Review, Reset, Resolution

201.2-->203.2-->206.2

It's official: In the past 2 years I lost about 45 lbs, but in the last six months regained about 15. Three steps forward, one step back. I know why this happened: It was around May I started getting really hungry all the time, and wishfully assumed that meant my body simply needed more calories, and set my budget closer to 2600/day, up from 2300. Between that, eating freely on the weekends and letting that creep into Friday nights, it's no surprise I'be been gaining 2-3 pounds a month consistently since.

In hindsight, I should have punched through that hunger with steely resolve and hopefully I either would have rested at my low weight or have continued to lose, and the hunger would have eventually dissipated. I've taken the past two weeks to not really focus on my day to day eating but think in terms of the long-game. I found as I ate relatively healthily during the week but not too tightly bound, my eating on the weekends actually felt less pressurized and I ate closer to how I eat during the week, simply to feel good. I've come to a realization, which in retrospect seems kind of self-evident but still feels like a breakthrough. I guess because it's very…personal, not something that may apply to other people, not something to base a series of self-help diet books on. I've been paying very close attention to the hunger that prompts me to eat, and there seems to be three distinct kinds of hunger:

1. Stomach-centered: My stomach feels empty, void of contents. It's a vaguely uncomfortable feeling, like almost on the edge of a cramp, but no actual pain. The rest of me is fine. 
2. Body-difused: A hunger that feels like it's coming from all over my body, particularly in my head and forearms, similar to bonking on the bike but slower and less disorienting. I guess it's probably a drop in blood sugar and an over all craving or lust for food - actual hunger, a physiological call to feed myself. 
3. Emotionally-centered: I skipped dinner twice this past week and found myself with an empty stomach - all my life that has been taken as a signal to eat. My parents took great pains and great satisfaction with providing me with three square meals, and I took great satisfaction with sneaking sweets. I was never hungry, infact I was always full. An empty stomach feeling meant something was off.

Unhitching one from three is quite a thing. Pointing to two and saying, "THAT is when I eat" is quite a thing, too.

Thanks, Google Image Search. Thanks a lot.

By skipping dinner a few times over the past two weeks, I wasn't doing anything dangerous, not risking an eating disorder or even denying myself a pleasure or a reward. I was treating my system kindly - I had taken in enough calories at a restaurant or a holiday party, even if I relatively controlled myself during those meals by eating the big salad and not eating too much bread and ice cream. Recognizing that I don't have to eat a regularly scheduled meal if I don't' have the physical call to eat: this feels like a break through of some sort. This is a new key to a read another layer of information on the map.

I'm not a resolutions kind of guy, as people tend to make them for the wrong reasons or make promises that are not realistic. But this blog, and putting out what I eat every day for the world to judge, is kinda like a resolution every week, so sharing some longer-term resolutions might strengthen them.

In 2015, I resolve to:

• Read more for pleasure. Most of what I read this past year was about finances, food or, uh, Artie Lange. There is so many great books, I will regret getting old without indulging in more of them. Experiencing more pleasure, that is a resolution that is a reward unto itself. A good friend recently gave me Low Life, which seems like a natural companion to one of my favorite books of all time, The Power Broker.
• Eat on the weekend in a way that I'd like to eat for the rest of my life, not just indulging in fast and convenient pleasures I think I'm denying myself during the week. Instead of a time for restaurants and frozen foods, this can also be an experimental time to have fun with new salads, new vegetables and preparations. And, of course, a time to go full throttle on the creativity of making something sinful that can be shared. I have kids, -sigh-.
• Get back to 2300 calories a day. I've been hammering away long enough at this game, I know what that looks like, I don't need some journalist preying on other's lame resolution fever to prompt me.
• Weight lift once a week if riding not possible. Haven't waited on this one; have lifted twice the past two weeks -- the first time was a bit startling how my strength has decreased since I stopped a few months ago, and the second time was also startling how a good 1/3 of that returned after just one (soreness-inducing) lift.

There are other resolutions rattling around my head, like approaching more aspects of my life with the same emotionally detached rationality that I've turned my food-thinkin' over to, but I think keeping it to real tangible things will be good enough for now. Thanks and gratitude!