When Your Hungry ... EAT !!!

There are so many times during the day when I can eat. Let's see, when I wake up, when I get up, when I leave for work, when I drive to work, when I get to work, during my work day, break time, lunch time, snack time, and on my way home from work, when I get home from work, dinner time, munch out time, during TV time, before I go to bed, midnight snack time, and any other time in between!

So, when do I eat? How do I know when is the best time to eat? That's pretty easy... When I am hungry! A few years ago, probably ten or more, I did a weight loss program with some ladies at the church that I was attending and it was called "The Weigh Down Workshop". Many of you may have heard of it. It is written by a Christian woman who struggled for years with her weight and finally got in tune with how the Lord wired her body to work and be healthy.

The gal who wrote the diet, or message I should say, had been doing this program herself for many years and had been very successful in not only losing her extra weight but keeping it off. Everything she spoke about in her book and the videos that we watched was geared with the same thought. "When you are hungry, only Then should you eat.". What she meant by this was that you should learn to listen to your body for clues to tell you it is time to eat. Easier said than done, right? Well not necessarily...

She explained that many years ago our ancestors, even as far back as during Bible times, that food was not as plentiful as food is today. People did not tend to be over weight or obese because food was not in abundance and therefore there was not the tendency to over eat, or eat the wrong things in general because they were not available. I remember when I was a young girl telling my mother that I was hungry. Well I didn't really know what hunger was I just knew that I wanted something to eat. And most of the time I got this response, " Well you need to wait until dinner." Or "If you have to eat something, eat a piece of fruit."

Well this usually did three things, it made me (1) want to sneak and snack on things that I should not eat, and since we did not have "sweets" in our house I would eat peanut butter on crackers!! Yum yum one of my all time favorites! And (2) it made me look at fruit as something undesirable, something that was good for you so therefore not something that I wanted to partake in. And finally (3) because I had eaten something before my meal, I was not really very hungry during my meal, but because I did not want my parents to know I had eaten a whole lot of crackers and peanut butter I would eat everything that was for dinner as well. Meaning I was stuffed!

To be continued .....