If you're eating cheese by itself, you're off program. If your cheese portion exceeds your meat portion, you're off program. Think about cheese like you would Ketchup or mustard - they enhance the dish. If cheese is a trigger food for you, you may want to avoid it entirely for a few months, longer if it keeps getting in your way.
Remember, cheese needs an army* to process through your body. Your body only has so many army men available to work off the cheese. When they run out, your body stores the cheese. When your body stores food, instead of processing it through, you don't lose weight.
I have to really get behind this reality myself: cheese is a condiment. I can either treat it as such, or hold onto my weight. If I can't treat it as a condiment, then I have to give it up until I can. It's like a parent punishing me to my room. Until I behave properly, no cheese for me.
When someone asks how much cheese can they have, the answer is a tiny bit; cheese is a condiment.
*Don't hold me to this (army), I can never remember if this analogy is the army or what military branch owns this task.
I realize, a few days after you sent this out, how incredibly important absolute clarity is to me in avoiding the confusion and obsession that has been such a big part of my life with food. Since I read this wonderfully clear explanation, I have felt much more back in the driver's seat again. Not just about cheese, but about eating in general. Part of what has been crazy making in the past has been the ever changing advice, from doctors, nutritionists, whatever about what and how to eat. What is supposed to be life saving one month is deadly the next and food morphed from something healthy and life giving to every morself being fraught with anxiety and uncertainty. Food is neither salvation nor enemy. It is simply food..nutrition, taste. As Julie said at out first meeting, almost all diets "work", in that one can lose weight on them temporarily. But changing one's deepest relationship with food and eating is another thing, and this is the first program that has begun to do that for me. Aside from the changes happening in my energy and body shape, there has been a huge amount of insight and learning about addiction, and I am eternally grateful for that!
ReplyDeleteEva
I have been following this program with a friend but have never been to see Julie. It's been just over a month and I am down a size... I'm going to continue it's so easy for me. And if I start to feel like I need more help I will make that appointment. I'm not a sweet eater so that part was easy, my downfall is pasta, bread & cheese... But when you eat enough meat you will not be hungry so the cravings go away!! Try it & if you don't have a lot of willpower make that appointment it will change your life!!
ReplyDeleteThis truly hit the spot today! I am finding that I crave the cheese. I no longer look to the cupboards or the freezer for ice cream or chocolate but to the drawer in the refrigerator for CHEESE. Cheese has become my new ice cream. I think you are right Theresa, I need to put myself in timeout and stay away from the cheese. I am going to have to tell myself "I don't want to want it" or "I have had that before, I know what it tastes like and I don't need to have it now" I love knowing that when I feel that I am struggling, I can come to this blog and find that someone is feeling the same as I do.
ReplyDeleteI hear you Adrienne! Yesterday there were treats in the office and a healthy alternative was an incredible cheese (organic too). I had a piece and said to myself "cheese is my new sugar!"
DeleteI've not had cheese in the house all week and have been refraining from elsewhere. But, cheese is not something to have as a snack and that's what I did yesterday. Never mind you have to have it with meat. And - we aren't supposed to snack; if we're hungry we should eat a meal.
This is the kind of issue that has kept me in my size instead of dropping, so I encourage you to stay away from cheese - it stays with us instead of passing through us.
Keep up the good work here! We've come to far to let a little thing called cheese get in our way.
Moooooooooooooove over; step away from the cheese.