Day 11 - Beck Diet Solution, Hunger vs. Cravings

To lose weight and keep it off, we need to have the skill of differentiating between 1) hunger, 2) a desire to eat and 3) cravings. Beck defines these states as:

Hunger: when you’ve fasted for several hours and your stomach is empty and may be rumbling;
A desire to eat: not being particularly hungry but eating because there is food around, like wanting seconds or dessert after a meal;
Craving: physiological and emotionally intense urge to eat, tension and yearning in your mouth, throat or body.

Know the difference between the three – your success depends on it. And chances are, if we struggle with weight, we don’t really know yet. Today’s exercise will sharpen our ability to differentiate between hunger, desire and cravings, and know when it is truly time to eat.

We start by rating our hunger on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0=no hunger and 10=the hungriest you have ever felt. Today, we will do this four times whenever we eat: 1) right before we start eating, 2) halfway through the meal or snack, 3) once we’ve finished eating and 4) 20 minutes after eating. The book provides a hunger monitoring chart that you can use. Each time we rate our hunger, we should also note the accompanying sensations/desires and what they feel like.

If today is not a good day for this task, we can also pick another day. Talk back against the STs tempting you not to do this exercise. Beck says that knowing the difference between hunger, desire and cravings isn’t something that can be learned just by reading about them. We need to physically experience and identify these three states and note the differences between them. Unless we learn to do this successfully, even if we lose weight we will eventually gain it back. We may even have to do this exercise periodically to remind ourselves and sharpen our skills when needed.

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Day 22 - Beck Diet Solution, Say “Oh Well” To Disappointment

Inigo Montoya: Who are you? Man in Black: No one of consequence. Inigo Montoya: I must know... Man in Black: Get used to disappointment. Inigo Montoya: 'kay. The Princess Bride (20th Century Fox 1987) Just as Inigo shrugs off the disappointment of the Man in Black’s declining to reveal his identity and gets right back into the duel, so too must we shrug off those discouragements that go hand-in-hand with losing weight and keep truckin’ down the weight loss trail. It’ll go easier for us if we do. What if we just lay around bellyaching about how horrible it is that we can’t have that donut, can’t eat/drink exactly what everybody else does at parties, can’t just open the fridge and eat whenever we felt like it? How much would we really accomplish that way? Even if we do stick to our plans for a little while under that mindset, we’d be fighting an exhausting battle with ourselves every day and eventually give in. Even the patience and resolve of saints would

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