Dear Kayla,
How did you lose weight by eating anything in your eating window? I would be afraid of cramming myself full of food!
Signed,
Tracy
Dear Tracy,
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that eating anything I wanted in my eating window was the most helpful thing I did for myself on the weight loss journey. When I decided this would be my rule, I was pretty sure I’d regain the 15 pounds I had lost and then some. But they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. My pattern previous to 2016 went like this:
- Decide to lose weight
- Cut out foods I loved from my diet.
- Get down to goal weight (or possibly not.)
- Start eating all the foods I loved again.
- Regain the weight.
- Go back to step 1.
My new hypothesis was that I needed to learn how to eat all the foods while I was losing weight. My theory was that if I showed myself that I could lose weight while eating those foods, I could certainly keep the weight off this time.
I went for it. I told myself, and I meant it, that I could eat whatever I wanted during my eating window, no guilt allowed. Then, wonder of wonders, I found I had stopping power. Once the guilt was gone, eating the right amount was easier. I knew I could have it again whenever I wanted, so it was easy to stop when full. The cravings faded away. To be clear, I still love Double-Stuf Oreos. Now when I eat them, I can eat the right amount and not feel miserable afterwards.
Another unexpected benefit of this was that it helped me to be consistent with my fasting. If something looked tempting in my fasting window, I reminded myself that in a few hours I could have it. The temptation to break my fast early disappeared, and I stuck with it.
To mark a food as off-limits gives it too much power. It becomes tempting. It fools you into thinking the food is more powerful than you are. But this simply isn’t true. You have, somewhere inside you, the capacity to eat the right amount of it. Think of the food you consider the most forbidden. Make sure it’s something that you believe you simply cannot stop on once you start. Now imagine that I said I’d give you $1 million dollars if you could eat a bite of it and then stop. See? You’re stronger than you think.
The day I got down to my goal weight, I was much less anxious. I had proven to myself that I could lose weight eating all the foods I loved. Going forward, I just needed to stay in the habits I had cultivated while losing weight. I know allowing yourself to eat whatever you want in the window seems counterintuitive, but it’s certainly what worked for me.
Sincerely,
Kayla