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Weight loss and Christmas. The food addicts guide to feasts part 1

I am now living in that nice space where I don’t fear putting on weight simply because I know exactly how to lose it. It’s been a complicated road to get here but worth it. I actually started the journey when I was twelve. Few things stand out in my memory as well as me getting a love for weight training, sculpting my body and learning how it works.

With hindsight I can see the engineering, artistic and practical influences in my particular approach because that is the kind of family I come from. The men are generally engineers, the women more artistic and generally practical.

My inner food addict

What I’ve learnt comes down to accepting myself, my humanity and the life I lead. I am who I am. I get results because I work honestly with what I have. I love to move, to walk, to run and stay active which makes burning calories that bit easier but I could still put on plenty of weight because I’m not a professional athlete. So I don’t have the time to move enough to negate all the calories I would eat had I not figured out how to eat all I want and want what I eat. Knowing that it will get me to the weight I want to be.

Right now I’m really enjoying the holiday season because I know how to make Christmas work for me. I use the basic principle of feast and famine that our bodies expect, to make each day work for me not against me. Right now I just balance quantity with quality. Some days the quantity of food on offer is vast, others it’s more normal. At times I really do eat a lot and I mean like 2-3 meals worth in one sitting, some days I do that for each meal, That’s rare now but something i used to do often.

I still remember when I did just this for a week when we travelled on the QEII a few years ago. I found it easier at each meal to tell the waiter what I didn’t want on the menu. You see I agreed to go because it was a cruise and when I learnt that this means it is

a floating restaurant of the highest quality where all the food is free

The food addict in me took over. How could I say no!!! Each meal would cost atleast £30 in a top class restaurant and I had 3 per sitting and it was all free. My logic was that if I didn’t eat it then it would have gone to waste wouldn’t it. Said like a true addict don’t you think!!!

Fattening up

Of course I put on a stone in one week. Not the first time I have done this but the most memorable and I didn’t regret a gram of it.

I can still remember the feeling of the new fat being laid down.

For those not accustomed to it I’ll try and explain. Each person lays down fat in their own particular way. Some put it in their bellies, some their legs, some deep inside their bodies, others more at the surface. The only exact way to know is to have a scan. That’s a medical procedure and not something I have access to so my low tech alternative is through feeling it. It’s like when you have a hair cut and you suddenly feel the wind in places you haven’t for ages. It reminds you that you’ve had a haircut. The feeling goes in a few days, not because your nerves stop sensing the wind but because your brain stops paying attention to the information.

I hope to explain this process in detail at some other time. For now it’s enough to understand the opposite process is happening. I always get a new layer of fat around my belly. It feels like insulation very much because my sense of feeling around my stomach gets dulled. Touching it just feels different. I know I’m touching it but I don’t feel the sensation as clearly as I did before. Over time this sense adjusts. The nerves either get rewired or their signals are listened to better but for a short while I am acutely aware most of the time that I am now bigger, heftier. Even the way my clothes feel on my skin is different.

If you understand what I am saying because you get the same results. You know what it feels like to gain a lot of weight in a short time. You may then then understand the challenges I face saying “no” to food.  It literally was not how I was raised. Finishing my plate was a sign of respect and wasting it is an offense. So changing my attitude to food, focusing on quality over quality has been anything but easy. It has taken years and huge amounts of learning.

Continue to The food addicts guide to feasts part 2

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