I would like to make a formal introduction:  “Eating just as much as my body requires” meet “Eating as much as I can get away with.” I am so glad you two have finally become acquainted because usually you are never in the same place at the same time. It’s only right you should know each other because you tend to occupy a very crucial space in our heads—just never together.

Apprentice, when we are connected with our Daily Calorie Budget for Weight Release, our Inner Coach’s problem solving ability, and our food journaling, you could say we are hanging with our friend—“Eating just as much as my body requires.”   How do you know for sure that you are in the company of this friend?

• Life feels right, and the scale, if we are in release mode will, more than likely, be going in the downward direction accordingly.
• It’s harder to overlook those extra bites and licks and picks and slivers when you are writing them down.
• You remain conscious to the amounts of foods that it takes to stay in the weight release zone.
• You stay away from going into cognitive error thoughts like “I blew it”, or “I ate soooo much.”
• You stay out of the fuzzy, magical guessing game “I think that half bag of chips was probably about 100 calories” land.

What Happens When Recordkeeping Goes Away?

When we stop recordkeeping,  "Eating as much as my body requires” usually stops as well. The two are very much a couple.

What happens next is the wily, “Eating as much as I can get away with” makes an entrance.  Sometimes he sneaks in, and you don’t even know he’s there.  Sometimes he makes his presence known and you, being the kind of host who doesn’t like to make a fuss, let him stay and run his sneaky “under-the-radar-eating” rave, leading you down a dark alley as you become more and more disconnected from yourself.

Signs you are under the spell of “Eating as Much as I Can Get Away With”:

• You measure the peanut butter that you spread on the bread, but not the dip-and-lick-off the-knife-peanut-butter you also consumed—it doesn’t count when you’re just cleaning the utensils!
• The picks, licks, sips, dips, nibbles, dribbles, corners, crumbs, crusts, slivers, scoops, that you consume by the light of the fridge and dust of the cupboard, while you are baking or cooking, etc. do not count.   I mean it’s hardly a calorie at all!
• When your cup measurer becomes the cup that runneth over.
• A handful of almonds turns into three fistfuls of almonds.  “Hey, they’re healthy!”
• When everything that is on your plate is accounted for but the stuff you eat in the kitchen while cleaning up is not.

Distorted Expectations of the Non-Recordkeeping

Here’s the rub, “Eating just as much as I can get away with” expects you to get on the scale and to have lost weight!  That’s right, because “Eat as much as I can get away with” is a little delusional because he doesn’t have the steady black and white reality check hand of food journaling keeping him on the straight and narrow—he’s kind of all over the place, a little DWI  (Dieting Without the Intention of writing it down).  And we know where this kind of thinking sends us:  “What—how did that happen—I’ve been soooooo good!”, and into cognitive error --“I’m a failure!, “I don’t deserve to be thin, I don’t deserve to be happy.”

I’m not saying we should try to get rid of “Eating just as much as I can get away with”, because it’s actually primitive hard wiring to head for the most caloric food in the largest amounts.  We can never hope to be totally free of this aspect of our beings, but we can learn the tune he plays and become adept at hitting the “mute” button.

What is the best skill for doing this?  Recordkeeping!

Recordkeeping to “Eating just as much as I can get away with” is like water poured on the Wicked Witch of the West. It’s the silver stake through the heart of the vampire that will suck you of your sacred connected-ness to yourself.

So my dear Apprentice, I hope that you continue to stay in the wonderful company of "Eating as much as my body requires" for many wonderful slim, healthy and masterful years to come!

Have a great Shift Day 23!

Ox Rita