For the
first time ever, I saw a dietician. She had recently graduated from school, and
she was young, pretty, and skinny. She had sort of a lazy eye or something
going on.
I told her
that I had an ED and that I wanted more structure to my eating habits. She said
that that sounded good and we wrote out a meal plan that I was excited about. I
asked about calories just so I would know that I wasn’t going to gain weight on
the plan, and she balked.
“I don’t
think I should give this to you because I think you’ll become too obsessed with
calories.”
“No, I only
asked because I wanted to know I wasn’t going to get fat on this!”
“I think it
would be wise for me to just give you some general guidelines.”
I was
miffed, but I didn’t argue.
Her main
advice was that I needed to stop eating so many sugary foods. I mean, duh. But
for some reason her saying that out loud to me helped me stop eating them. I
guess I’d been giving myself license to binge on desserts more because I’m in
the stage where I know that eating some desserts won’t make me fat. The problem
is I eat too many of them.
The other
thing she told me was to get three different food groups in at each meal, and
to have protein at every single meal. I’m supposed to get a fruit in at lunch
and several vegetables in at dinner, but I’ll have to vary it because the school
meal plan I’m on doesn’t allow for me to get much fresh food. Eating different
food groups at each meal will allow me to get much-needed nutrients and the
protein will help keep me full. The idea is that the more variety I eat and the
fuller I keep myself, the less inclined I’ll be to have cravings for sugar.
It’s a
solid theory, and so far it’s been working. Today at dinner I had no desire to
eat desserts. I’ve only been following her plan for three days, though. We’ll
see where I am in a week.
Challenge
yourself to eat three different food groups at each meal! See if it helps stave
off cravings.
