We all know that our day begins at sunset: “And it was evening, and it was morning…” is the formula for each of the days of Creation. We are all clearly aware that Shabbos begins on Friday night and ends on Saturday night. Those davening Maariv or bentsching at night recite the appropriate sections (for Rosh Chodesh, etc) for the upcoming day.
But there is no time in the Jewish year where the beginning of the day at the evening is more obvious than during the counting of the Omer. We count the day in the evening, and if we forget, we can count during the day (without a bracha) until the evening, when the number increases. A day is an evening followed by a morning, and not the reverse.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch adds a level of meaning to this. He says that the word layla, night, is related to the word for weary or dragging (like nil’ah), and yom, day, to the word kum, rising to independence. Erev, evening, is when the day begins to mix into the evening, and boker, morning, is when things separate from each other and become distinct (like levaker, to check or criticize). Our view of life is that the day begins with evening, goes through a period of darkness, and then develops toward the morning and the goodness of the light of day. As Rav Hirsch says, “Only when a boker has succeeded an erev has the world passed a day of complete existence.” Similarly, while the secular calendar year ends in the darkness of the end of December, the Jewish year ends in a period of light. David Hamelech says in Tehilim, chapter 30, that a person lays down in the evening with tears and arises in the morning in joy. This is our perspective.
So, what does this have to do with eating? A couple of months ago, I decided to redefine the beginning and ending of my dieting day. Instead of starting when I wake up in the morning, and ending when I go to sleep, I would start the day – and counting the “points” I could eat in the day – beginning with supper. I had heard this recommended a number of times at various Weight Watchers meetings, but had never thought about trying it before.
Readers of the first article in this series (“Moving Forward” in WWW, December 2011) know that I have had great difficulty in controlling my eating at night. Well, this new approach worked seemingly miraculously. I no longer “ran out of points” in the evening but still continued to eat, no longer tabulating what I ate as I did in the past. Now, suppertime starts a new day. If I am hungry at night, I have plenty of points left, so there is no desperation. There is a clear realization, though, that whatever I eat tonight will decrease the number of points left for the morning and afternoon. I found that I was making better decisions about eating at night, was not tempted into the mindless eating that I so often have fallen prey to in the past, and did not have the feeling that I was already over the limit, so why not keep on eating.
This approach also helped me with my daytime eating. In particular, the time from when I get home from work until I eat supper has also been a high-risk time for a desperate kind of eating. With the day defined as starting with supper, I know that the tally of my points consumed returns to zero when I start supper, and I can eat a good meal then, without the compulsion to stuff myself before supper. It also is a wonderful feeling to wake up in the morning and not feel stuffed. So when the system worked at night, it also got me started in the right mood in the morning.
In my first four weeks of starting my day at suppertime, I lost around four-and-a-half pounds. And it was relatively effortless. This got me nervous, because I knew that sooner or later, the honeymoon period of a new diet approach would wear off, and it would require strenuous effort again. In fact, the honeymoon is beginning to wear off now, and I find myself eating mindlessly, and a little too much at night, although I am still counting points and using the extra optional weekly points to cover some of this.
I knew the honeymoon could not last. Nonetheless, this approach shows tremendous promise, even if will require more effort on my part. There is something beautiful about seeing the day in continuity, not trailing off into darkness but transitioning into the light of a new day and going forward.
Janet Sunness is medical director of the Richard E. Hoover Low Vision Rehabilitation Services at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. Please email her at jsunness@gmail.com to provide feedback on this series. Her Sunday 8 p.m. class at Shomrei Emunah for women has just started studying Rav Schwab on Prayer. © Janet Sunness 2012
