Bye Bye White Stuff

There are some things you just have to learn for yourself.

For instance, even though just about every sane diet book, magazine, and website that's ever existed has endlessly preached the merits whole grains, brown rice, and the like, and has ranted incessantly the evils of all processsed carbs, there was a part of me that just never caught on. Call me slow, or maybe just skeptical. (I'm talking about real nutritional advice here, not: "See how you can lose 20 lbs next week with this ONE WEIRD TRICK.")

I used to believe in the difference between whole grains and processed grains with about the same conviction that I believe in eating all organic. I thought there were some slight health benefits that some overachieving health nuts were all crazy about, but that the difference wasn't really that significant.

But ever since I started the no sugar diet I've tuned in to my body's hunger messages and I've discovered something very interesting: white stuff messes with me. After eating something white and processed, even without sugar, I feel MORE hungry after eating it than before I ever ate. 

I know that sounds loopy, and when I tried to explain it hubby, he was very puzzled. But maybe one can't understand it who hasn't experienced it themselves. And whether or not anyone understands why it happens, I have my own empirical evidence: this is how I feel. White carbs make me hungry.

I wrote before how a no carb diet also makes me also crazy hungry, and since that discovery, I wasn't watching carbs other than sugar. But I felt miserable eating white stuff. I never felt satisfied.

Now what I've discovered is that brown, whole grain stuff works in my system as if it were a completely different food than the white stuff. The difference isn't slight, it's astonishing.

Have you ever sat next to someone who has been thin their entire life, in fact, maybe who even wishes she could gain a little weight, but no matter how hard she tries, she just can't gain a pound? And have you ever watched this person eat and noticed that even though she just told you she thinks she is too skinny, she was only able to eat half her dinner and pushed the rest aside? "I'm stuffed!" she exclaims.  She is not endowed with supreme self-discipline, she simply isn't hungry. Food is metabolized differently. Her hunger and full signals work. They're not broken like mine.

Have you ever wished you could feel more like that person when you eat? What I've come to discover about eating a certain way is that it has the potential to turn me more into that person in that I can feel full and satisfied like them. I might not feel exactly like that yet, but I am much closer.

Avoiding white carbs makes me have healthier attitude toward food. It's such a freeing feeling and that is what makes me want to keep going with the way I'm eating. And that's why I like my new approach to eating healthy. When I'm doing these things because I see how it affects how I feel, I'm so much more likely to stick with it than doing it simply because Oprah said to. I just needed to find out for myself.

It's great fun to be one's own science experiment: you should try it.