Can greater eating satisfaction lead to greater weight loss?

I CAN’T GET NO!

We all want satisfaction, don’t we, in everything we do or experience. As Americans, we consider satisfaction part of our birthright. But does weight loss success require us to eat dull, flavorless food for the rest of our lives?

The British want satisfaction too. In 1965, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones recorded a song that (among others) I just could not get out of my impressionable 12-year-old head. The first verse is:

Can't get no satisfaction

I can't get no satisfaction

'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try

I can't get no, I can't get no

As song lyrics go, that's pretty inane, but as far as I know, Mick Jagger has never claimed to be a poet or intellectual. I now suspect (as I did at age 12) that Satisfaction has a sexual ("I can't get no girlie action") as well as a political theme. Today I'm going to use what you might call my artistic license (that I got by sending an application and $75 to the International Artistic Vehicle Department) and drive Mick Jagger's car down a new road.

THE SATISFACTION FACTOR

In their book titled Intuitive Eating, authors Tribole & Resch tell us that to overcome our eating problems, we must discover the satisfaction factor. They write: "The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence--the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you've had 'enough'.

In many ways, I think Tribole & Resch are on target. My weight loss surgery has forced me to take tiny bites, chew very well, and get every molecule of flavor and pleasure out of each mouthful of food, and as a result, I do get a lot more satisfaction out of my meals now. That’s one of the wonderful things about my post-op experience. If you told me that all I could eat for the rest of my life is stale crackers and lukewarm water, I’d be off my bandwagon in one swift leap. But can eating for the satisfaction factor really overcome my eating problems and make them a distant memory?

I don't think I overlooked the pleasure and satisfaction from eating back in the bad old days. Rather, I sought it in the wrong places and gave myself such massive daily overdoses of food that it lost its power to please even while it gained more power to drive me. Kind of like an addict needing bigger and bigger doses of a drug to get that precious high feeling: an addict whose hunger for that high drives him or her to a life of crime. I never committed a crime for the sake of food, but otherwise I behaved like an addict. I was ashamed of my food issues and eating behaviors and worked to keep them secret even while even a casual observer could see just from my size and shape that something in me had gone off its track a long time ago.

One of the reasons I wanted to hide my food problems was my fear of being judged by others. I don't think I was being paranoid. Even now, I have (slim) acquaintances who react to obesity in others as if it's an awful, shameful crime instead of a chronic disease. They see a super morbidly obese woman heaving herself out of the motorized shopping cart at Wal-Mart and whisper, "How could she let herself get that way?"

Well, those “normal” acquaintances (and many others) just don't know the "how" of obesity, do they? But we do. The sight of that obese woman bothers me, too, because I know far too much about what her life must be like, and I'm filled with compassion and pity and frustration when I watch her struggle to reach a package of Double Stuff Oreo cookies on the supermarket shelf.

The sight of that obese woman in a motorized shopping cart, and the overfeeding of America is a hot political topic now, but I hate politics, so I’ll pass up that aspect of obesity for now, and just suggest that you give some thought to whether your own healing should involve “becoming normal,” and whether or not WLS will send you down that road and keep you on track for the rest of your life. Me? I feel that I can’t afford to ignore my past as an “abnormal,” obese person, because of that short, fat blonde girl who lurks inside me, just waiting to get out. What do you think?

Ohhh I just love this extremely intellectual post. I am swamped with farm tasks at the moment, but I am up for the challenge to reciprocate an equally appealing and thoughtful post. Stay posted

Satisfaction... ahhh yes, I remember those days...

I'm prone to believe many dieters would let those words fall from the lips on occassion. How can we not when we so frequently tie diet with withdrawal of old ways, old foods, and old favorites. To eat was to satisfy, and not just our hunger. For some it was a coping mechanism, for others a retreat, perhaps a reward. And what about those who tie eating with socializing. To remove one, seems to remove the other and without the other it's like living without balance. And thus dieting is an imbalance, certainly does not sound like satisfying ey?

So than one must ponder why they eat. Are you more satisfied when your hunger subsides or when some innate need is fulfilled? Ahh, that is the question. Obesity is now recognized as a chronic disease (someone smart finally figure that out But obesity is complex is it not. It's not straightforward as if we all experience this disease the same. Some overindulge, some crave sweets etc etc So it's fair to say we experience food differently. However, I would be certain that being obese has nothing to do with hunger. Rather the insatiable appetite we have for certain foods (sensations) and the remarkable capability to overindulge in these foods like we are eating for a party of 10. Hunger was satisfied a long time ago, yet we insist on eating more and more because, again, there is an innate need that we are attempting to please. But isn't this an imbalance too, one as intolerable and unsatisfying as dieting?

There is a dysfunction in our relationship with food. And we need to reassess how to build a healthy one. Similar to marital counseling, it requires alot of introspection, creation of new boundaries, and identifying solutions that will restore harmony. And thus enters the topic of satisfaction...

Satisfaction needs prioritization and redefinition. Obviously priority one is to satisfy hunger. But now we need to satisfy our taste buds. Foods are packed with flavor, but sometimes we immediately reach out for foods that are high in flavor/sugar/salt etc. It's an instant gratifier indeed. However, we simply miss out on the subtle flavors lurking in other foods that are actually equal contenders in the satisfaction department, we simply don't afford them the opportunity to show us what they can offer. I discovered this personally after the band when I had to resort to the basic staples. After withholding all the thrills (spices, oils, name it) I grew a palate for basic foods. Something as simple as grilled zuchinni and squash were just simply to die for. Even plain yogurt took on a new life. My plain oatmeal is more satisfying with a few nuts on it than the old version which was nothing but sugar (cinammon, brown sugar etc). So imagine what happens now when I go out to eat and have a rich dessert or a sauce covered meal. For one, it's too rich and I can only eat the smallest amounts. Two, I feel deprived..like I'm not eating a satisfying meal. I have in essence, redefined satisfaction.

Having goals after wls will evolve in time. I am near my goal and am actually in maintenance mode. My goal in the beginning was simply to be skinny. But as you become awakened to this new way of eating new goals emerge, like intentionally eliminating certain high fat/high sugar foods, and the manner in which you ate (excessive, too frequent), and addressing the innate needs you were fullfilling and finding new methods to fullfill them through new foods (ie sweet is a handful of blueberries not tubs of icecream) or new activities (hobbies instead of boredom splurges). Than it all becomes a challenge. You transform your body as well as your interests. Taking up physcial activities, maybe a cooking class to really exploit those natural flavors etc becomes not only rewarding, but satisfying on many levels.

So is this becoming 'normal'. NO! It's better than normal. We have this false belief that skinny people are healthy, active and that they do not suffer from the same ties to food as we do. Be better than normal, be the best.. and experience sublime satisfaction!