Exercise requires a period of focused effort, and then you are done. Watching what I eat, I've found, is almost the opposite skill. For me what it requires is relaxed attention and awareness of my goals. And the rub is that attention and awareness must be there 24 hours a day.
If I walk by a bowl of snacks and "forget" for 30 seconds what my goal is, the next thing I know I'm swallowing the snack that I just finished chewing. I transition back from auto-pilot thinking damn, that was not helpful, I suck.
For me watching what I eat is like maintaining good posture. Or driving on an empty highway. Neither one is "hard", but both are hard in the sense you have to maintain focus and attention non-stop. No breaks not even for 20 seconds or you will drive off into the woods.
Pretty much no one ever says let me just slump my shoulders forward and look down at the ground. It just happens. It happens precisely because you are not at the wheel. Auto-pilot takes over and auto-pilot does not give a damn about your posture, or your waistline.
So for me, dieting has been almost 100% a mental exercise in maintaining attention and awareness during the day. The physical sensations of hunger I found were surprisingly not an obstacle. If I entertained breaking my diet, breaking open the cookies or chips, then yes, I got viciously and acutely hungry. Like I can't hold out another 10 minutes much less until dinner. Like this is torture, I'm getting low blood sugar, I'm going to pass out.
But if I immediately shut off the option of eating. If I just say you know I'm having three meals today, and that's enough, that's more than 90% of my ancestors probably had hunting and gathering their way across the plains. That's more than millions of people have even today. Then the hunger just went away. Or, maybe I just re-interpreted that hunger feeling as a signal I had not yet ruined my eating that day, I had not pigged out. A feeling that I was on track. It became kind of a comforting feeling, I swear.
But the constant attention was hard and continues to be hard. Again it's like driving. It's not physically hard. You are just sitting there in a comfy chair listening to music. But you have to keep your eyes open. You have to keep checking the mirrors. You have to keep between the lines. You cannot ever forget: you are behind the wheel.
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