Serve.
Last night, my husband made meatloaf. Yum, right? The recipe is out of one of my “healthy” cookbooks, but we really like it, so it’s the one he always makes. It serves six and one serving equals 168 calories. Yeah, I wish I could forget that, too.
Anyway, last night, he made a slightly smaller meatloaf, probably about four servings based on my highly-trained eyeballing. I ate a serving of meatloaf, a spoonful of mashed potatoes, some sauteed veggies, and a half an apple. It was tasty. But after dinner I felt…weird. Kind of…angry? Annoyed? My husband ate the remaining three servings of meatloaf, the rest of the mashed potatoes, and the other half of my apple.
I realized what was upsetting me about 10 minutes after I finished eating.
I was still hungry.
Here’s the thing.
I’m mostly okay at eating what I want, making choices a good 70% of the time based on what food actually appeals to me. But what is killing me is my idea of servings.
I seriously struggle with eating more than one serving of anything. I eat whatever the alloted portion size is, and then I just can’t get myself to eat more. I put precisely 5 slices of deli ham on my sandwich because that’s a serving. I count out crackers. I only eat cereal out of a specific bowl because it holds a cup and that’s the serving size for my cereal. Same thing with baby carrots — I pack them for my lunch every day in a container that holds exactlya half a cup.
This is ridiculous.
Last night, as I sat there feeling surly and hungry after eating, I ran a quick calculation and determined that my supper had been about 310 calories. Son of a biscuit, no wonder I was still hungry! Even worse, I felt annoyed by my husband, thinking how unfair it was that he didn’t have to stop eating when he was still hungry. You know, completely ignoring the fact that I didn’t have to stop either.
I think this is one of my last huge hurdles, giving up the idea of “appropriate” portion sizes. It’s just really, really, really scary to let go of and I find myself slipping back into it over and over again.
It seems I’m secretly afraid of eating the world. That idea is just so damned hard to shake, isn’t it?
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Have you heard of the book The Artist’s Way? I am reading it now. It may help refocus some of your control ….. tendencies. I think I remember reading you had some hobbies you wanted to focus on. Just thought it might help. Fear of eating the world I think speaks to other deeper fears of …. yourself?
It helped me a lot when I realized that while single sized portions might work for some people, the only way they work for me is if I want to be 1) dizzy, lightheaded and incapable of functioning or 2) eating every hour on the hour.
I’ve redefined a proper portion size to “what makes me nicely satisfied” and healthy foods to “foods that make me feel good.” It seems to make a lot of sense that using other people’s external definitions to guide my internal cues is a pretty bad way of going about it.
But, yeah, sometimes I’m still afraid of eating the world. Afraid that the satiety cues won’t catch up with my mouth and maybe I’m best starting small. I do hate the over-stuffed feeling, but I hate the feeling that I failed to let myself sustain myself as well. And doing that? Is not a proper portion size.
Maybe you could toss out the “correctly-sized” dishes and just sort of wing it? I know it would make you crazy, but maybe it would also be kind of freeing…
I just discovered your blog yesterday, from Kate Harding’s site, and I’m really finding it helpful – thanks for sharing your story. I’m just barely beginning to put aside my probably 2+ decade habit of dieting (yep, my mom started me young – like 1st grade!). Anyway, this post resonated with me – I like you am a compulsive, habitual calorie counter. I just can’t seem to look at food without estimating how many calories are in it, then checking that against my tabulation of how many calories I’ve had so far that day…it’s just second nature! I too have a bowl which I know exactly where the 1 cup line is, and I can eyeball a “portion size” on just about anything else. And I, too, can’t get over how easy my current and previous boyfriends are about food – they just eat what they want, without worrying about it. What a foreign, yet amazingly liberating, concept!!! Seriously, it’s like observing the cultural habits of an African Pygmy or something, it’s such a different way of thinking from my own!
Anyway, I just want to say, from my vantage point of someone who’s just beginning, you’re doing great and you’ve made tremendous progress. I hope to have progressed this far within 6 months. Good luck with this latest hurdle, but just the fact that you’re aware of it is a start. Stay focused on what your body tells you, rather than your mind.
I found this to be incredibly profound: “It seems I’m secretly afraid of eating the world.”
And you know, I’ve read in at least one book that people in the Western world divert their fears of material over-consumption (of natural resources, for example) into a fear of food consumption. I think about that sometimes.
I was at dinner the other night with seven other folks — six of whom are pretty seriously athletic, and all of whom eat with immense gusto and pleasure. And in quantities that are truly astonishing, with no self-consciousness about it whatsoever. We could all learn from this approach. I really enjoy eating with them, because you never hear any conversations about dieting or weight loss or what this or that person “should” eat. Other than an occasional, “are you gonna finish that? I’ll eat it.” Or “go ahead and have dessert or you’ll never make it up that last hill tomorrow.”
But I had to laugh when one of the guys, who is extremely lean, confessed that he once tried to put on ten pounds. I think he said he went to a doc and/or nutritionist to make sure there was nothing wrong with his thyroid, etc. first, and to plan the diet strategy. He had to eat 6,000 calories a day. Six thousand. And absolutely hated every minute of it: measuring everything, drinking supplement shakes, eating all the time — he said his whole life revolved around food, and it was really unpleasant.
Sound familiar?
And no, he wasn’t successful, and lost what little he’d gained as soon as he went back to eating whatever he wanted.
GWC, I think it’s time for me to say a long overdue, and heartfelt, thank you. I found your site a couple of months ago when someone at Shapely Prose recommended it. I had made a comment along the lines of, “I love all of this FA stuff, but it’s really hard to DO it” and someone suggested I come here. It’s been such a relief to read your thoughts. I’ve been Weight Watchers-ing on and off for five years, and I completely understand the portion size/calories thing. (For me, it’s points. For the rest of my life, I think I will look at food and automatically calculate points.) Even as I struggle with making this transition in my life – from dieting to NOT dieting, from hating my body to accepting and even hopefully loving it – it’s so great to read the way you handle things, the positive ways you counteract your old behavior, and just know that we’re all in this harbor together. (As you said in a recent comment.) I love reading Shapely Prose, but sometimes it just seems like the writers are all in such a great, easy place with their fat acceptance. (And I know that’s not true, that it’s not easier for anyone, it’s just my own skewed perspective.) I’m just saying that I really enjoy reading your very real, honest take on what it really is like to be healthy but give up dieting and everything that comes with it.
So… thank you.
Sue, I really relate to the place you–and possibly GwC too—seem to be at. I’m learning about body acceptance, but I’m not in an easy place with it; and I like coming here as well as to Shapely Prose, the Rotund, and the F-word, because it seems like this blog is about the journey.
hey
I realised a while ago that often the ’serving size’ is just a device made up by the manufactures to make their product look good. ie, make it look like a packet contains a lot of serving, that a serving has a nice neat number for the dieters (sometimes I wonder about the 100cal slice of bread, but maybe that is paranoia. more recently I have noticed that serving suggestions are actually going down as companies try to make food look like it has less salt/sugar etc in…
love h.x
oh my LORD i know exactly what you’re talking about. this is one of the things i’m still struggling with too. i also went through bulimia, about six years, and have been purge-free for over a year now. but i know that the blue bowls hold two cups… the beige bowls a cup and a half… peanut butter should be the size of a golf ball… it’s really horrible, isn’t it? i’m getting better at it (not as quickly as i’d like). i still hate that my husband clears out the pasta bowl while i sit there wanting to lick the spoon.
gonna give you another book tip here: Intuitive Eating. some of it doesn’t speak to me, but a big thing that it made me think about is that it’s OKAY to go back for seconds, because who came up with portion sizes anyway, yer mom? it’s very freeing to say to yourself “it’s cool. this is not the last time you’ll be fed. if you’re still hungry, go get some more,” and actually mean it. worth a read.
by the way, nice blog. i just found you and added you to my list, which, i should add, is very selective : )