying them quite well and in the first 2 weeks noticed quite big differences in the size of my stomach. However sometimes i find i have really bad days when i return to my old eating habits of just eating for no reason and not being able to stop myself. On good days it means that i actually don't eat much at all, often skipping a meal because im not even hungry for it. It is not this that i have the problem with, but how to stop myself on the bad days, and how these bad days have an effect on my overall weight loss. Presently, I feel like my stomach has actually got bigger not smaller and I'd really like some help in what i'm doing wrong! and how i can improve what i am doing. I'd say in a period of 2 weeks i'd have 3 bad days, 4 average and the rest good.

please help!

Thanks

Extra information is that i am about 5'7 and weigh 10stone 14. I am trying to base my weight loss more on how i look than what I weigh

 

[Jynus]

hmm, well I might need to know more about the program. The kinds of foods you eat play a very important role in weight loss as well. So following those rules while eating a crap diet might not get you very far vs if you were eating a proper macro split of healthy foods.

as for what to do, honestly mate, everyone has bad days. And the odd one here and there is fine. Hell, it's recommended. I have 1 day a week where i enjoy things like nachos and the odd drink. it comes down to willpower and self determination. food for a lot of people is a mental thing, which means it's over my pay grade to get down to the root of the problem. Things like comfort food for example. IE: The problem isn't that they're overweight, it's that they're depressed as hell. fix that, and you've solved a big chunk of the weight problem. So sometimes it's more than just food. Which can make the issues of solving it a lot more tricky.

but what I know for me is that I have very clear goals in my mind, (i'm trying to gain muscle, thus gain weight) and no matter what, regardless of how crappy I feel, or how I moan about having to eat this particular food, I'll just do it, cause I want the end result. So I don't know what to say aside from the old cliche, do what you gotta do. It comes down to simply just knowing what you need to do, then doing it.

 

[KaraCooks]

What Jynus said.

Also a few other thoughts for you. I am a big believer in the kind of "mindful" eating you describe, but keep in mind that people who are overweight (myself included) often got this way because we have screwed up hunger/satiety receptors. We've conditioned ourselves, through years of emotional eating or social eating or whatever to not really know when we're hungry, when we're full, or what we want. Sometimes when you're first getting started, you need to plan to eat on a regular basis whether you think you're hungry or not, and stop whether you feel full or not. Just to see what an average meal at a regular time feels like.

The reason I point this out is very specifically because of this statement in your post:

On good days it means that i actually don't eat much at all, often skipping a meal because im not even hungry for it.

You see, eating too little is as bad as eating too much. And skipping meals is not a "good day" - not by any stretch of the imagination. I would suspect that the reason you have a hard time stopping on your "bad" days is that you're setting yourself up for it by under eating on what you *think* are your "good" days.

What you have to remember is that our bodies are geared for survival based on thousands of years of evolution. Over the majority of human existence, we were hunter-gatherers. That meant that our bodies were adapted to periods of very little food, and then when we did catch food (or gather food), our bodies allowed us to gorge in order to acquire enough nutrition to get through the next period of little to no food.

Even though we don't have to hunt/gather and go for days w/out any more, our bodies are still adapted to this. So when you go a day w/out eating (or eating very little), the next time food is available, your body is adapted to think "must eat everything now because tomorrow there might not be any again". Your hunger receptors become triggered and you eat like crazy.

Now, that's a really simplistic view of it and there are all kinds of other contributing factors, but it all goes back to what I said about eating too little being as bad as eating too much.

Ideally you would eat about the same every day and help your body achieve a balance. When your body knows that it's going to receive nutrition on a regular basis, then it levels itself out - that includes your hunger triggers.

So my advice would be to start planning out your days food in advance - the night before or even a week at a time. It doesn't matter if you eat 3 meals or 6 meals, or 3 meals and snacks or whatever ... but eat at regular intervals, eat a reasonable amount of food, and eat healthy food. However you determine those factors to fall out ... stick with a plan for a while. It'll make it easier to retrain your hunger triggers.