For this first month after the stent, we have chosen to be extra careful about saturated fat, foods with a high glycemic index, low-quality carbs, that kind of thing, so that we can get David as far away from danger as quickly as possible. We're trying to bring his LDL number and his weight down and his HDL number up as quickly as possible, knowing that healthy weight loss does not occur quickly and it can take a lot and a long time to make major changes in the cholesterol numbers. But he's on some medications that will help, we think, and so we're spending this first month learning where we need to make modifications and modulations in our eating habits and where we have some slack.
It's been educational for me, since I really do see how close to what the cardiologist wants we normally are for meals. The challenge is in the snacks, or at least what I was thinking of as snacks. It's better if I think of the snacks as meals, as mini-meals in between the prepared, sit-down events. I see that what I thought of as David's sweet tooth or snacking is really not something peripheral or ancillary at all. He gets hungry more often than I do, and I think he gets hungrier, though there's no real way to compare, and he needs food that he can get quickly and easily and that doesn't require a lot of fussing and time. It's better to think of the snacks the same way I think of meals -- as feeding us when we are hungry.
He gets to be hungry, he gets to have this hunger, and it gets to be fed. If he wants ice cream, he gets ice cream, in whatever form will satisfy that particular hunger that particular day. It is critical (because ice cream has ingredients that are not good for him, whether saturated fat or a long list of chemicals made in factories) that, when he eats that ice cream, he eats it as consciously as he possibly can, so that he eats exactly what he wants and not a molecule more. He gets to be satisfied. (We also see from the heart-healthy information sheet that got sent to us that there is enough slack that he can eat ice cream sometimes, we can eat some saturated fat every day and be just fine.)
We're not to the place yet where the snacks we are developing for him are as easy for him to eat as grabbing some cookies or some pie or some ice cream. It seems to me that there needs to be enough variety of foods that he genuinely likes that he can choose something that will satisfy his hunger.
The same is true for me. I too get my hunger, and I get to satisfy it. It is so easy for me to ignore or just not take the time and attention to notice that I actually am hungry, or that my hunger has been growing for a while. I think attention to my hunger helps me make better choices. I can choose to wait a little more, in order to get something that I will like better. I can choose to have some tiding food -- something to tide me over until I can get the food I want. I can choose to eat something now, just enough so that I will be hungry again later. If I don't pay attention to the hunger and make these choices, then I act without having consciously chosen, and I don't eat consciously then, either.
It feels like eating is a lot more work when we're really conscious. We eat less when we do eat, and we get hungrier again sooner. But the real key is the hunger. In order to eat consciously, we have to honor the hunger. We have to notice it, attend to it, and feed it, feed it what it wants and likes.
These snacks for David are also meals, they are about feeding him when he is hungry.
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