Fork Put-Downs

One of the places I frequent for weight loss information on the web is the fitness subreddit on reddit.com. Like much of reddit, it can be a cesspool, but there's some good information hidden under the crap. One of the standard memes on /r/fitness is that whenever somebody posts asking about exercises to help lose weight, some wit will recommend "Fork Put-Downs." This gets at a grain of truth - weight loss is mostly about what you eat, it's nearly impossible to out-exercise a bad diet, at least after age 24 or so.

However, reducing what you eat in the long term falls under the category of simple, not easy. I have certainly been well aware for many years that the calories in - calories out equation governs weight changes. The problem is that very few of us interact with food strictly on the level of accounting. For me, and I suspect for many people, it was necessary to change my relationship with food before I could change my eating habits in the long term. Food is after all a primal need for life, and as such is wired pretty deep into our brains - it shouldn't be a surprise that this can lead us to apparently irrational decisions at times. 

So, one of the reasons my current weight loss has held is because about six months ago I had an epiphany. The reason I've always been a big eater is because my parents both died of cancer, about a decade apart. Neither of them was ever particularly fat, but when each got sick they wasted away, unable to eat much. And so deep in the recesses of my mind, I associated the ability to clean my plate with not having cancer. 

That, I'm pretty sure, has driven my relationship with food for most of my life. It's why all my previous weight loss has been short term. Now that I know that I think that way, I've been able to get a handle on my behavior and keep the urge to overeat in check. There are still some dark nights where I have to fight the urge to binge, but knowing what I'm fighting makes it a winnable battle.

So yeah, I now practice daily fork put-downs and the weight's coming off. But to get there, I had to take a trip into my head, through a bunch of memories I would've preferred not to re-live. Simple, not easy.