So how's that working out for you Diana?

I was raving to my girlfriend about God Women and Food, about how wonderful it is to not be consumed by thoughts of food. I eat when I'm hungry, which is a really new concept for me. I eat what I want, and surprisingly I don't crave sweets. I eat healthy food, and I don't weigh or measure my portions.

As I'm telling my girlfriend how great this is and how free I feel, she asked the inevitable question, so how's that working out for weight loss? The honest answer to that question is that it's not working out at all for weight loss.

I've been home for four days. I'm still on vacation if you call cleaning house, doing mounds of laundry, vet visits, and a Costco run and grocery shopping a vacation.

I've been eating pretty much when and what I want, including handfuls of Thai Curry Cashews that I discovered in the bulk foods in the "nutritional" food center at Fred Meyers. My recommendation is to stay away from those things because they are addictive (and full of calories and fat).

Here's the strange thing. My weight on Monday morning after nine days of eating out, desserts and really eating what I wanted, was 173 pounds (up seven pounds). My weight this morning is still 173.

Now that would be a wonderful thing IF I was at goal. I am NOT at my goal weight.

My conclusion is probably pretty obvious to anyone reading this. Although the theory of eating when you're hungry and eating what you want sounds really good, it's not really working out for me. I want to LOSE weight, not maintain my weight and especially not at 173.

I'm not giving up on Geneen's ideas in Women Food and God because I think they're valid and most of them can work for me, I just have to be a little more restrictive in order to lose weight. I don't plan on torturing myself with a strict 100% on plan "diet" or starving myself. I do plan on going back to counting Points, starting today.

It's also back to the gym six days a week since that seems to work out best for me. I've been going every other day this week and it makes me feel lazy and like I'm cheating. When I work out really hard I want to eat better (no cashews).

I'm on Chapter ten of Women Food and God, The GPS from the Twilight Zone. This is the chapter where she talks about The Voice. I really like this chapter so far. Here's an excerpt from pages 130-131:

The Voice feels and sounds so much like you that you believe it is you. You think you are telling yourself the truth. And you are utterly convinced that without The Voice as your conscience, your wild and unruly tendencies would run amok.

Let's take an example that probably occurs with alarming frequency, possibly many times a day. You are humming along with your morning routine when you try on an old pair of pants. Uh-oh. You can't get your right leg into the designated hole.The hole that just last year was already a size bigger than the year before. The Voice says, Look at you! You are pathetic! Your thighs are the size of the Rocky Mountains. You look down at the appendages in question. Hmm, you think, my thighs really are taking over my body, the living room, the neighborhood. The Voice says, You should be ashamed of yourself! You agree. You think, I am ashamed of myself, look how I've let myself go. The Voices says, Bad bad bad. You think, Bad thighs, Bad me.

A few minutes later you notice that you feel as if you've been vaporized. In the space that you once occupied there is a ghostly dread and a vague feeling of being needy, weak and fat. Within minutes, you've ricocheted into feeling as if your life is not worth anything.

Yet.

Nothing--not one thing--has changed since earlier this morning when you felt spunky, feisty, irreverent. The objective fact is that you can't fit into your pants. The reality is that you've gained weight in the last few months. But why should gaining weight have the power to devastate every last shred of your well-being? Why can't you realize you've gained weight and make some decisions about how to proceed with some degree of wisdom and self-worth?

Sound familiar? It's like a chapter taken right out of my life that I've repeated over and over for decades. Geneen continues on with how to deal with the voice. I'm only half-way through this chapter, but so far, it's one of my favorites.