I am NOT hungry!

But I want to eat. 

That is the battle I feel I fight more than any other. I am literally NOT hungry. But food sounds good. Smells good. Is advertised skillfully. Is calling out to me from the closed fridge 55 feet away down a hall in my home. 

So I remind myself, I am NOT hungry. I have actually found myself saying this out loud when I am in private and once, slightly embarrassingly, in an elevator where I had forgotten there was someone behind me and we were going up to the 24th floor and made two stops along the way so I got distracted and instead of being alone…had a witness to my mantra.

And why is it that the desire to eat is more powerful than the realization of satiety. That my body has what it needs and doesn’t have a true need for anything else right now…except the pleasure of taste buds on my tongue. It doesn’t make me feel good to eat when I am not hungry. It doesn’t make me look good, long term, to eat when I am not hungry. But those taste buds are gimme, gimme, gimme oriented much of the day I find. And man, are they ever loud! 

The good news is, I have become conscious of this and will keep myself from eating when I should not…and that is when I am not actually hungry or in need of nutrients…but why the battle. Why are my mind and my stomach the perpetual Middle Eastern conflict in my body?

And sure, sometimes I give in and walk down the hall and open that fridge and have to say something else to myself…there are no friends in here. And again, I am right…but sometimes I will invite a frenemy of sorts to come and visit those taste buds even when I am not hungry. Mostly, however, I have found that reminding myself I am not hungry and these are not friends is helpful. They are also not solutions to frustration. Or boredom. Or anger. Or any emotion I’ve ever had before or will ever have in the future. It is only fuel for my body. And right now, I have all the fuel I need. When my car is full of gas, I can’t stuff it further…the gas spills out and I would say OH NO…what a waste! I envision that sometimes and realize that what will spill out is the muffin top of me over the top of my jeans or skirts and then I would say OH NO, what a waist! And that helps. 

If I were to count them up, I bet the people who have posed the next question are a cumulative 20-30 at this point. They have asked, in various forms, how I have the willpower to say no, or to stop after a bite or two. It isn’t willpower. Not at all. 

It is a deep desire to be the best version of me I can possibly be because I keep a photograph of the worst version of me on my phone. In an album, all by its lonesome to quickly and easily refer to when I do consider casting aside what I know to be a good choice long term for a ‘quick hit’ in the short term.  And remind me that for a very long time I lived life in a very different shell and this shell is incredibly preferred by me and so here I shall remain! But only if I keep the flame of that desire burning with at least the small blue pilot on and at times I have to go to 50,000 BTUs. To remain as fit as I can and to be happy with my choices. Which is not to say I’ve never had a fourth, fifth, sixth bite since embarking on this journey. But it was MY CHOICE! 

It was worth it to me at the time and I consciously chose those additional bites and understood what they meant. If I was going to run an extra few miles because I was at a restaurant with the very best crème brulee in three states, then I’ll enjoy the goodness out of it!