1.30.07

One of the most amazing things is that my body functions just fine and dandy on less than 1,500 calories a day. And without being hungry. And yet when I was eating over 3,000 calories a day, I would feel hunger more often.

In fact, amazingly (this isn't a new revelation, but is somewhat counter-intuitive at least) my body functions and feels even better than how it did when I was overeating. I recently had some restaurant style fries (as opposed to my homemade fries cooked in PAM) and they tasted extraordinarily salty. Just like pure salt. And afterwards my stomach felt heavy.

And it's very tempting to complain that the progress in my body is too slow. After a month of reduced eating, my mind thinks that I should be a completely new person. But really, the progress has been outstanding. Considering how long I've eaten crap and how slowly my body got to shape it was, a month of smart eating has done wonders.

I was watching an interview with overweight kids who were at an exercise boot camp. And one kid said that they "were going to exercise until they got in shape." And the news clip acted as if that was just fine. The problem with most diet plans is even if they work, people can't wait to go back to their old habits, once they reach their goals. So my goals are not weight loss targets, but rather to maintain healthy habits forever.

That doesn't mean a life of deprivation - in fact I've been having delicious homemade lean cheeseburgers twice a week, BBQ chicken dinners, whatever I want and still getting healthier.

Also, this whole journey might not have been possible without my vacation to Paris. The combination of eating a lot less while in France, walking around so much, and seeing a culture that doesn't encourage overeating made it feasible to start my new habits. My hunger levels had adjusted so then when I did get back and started eating healthier it wasn't as impossible as it would have been back in 2006.