Author's note: This is the fifth installment of a column that explores a new diet based on spiritual rather than physical paradigms. It is arranged in "bite-sized chunks" that come to you each Friday and that build on each other. The first few concepts sound deceptively simple, but require discipline and commitment (and practice) to implement - and they lay the foundation for the more enlightening and revealing concepts to come. Your challenge as a participant is to put the principles into practice each week as they come to you. If you missed any of the earlier columns, catch up by clicking here to go to the Bridell archives. And remember that Dr Bridell appreciates feedback and comments as well as questions which you can send to him by clicking here.
One of the simplest ways to eat less food is to make less room for it by filling your stomach up with the beautiful, zero-calories, clearing, cleansing, lubricating, hydrating substance we call water.
Doctors and nutritionists have been telling us for decades that most of us need to drink more water - six to ten good sized glasses of it every day they say. Not liquids - water. It's hard to drink that much unless we're sipping away pretty steadily. One thing that helps is the habit of always drinking a big clear glass of water before you eat anything.
Drinking a full glass before eating results in two good things:
- more water
- less food.
Both are accomplished by the simple resolution that becomes a habit: "Before I eat anything - meals or snacks - I will drink a glass of water." Filling your stomach part way up with water is the simplest conceivable way to make less room in there for food. And staying fully hydrated (something very few of us do consistently) makes you feel better in all sorts of ways.
If you want to experiment a little and to focus on how good water feels to your body, wait until you're thirsty sometime - after exercise perhaps, or first thing in the morning, or maybe when you get up in the night - and then drink a couple of glasses or cold water. Then lie down, relax, close your eyes and feel the hydration flowing through your body. If you concentrate you'll feel the water radiating out toward your extremities - refreshing, regenerating, replenishing, and renewing every cell.
More water really is the perfect complement to less food all day long. Get a good water bottle that you like the look and feel of, and carry it around with you. Have it with you in the car, set it on your desk, keep it near when you're watching TV or reading at home. Fill it often. Let sipping away become a habit.
It's the easiest thing in the world to monitor yourself to see that you are always fully hydrated. You'll be going to the bathroom more often, and your urine will be nice and clear. If you're not going several times a day and if your urine is yellow, you're not drinking enough.
Wow! Talk about a simple key to the eat-half diet! Just drink more! What a deal! It keeps you from eating more and it helps your body to digest what you do eat better and to use the foods nutrients more efficiently and get them passed out more effectively out to your cells. It also helps your blood pressure and (this is the amazing thing) it somehow makes you feel more relaxed, more calm, and even more optimistic.
The best things in life are free, and the best thing is water!
Overcoming "Impulse Eating"
Retailers thrive on impulse purchasing - shoppers who can't resist the bargain-priced ticket items that are carefully placed where the eye glances and the hand can reach. Most of us eat like impulse purchasers shop. When we walk past food, or see food lying somewhere on the counter or in the drawer or on the shelf, we grab it and slap it in our mouths - just a little of course, but it adds up. Some call it "grazing" because it's a lot like what horses do... just nibbling all the time. There's food all around us in our homes so it's a bite here and a bite there, not even counting the full-fledged snacks. We eat what's in front of us or around us for the same reason Sir Edmond Hillary said he climbed Everest: "Because it is there."
The problem with impulse purchasing or impulse eating is that it lets your appetite win - just in little pieces, but those little bites combine and multiply, and appetite wins while you lose (or gain). This has always been a tactic or a strategy in war and in sports ... chipping away ... a yard or two at a time ... "small ball" ... a foot in the door ... slipping in under the radar. Bites and tastes so little they don't seem to matter. It is the subtle strategy of appetite and it claims victory over us one little innocent bite at a time.
One way to bridle that appetite, to get rid of the grazing habit, is to sip water instead. Keep a water bottle closely and substitute the sipping habit for the grazing habit. Fill up on the water that helps instead of the food that hurts.
It's helpful to think of your appetite being like a horse. It wants to graze all the time. It is in the habit of putting its head down and nibbling. But you are the rider! And you have the reins! And you can pull that horse's head up every time he tries for a bite, and pretty soon you can break his habit. Let him drink from the stream, but not eat from the field.
The only way to beat the grazing habit is to decide in advance to put nothing but water in your mouth between the meals and one or two snacks you've chosen. Rein your appetite into complete submission on this. Show it who's boss. And let water be your ally!
