The Art of Weaning
When we were young our mothers had to wean us. Animal lovers who have experienced the joy of a pet giving birth to a litter knows the importance of weaning the little critters away from their mother and bringing them onto solid foods.
Now here we are as adults, with food issues — whether it’s weight or health or both. You try dieting and don’t seem to get anywhere. It’s no fun. It’s hard. There’s not much pleasure in it. It’s more of a burden than what it’s worth. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Why bother?
So, have you tried weaning? Weaning involves slowly removing the antoginists in your diet and replacing them with protagonists. Think about — going cold turkey on soda, chips, desserts sounds impossible. But, what if you simply consumed a little less.
I once drank soda every day in the afternoon. When I wanted to drop soda from my diet I weaned myself off it. I started with Tuesday & Thursday afternoons. Instead of soda I drank green tea (the real stuff). I mentally felt good about replacing the bad with the good. And, in the moments of weakness, I knew I could have a soda the next day. Once I became comfortable, I switched to Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Then I graduated going through Monday-Friday without any soda. Eventually I weaned it completely from my normal diet, and reduced it to an occassional thing.
It wasn’t exactly easy. But over time, it got much easier. It’s not much different than weaning babies from their mothers. At first you cry for your little addiction. It’s hard and you must steel yourself to overcome the craving. But after about 2 weeks it gets easier. The craving loses its grip on your soul. Instead it weakens, and a new part of you emerges — one that looks forward to the ‘clean’ food.
By weaning, I was able to invert my behavior. In the beginning, I occassionally drank water but always drank soda. In a matter of weeks I was always drinking water (or green tea) and rarely ever drinking soda. The same technique has been applied to every antagonistic trigger foods. In the course of a year, my entire diet was transformed. I now mostly eat the good stuff, with an occassional foray into the bad.
The amazing thing is that once you’ve been off some of these foods that you once thought were so wonderful, when you finally go back, you might find yourself wondering what you thought was so great about them. That soda is suddenly oddly sweet. The potato chips have little flavor. The desserts are either sweet, flavorless, or both, and in some cases you can feel the fat on your lips. Once you’re there… there’s no going back.
Even adults can benefit from the art of weaning.
May 24th, 2007 at 8:50 am
I agree 100%. Frankly, I idea of replacing the bad with the good isn’t always a bad thing. I get excited about eating healthy and preparing my meals in a way that I know isn’t going to have an adverse effect on my body. However, it’s the down points. The time of weakness. If you’re an emotional eater, it’s when the dark cloud comes overhead, if you’re a boredom eater, it’s when you just want something to fill the time. You get the idea.
If you experience those types of destructive eating, even the best diet isn’t going to help because too much of a good thing packs on weight too. That being said, wouldn’t a food journal help? Wouldn’t it help to write down what you’re feeling at the time when you want to reach for that extra apple, or that extra what ever it is that you choose to eat? That way you can see what triggers your eating attack and find other things to counteract the attack. Then you sit back and drink that glass of water to wart off the attack.
I would think that these too are ways to wean off of a bad habit.