Red Light/Green Light

by Maryann Marks

I’m at the gym, with the energy flow working at optimum. This is when I get the best ideas for my blogs. Red light/green light flashed into my mind.

I’ve been under the weather the past two weeks. I noticed that I had no enthusiasm for anything. Because my appetite was gone, I lost a few pounds. I decided to run an experiment about keeping my portions smaller as my health returned.

I recently read a research study that gave three groups of people, who just finished a big lunch, three sizes of stale popcorn as when they went in to a movie. Everyone ate all the popcorn, and when interviewed about the taste, no-one mentioned it was stale. We’re suppose to eat when we are hungry-wrong. We tend to eat what is in front of us, especially when we are with others doing the same.

It has been a great surprise to me that I can eat small portions and be satisfied. Usually, after my stomach has shrunk from either an illness or planned fasting, I inched my way back to my normal portions without a blink of an eye. What happened this time? Using mindfulness as a steady practice, I believe, I am connecting my body with that part of my brain that ruled the portion size. It always said, “this is how much you have to eat to be full.” If I ate less, I was hungry.

Now, I’m being mindful and curious about the hungry instead of assuming I’ll be hungry if I don’t eat a larger portion. I suspect that our hunger factor is not very reliable. It will play tricks on us unless we learn to challenge it. The red light is the body saying that’s enough; the green light is the mind saying more.