I’ve been following the advice of some “no-dieting” gurus by trying to “eat what I want”. For about the first three weeks, when I asked myself, “Self, what do you want”, I would almost always hear, “FRENCH FRIES!” I think I ate them at least once a day for the first two weeks… sometimes more than once a day. One night, I ate so many of them I actually hoped I would throw up and get them out of my system. I didn’t.

One day, I realized that french fries no longer sounded good. Well, let me rephrase that. I still remembered them tasting good, but now I considered how I might physically feel after I ate them. This turn in focus made me think a bit more about my french fry craze. You see, I have never been known to crave french fries, so why did I want them so much? The only thing I could think of was that they had been a “no, no” food even when I was on Weight Watchers. Yes, they say you can “eat whatever you want”, but when what I wanted would take more than half my daily points… well, I wouldn’t eat them. So, for me, they were off-limits. Realizing why I wanted the french fries helped me realize all the more that it wasn’t my body that wanted them, it was my mind.

My next food craving was FRITOS® Honey BBQ Flavored Corn Chips. Yikes! I would eat an entire bag for a “meal”. This one didn’t last as long as the french fries because when I figured out my fry issue, I applied the same thought process to the corn chips. I haven’t had them in several days either. Now, I probably gained a few pounds (still haven’t weighed), but I think this fry frenzy was critical to moving past the dieting mentality. Within the past couple of days I’ve begun to voluntarily eat more whole foods again. That’s progress.