Does anyone have a healthy relationship with food anymore? I don’t. I struggled with gluttony for years—overeating, eating exactly what I wanted, and fulfilling every fleshly desire. Although I refrained from and resisted temptation on a regular basis, when I do go to indulge, I am still a glutton. I still choose to overeat until I am sick. I stuff in everything I can possibly find that I like.
I haven’t figured out how to find moderation in my re-feed meal. What is a re-feed meal? After you are consistent with your body and your body is used to eating what it is eating, it gets to the point where it needs a shock to the system. A shock to your system is called a re-feed. Some call it a cheat meal, but it’s not really cheating. It’s re-feeding your body. A re-feed meal shocks the system by injecting so much fat and carbs into it that it has to work a little harder to burn off what you gave it. The next day—it’s interesting—it wants the same thing you had the day before. But when you deprive it of all of that food, fat, and disgustingness you had the day before, your metabolism (a) increases and (b) taps into fat storage and starts burning. It wants to eat more fat, so instead of tapping into your energy stores, it taps into your fat storage. How awesome is that?
Now here is the problem. A lot of people want to re-feed every day. “I’m going to have a re-feed meal today. And a re-feed meal at breakfast.” Those are little, baby cheats that confuse your metabolism. Your metabolism wants a consistent fuel just like an infant who needs food every three hours. Once it is set on a consistent schedule, it falls into a habit. Our body likes traditions and habits. It wants to know it can trust you. It trusts that if you say you are going to feed it every three hours, you are going to feed it.
Somehow in America, we have switched to a three-meals-a-day style of eating. In essence, what we are doing is we feed it, and then we wait a long time until we are absolutely starving, and then we stuff it again. In the meantime, your body is screaming, “Hey, I am ready for fuel. Look, my tank is on low, and you are not feeding me.” The next meal you eat will throw everything in the fat storage. It’s like, “Hey, I need to store this food for later because this lady is probably going to starve me again. She is constantly starving me. I don’t know when I can count on you to feed me.” That is your body.
But now suddenly, I am feeding my body consistently. It actually knows what it is going to get, when it is going to get it, and how often it is going to eat. It likes it. I cannot even overeat on a meal by one ounce of nuts. If I try to go for two ounces of nuts instead of my typical one, I can feel it in my stomach. It feels so full. It’s too much. I cannot do it anymore. In the past, I could have eaten until I was blue. I could have eaten six ounces of nuts, a huge meal, cookies, and ice cream, and it would have been no big deal. It’s like my stomach was stretched out. My stomach probably didn’t know what size to be, honestly. It’s like, “Oh, do I need to be huge or small? I don’t know what we are going to do. Are we going to stuff our face today, or are we going to eat little baby bird bites? Are we going to have a soda and a candy bar? I’m not sure how consistent she is going to be with me.”But now I am consistent. My meals are the same; my measurements are the same. It’s all consistent. If I eat even the tiniest bit over, I can feel it, as if my stomach has adjusted and adapted to my new eating plan and it won’t even allow me to eat past being satisfied. How healthy is that? I have a daughter who since she was a little two-year-old has never eaten past satisfied. She eats until she is satisfied, and then she puts her fork down. Because of that, she is extremely tiny. She has a thigh gap. Who has a thigh gap? Not many people. But she has it because she has consistently put her fork down upon satisfaction instead of being gluttonous and eating excessively.
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