Perspective on feeling "full"

During this past season of excess otherwise known as the holidays, I have done my share of over-eating. After one particularly enthusiastic round of Tex-Mex, I was whining to a friend about how stuffed I felt, to the point of uncomfortable. Her response took me by surprise: "Oh, I used to feel that way all the time!"

Wow. This is from a friend who has totally overhauled her eating and lifestyle habits, and is well down the long road to serious weight loss.

As someone who has never had a weight issue, I needed clarification. Were you mistaking this for a normal satiated feeling? Did you forget how uncomfortable it was, or simply get used to it? When did you realize this was not normal? Here's what I got back:

OK...we fat people get into a "habit" of eating so much that I think we just adjust to that feeling and unless we have that super-full feeling we don't think we are satiated. So I guess we mistake that "less than stuffed " feeling for "I must be hungry again".

The emotional part of eating is all about feeling satisfied and unfortunately the more we stuff ourselves the more we seem to want in order to feel full, ie., satisfied. It is one of those never-ending cycles for many people.

So the increasing sizes of clothes or being unable to move as much just doesn't become as important as feeling satisfied. Very many times the "satisfied" or stuffed feeling is equated with happiness...unfortunately.

For me, a herniated disk (twice) had a bit to do with me paying attention after I realized I caused this myself. But I didn't truly change me enough. I still didn't care enough about myself to do anything about it.

The truth is that I didn't do anything until a good friend that I cared for came into my life that really enjoyed physical exercise, sports , competitions, just being fit and LIVING LIFE believed in me enough and showed me that I too could have those things.

Seeing her enjoy races and seeing the other large and out-of-shape people using the event as a means to become more fit was quite an eye-opener for me. I never would have thought that I could have these things like the other "fit" people I used to see.

The biggest thing for me was realizing that I could use races or events as a means to get into shape, and that was much better than waiting for the weight loss to happen first.