Color Me Fit: weight loss, fitness, exercise

It’s been some time (several months, I’d say) that this hadn’t happened to me, so I guess it’s worth being mentioned.

It’s kind of akin to the “Winter Time is nigh” feelings of hunger, except that we’re in June, and that of course winter is still pretty far, which is quite fortunate, given that I live in France and not in Antarctica. I will bet my hand that the reason to all of this was actually quite similar: sudden, brutal drops in temperature during the past two weeks. We’ve been swinging between 15°C and 30°C, and with the average human body being sensitive to variations of about 0.1°C or 0.2°C, no need to say that those were the weather equivalent of repeated slaps in my face.

And thus, I was hungry all week-end long. Not head hunger, not boredom hunger, not munchies, not hey-I’m-watching-TV-so-let’s-eat! hunger. Real, deep hunger. Because it was cold and rainy, and because I was cold. It’s one thing to go through -5°C or so in winter, when my body is already used to it, and when I’m wearing appropriate clothes; it’s a whole other affair to have a body whining “But… but… It’s SUMMER! Yesterday I was wearing a BIKINI!”, and clearly not knowing how to readapt quickly and efficiently to 15 less degrees. (15 or 20°C is really far from being ‘cold’, mind you, but in such circusmstances, uhh, it IS.)

In other words, whatever wasn’t nailed down to my shelves was under the constant threat of being eaten, and at the end of the day, I really felt like I had devoured all my food stocks. It wasn’t about sweets or pastries; it was the rice, the chicken, the fruits, the oatmeal… yeah, those things–another hint that tells me it had nothing to do with cravings. I even had a 1+ hour walk in the hopes of curbing the hunger down; in turn, it made it even worse.

I wrote down what I had eaten in my nice little notebook, but I’ll be honest: I didn’t dare to calculate the exact amount of calories.

And I wondered, after that, what am I going to do”?

The answer in the end was: nothing.

Today is Monday, I’m back at the office, those two days of eating are under my belt now (take this as a pun if you like!), and I’m not doing anything specific. This girl ain’t going to starve herself in the hopes of ‘making up for it’, nor is she going to give herself a moral whipping about how she has pigged out and should be ashamed. Because, truth is, I am not ashamed. I was genuinely hungry. Why should I be ashamed of this? For once, it wasn’t cravings! Now I’m going back to a normal eating pattern. End of the story, the movie’s over, normal activity is being resumed.

What else would there be to do, anyway? Anything else would be veering too close to obsession, or to self-punishment; frankly, there’s no point in that. I’ll lose 0.2 less pounds this week than I would have, or I won’t lose anything, or I’ll gain 0.2, and then things will be on track again, and isn’t it why I do things the way I do? So that I can be in there for the long haul, not just for a few months of ‘dieting’?

Of course, that also means eating plenty of veggies tonight rather than pasta or rice. I’m not ashamed, but I’m a not going to dive into complacency either.

Besides, those fresh green beans I’ll be buying upon getting back home tonight will be yummy and filling all the same.

Tags: hunger, eating, cold, solution, overeating