|
Professor loses weight with no-diet diet
Updated: 2005-12-05 10:07 When Steven Hawks is tempted by ice cream bars,
M&Ms and toffee-covered almonds at the grocery store, he doesn't pass them
by. He fills up his shopping cart.
It's the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young University health
science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it off for more than five
years.
Hawks calls his plan "intuitive eating" and thinks the rest of the country
would be better off if people stopped counting calories, started paying
attention to hunger pangs and ate whatever they wanted.
As part of intuitive eating, Hawks surrounds himself with unhealthy foods he
especially craves. He says having an overabundance of what's taboo helps him
lose his desire to gorge.
There is a catch to this no-diet diet, however: Intuitive eaters only eat
when they're hungry and stop when they're full.
That means not eating a box of chocolates when you're feeling blue or digging
into a big plate of nachos just because everyone else at the table is.
The trade-off is the opportunity to eat whatever your heart desires when you
are actually hungry.
"One of the advantages of intuitive eating is you're always eating things
that are most appealing to you, not out of emotional reasons, not because it's
there and tastes good," he said. "Whenever you feel the physical urge to eat
something, accept it and eat it. The cravings tend to subside. I don't have
anywhere near the cravings I would as a 'restrained eater.'"
Hawks should know. In 1989, the Utah native had a job at North Carolina State
University in Raleigh and wanted to return to his home state. But at 210 pounds,
he didn't think a fat person could get a job teaching students how to be
healthy, so his calorie-counting began.
He lost weight and got the job at Utah State University. But the pounds soon
came back.
For several years his weight fluctuated, until he eventually gave up on being
a restrained eater and the weight stayed on.
"You definitely lose weight on a diet, but resisting biological pressures is
ultimately doomed," Hawks said.
Several years later and still overweight at a new job at BYU, Hawks decided
it was time for a lifestyle change.
He stopped feeling guilty about eating salt-and-vinegar potato chips. He also
stopped eating when he wasn't hungry.
|
