I completely agree, Blankie.
I too have ready Gillian's book Eating Less, she also has a smaller book called Beating Overeating. One of the things that she wrote which really resonated with me was comparing the following scenario of someone smoking and wanting to give up.
The smoker says "I wish I could get rid of this awful cough." Their friend says "Why don't you stop smoking?". Smoker replies "I know, I'll have some cough medicine." The medicine may indeed reduce the cough but it won't deal with the cause of the cough.
Gillian says that if you are overweight it is because you are eating too much for your body's requirements, not anybody else's, yours. This sounds obvious, but the diet industry by and large focuses on losing weight rather than eating less (dieting is rather like the medicine for smokers).
I am a veteran of over thirty five years of dieting (I am really good at it, but always put the weight back on), and when I read her book I realised that Gillian had a point.
I decided to follow her advice about three months ago, learning how to eat less, and my first task was to stop weighing myself. The scales were no longer needed in my life. I was no longer to be governed by numbers!
This was scary actually. The scales have always been a barometer of how I was doing. How would I be able to measure 'success' now?
Over many dieting years I have developed a very bad relationship with food, both loving and fearing it. I wanted more than anything to be able to redescover a better relationship with food, one that took away the emotional anxieties that surrounded eating for me.
Through reading the book I have been learning how to face my addictive desires and work through them on the spot, not avoiding them, but confronting them head on. Each successful confrontation is another reinforcement and makes me stronger for the next one.
On relecting about the past few months I have realised that I haven't been thinking about food much at all, except when planning family meals or doing a shopping list. No binges whatsoever have happened. It has been like a load taken from my shoulders.
I suspect I have lost weight because clothes are getting looser, but this is a by-product of the really important achievement of eating less , developing a better relationship with food and eating, and all the time freely choosing to eat what I fancy. I find that I am focusing on heathier choices through choice rather than "you must have" "you shouldn't have" thoughts.
Last year I refused to go on holiday with the family because I felt so ashamed of how I looked after yet another failed diet. This year, a few weeks after reading Gillian's book, I actually booked a cruise for myself and my husband (for July!). This illustrates perfectly how my attitude has changed, how much more confident I feel in my skin (even at a UK size 20 now), how much more at ease I am in all areas of my life.
Food no longer dominates and this is how it should be.
I recently bought a Kindle (for the cruise lol) and one of the first e-books I bought was Eating Less by Gillian Riley. Even though I have the paper copy too (well thumbed through). I love my Kindle, and it is really easy to dip into particular passages really quickly for guidence and support.
Gillian has a website called eating less dot com. She posts newsletters each month which are free to read. I have found them inspirational and I suggest you have a look for yourself. There is also a chapter from her book you can read, it is also worth a look.
Hope this helps. I would love to hear from anyone who has read Eating Less and found it helpful.
AJ
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Best Non-Diet book ever!
