"To lose weight, you have to occasionally allow yourself to get really hungry"

'To lose weight, you have to occasionally allow yourself to get really hungry," he said with a knowing smile returning to his face. "I haven't had anything to eat yet today. I'm actually quite hungry.'"

I know, I know.  Being hungry *sucks*.  Have ya'll seen that commercial?


Now replace "cigarette" with "food".  Or maybe, "cake" or "doughnut" or "pizza".  Take your pick.  The point is, you KNOW that feeling.  And if you know that feeling, sooner or later you're going to have to face facts. 
 
You're a food addict.
 
Come on, it's not so bad.  At least you have a legitimate reason for being a food addict.  You'll never meet ANYONE who says that all food sucks, although there are plenty of us out there who can't fathom smoking, and who find alcohol disgusting (me!).  And they say that quitting a food addiction is harder than quitting drug/alcohol addictions, because you can cold-turkey those, but you can NEVER quit eating!!!  So we face that temptation constantly, five to six meals a day, in my case.  And I know that feeling.  Often, even when I'm physically satiated, mentally, all I can think is, "Cake.  Cake.  Cake.  OMG please.  Cake."  I hate days like that.  And I have a lot of them.
 
This leads me to another article I read in Runner's World (see full article here).  That's where the beginning quote on this post comes from.  It's from a section of their publication called The Newbie Chronicles and it's titled, "Hungry for More; When you start running, you get to eat as much as you want, right?".  Ok, now, some of you are already tsking and going "yeah, RIGHT" and others of you are going, "Uhm...isn't that the way it works?  Work out so you can eat?  More?  Whatever you want?  Right?"  I really hope that, deep down, you know that's not the way it works.  Not if you want to lose weight, and certainly not with regularity if you want to maintain your weight.  But I run into so many people who are laboring under this delusion that I find it necessary to blog on it, because it's such a deadly misconception to your weight loss efforts, and it can derail you faster than almost anything else you can do.
 
I've often said on this blog that exercise is half the equation, diet is the other half, and if you do not succeed at BOTH you will succeed at NEITHER.  Not over the long haul.  I've also frequently told people, "It's basic math.  Calories out must exceed calories in, or you'll never lose weight."  But I think this article is wonderful because it is so lighthearted that it reels you in without you realizing it.  You start reading it with a giggle and half a hope, and a guilty but elated ("YAY!  I'm not the only one!") sense of cameraderie.  You actually almost BELIEVE that it's true, but somewhere between the spade-sized wedge of double a-la-mode blueberry pie and ripping open the bag of chocolate chips in the pantry, you start to realize that the author is mocking himself...and you :).  And you can't help but laugh.
 
The end of the article is what I want to mention here.  About a year or so back, Oprah had a personal trainer/dietician on her show with impressive credentials.  They did a call-in show, and one of the callers basically said, "I'm hungry all the time when I diet.  How can I stop being hungry?"  The dietician's answer was, "You can't.  Caloric deficits create hunger; your body is not getting the calories it needs to maintain its weight, so you feel hungry.  For any weight loss to occur, you are going to HAVE to feel HUNGRY."  The final paragraph of this article is:  

One Saturday morning, from the sidelines of our sons' middle-school lacrosse game, I shared my discoveries with Dr. Matthew McCambridge, Lehigh Hospital physician and medical staff president of the Lehigh Valley Health Network in Pennsylvania. "It's all pretty straightforward," he said with a smile. "Weight loss and attending health benefit is essentially a calories-in/calories-out proposition."

"To lose weight," I said, "you have to... eat less."

"Exactly."
"Even if you're a runner?"
"At the typical distances and durations for the average athlete--yes, even if you're a runner."
"But I get really hungry after a run."
McCambridge, who is trim and muscular, had just completed a 12-mile run. "To lose weight, you have to occasionally allow yourself to get really hungry," he said with a knowing smile returning to his face. "I haven't had anything to eat yet today. I'm actually quite hungry."

For all of you out there about to click away from this post now because it's not what you want to hear, stop.  It may not be the news you want, but your disgust is because deep down, you know it's true.  And you just don't feel like being tortured like that every day.  Well, join the club.  WHO on earth LIKES feeling hungry?  No one.  But you didn't get fat by accident, and losing it won't happen by accident either.  Make the decision right now to accept this fact...every day you delay is another day you spend fat and unhappy, and your (already shortened due to excess weight) life will be that much shorter for it.
 
Hunger is like anything else; if you dwell on it, it will exacerbate your symptoms.  You have to force yourself not to think about it.  Don't listen to Running Partner #1; buck up and remind yourself "This is what it takes to lose weight and there's no sense whining, complaining, or dwelling on it.  Let's just get on with it."  It doesn't make the hunger go away, but it does shore up your willpower and determination.  There are no nicorette tablets for those of us on diets, and all those appetite suppressants still won't satisfy your mental hunger.  To lose weight, you're going to have to feel hungry. 
 
So the next time all you can think about is that leftover birthday cake in the Employee Lounge, remember, "Cigarette.  Cigarette.  Cigarette."  And remember Dr. McCambridge, his trim physique, his twelve-mile run, and his empty stomach.  And get on with your day.  Don't Think (about the hunger.)  Just Go (for the run.) :)