I find Thanksgiving so much easier with IE. No guilt. No painful stomach from over-eating. No eating stuff just because, even though it's not that great.
Just really enjoying the good stuff, stopping when I'm full, and enjoying family.
Sidhe, I'm glad you got to read the cook before buying. That's always a bummer when you don't care for it after you already bought it. I get a lot of used books from Amazon but that means you have to wait awhile till the price goes down. Sometimes when I am done cooking for 25 or more people like Thanksgiving, I'm so sick of looking at the food that I don't eat. ha!
I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. Last year I was riddled with guilt from overeating and feeling like I shouldn't be eating those foods to begin with. I know there will be no guilt in eating the wonderful foods that are going to be prepared this year. I live in the South and love southern cooking. However, my husband doesn't care much for it. So holidays I get to taste the things that I don't cook that often. We are having venison. I haven't had any in years and I am excited about it. I plan on making sure I listen to my body, my hunger signals, and stop when comfortable. We are going over to my husbands family later in the evening and they are having finger foods. I just plan on really following the IE rules to the max this holiday season. IE Rocks!!! I just can't contain the excitement over this way of eating. The way my thinking about eating has changed. I lost weight doing IE before I got pregnant with my daughter in 2004. But, I wasn't as determined and I still had that dieters mentality stuck in my head. That mindset is gone finally.
Right now I am craving a banana like crazy. I can almost taste it. Gotta make a trip to the grocery store tomorrow so I'll be sure to get some then.
Hope everyone has an awesome Thanksgiving!!! I have so much to be thankful for. You all are on my list of people I am thankful for . I am very grateful for a place like this with wonderful Chicks. Where I can feel excepted and find the support that I need. Love Ya'll!!!
Carol, maybe I should try your method of getting sick of food by cooking bunches of it, but then what would I do with all that food?? The Thanksgiving holiday has never been all that much of a challenge for me, and it won't be this year, either. My family is no longer in town, and friends are busy with their own families. The family across the street has invited us to their celebration, but DH has mentioned that he wants to "get out of town" for the holiday ("drive north", essentially) so we may just do that. It's been a long, long, time since I was at a full traditional Thanksgiving...before my grandmother died in August 1996, at least. Of course, the fact that my DH is British and Thanksgiving is NOT a British holiday may have something to do with it!
It's interesting, but I'm really not feeling challenged at all by the idea of being in the holiday season. Like you, Julie, there's a kind of mental going on...eat what I like, enjoy it, move on. At the moment I am doing my little "plan your day and buy what you need the night before" thing, and I'm happy with that. I'm eating a lot of fresh stuff and I'm excited about that because it just sounds really good--I look forward to it all! I don't see any reason to change my plans to go along with some arbitrary traditions that aren't MY traditions, anyway.
Half a baked potato with broccoli and cheese tonight, and maybe some hot chocolate later. I just ate a ring of dried pineapple, though, so I'll wait til I'm hungry again. For lunch I had yaki niku (finely sliced grilled beef and onions) at a sushi place, with miso soup and rice. Midmorning I had granola with sliced banana and strawberries and soy milk, and early this morning (6am) I had an apple with peanut butter. This sounds like a HUGE amount of food, and yes it is front-weighted (I eat more in the beginning of the day naturally, and my appetite dies off as the day wanes), but I ate what I wanted and left good portions of all those meals. Well, I tried to leave the fruit on my granola, but it got stolen by a little monkey of a 3-year-old!
So I got thinking about the list of foods I gave up there, and "how much" food I ate today. And I started worrying about it, and I started feeling bad, and I was tempted to go jump on the scale which would be a REALLY bad idea right now, and... What to do?
I went and filled out my fitday account.
The verdict is: about 2100 calories, 17% protein, 29% fat, 54% carbs. 33 grams of fiber. I'm a hair short on calcium, potassium, and iron (seriously, like, 98%). This is without planning. Well, you know, beyond "what do I want to eat that's fresh" and going to the store to get it. So really, I think I just managed to prove to myself that my body really will, if I get out of it's way, take good care of itself.
Happy Thanksgiving all! I had a nice one. And today I stepped on the scale and I was down a pound! OMG! What is up with that? It seems hard to believe I would lose weight at Thanksgiving. I'm glad though. lol
I had a great day yesterday. I followed my plan exactly and fixed one plate of a little bit of everything I liked and didn't have to go back for seconds. I ate and was satisfied not stuffed and not full. I was so pleased. Sent most of the food home with the guests and saved only enough for one meal today. I threw out the dressing so I wouldn't eat it. I'm up a lb, but that is only because the homemade noodles was cooked in store bought broth and had way more salt than I ever eat. That should come back down tomorrow. I am really thrilled with the way things went.
theCandEs GREAT on the weight loss. Glad to see that we all seem to have done very so well.
Carolr I couldn't get on here either. It kept showing it was busy.
Yay, it's now two yoga practices in three days . I love my yoga, it loves me, but still I haven't done it since the spring, and boy does it show in so many ways.
Second epiphany ... as I was eating the leftover orange-pineapple jello with marshmallows that I brought home, and feeling mildly guilty about it ...
I realized it's more dissatisfaction than guilt. My sweet tooth has become so sensitive, that I can't enjoy desserts as much as a I used to. I still eat them, rather than just entirely going without something I want ... but what I really want is that dessert but with 1/4 the sugar it was made with. And restaurants / other people just do not make stuff that way. And being single and only preferring dessert about once a week anyway, I'm not usually going to make it myself.
I don't know if that makes sense. It's was just interesting to me to realize I was misidentifying dissatisfaction as guilt. And I think I'll find it easier to start making little desserts for myself a little more often, the way I like them, and find it easier to skip the stuff that isn't quite what I want.
I was excited this morning to see that I'm back down to where I was before T'day. I even had lost half a pound. So I came out of this really good. I am sooo pleased. I LOVE IE!!! And I'm so thrilled that IE is finally my way of life. Didn't do calorie counting T'day and haven't gone back to it. I am finally strictly IE and loving it. Also finding that the healthy foods are what I want to eat. Big changes that are good changes in my life.
That's great PattyGirl!!!. Also great for you. TheCandESCongrats on the weight loss during the holidays. Those half of pounds add up. It took it a while to sink in for me. But I am hooked on IE also.
The holiday went well. I've started an exercise plan now. At least trying one. I just realized that Netflix has 42 DVD's on Play It Now status. I can watch them all on my computer. I never thought about this and didn't realize they even had workout videos after all these years of getting Netflix. I did 10 minutes of a 55 minute Carb Burner video today. That is all I could manage. plan on trying again tonight. I want to invest in some weights and a yoga mat.
So, I had this moment of epiphany today... I was driving, coming back from the gym, when I realized this is the body I have... this is the shape it has and it's not going to turn into somebody else's body any time soon...
Hello again, everyone! I got on the scale again this morning and it's still the same! I'm so happy. I thought I must be imagining things, but it is actually true!
Anyway, it was so nice outside, it made me feel like going for a walk. If only it could be fall all year. lol All of the trees here are changing and the weather is so nice. I love it.
Wow, lots of epiphanies going on around here. That's great! I think IE is a long process, and there is so much to learn about it and yourself everyday. This time I didn't get stuck in my pattern of overeating, and I feel great. I'm so glad it is working. I'm glad all of you are able to work your way through this, too. I feel it is really the only way to lose weight and keep it off. I know there are many ways to lose weight, but keeping it off is key. I used to think I would rather get down to my ideal weight by dieting, and then do IE. That was the wrong way to think about it, though. I need to go through this process, or I will not be able to keep the weight off.
The Thanksgiving holiday has never been all that much of a challenge for me, and it won't be this year, either. My family is no longer in town, and friends are busy with their own families. The family across the street has invited us to their celebration, but DH has mentioned that he wants to "get out of town" for the holiday ("drive north", essentially) so we may just do that. 
It's been a long, long, time since I was at a full traditional Thanksgiving...before my grandmother died in August 1996, at least. Of course, the fact that my DH is British and Thanksgiving is NOT a British holiday may have something to do with it! 
I ate and was satisfied not stuffed and not full. I was so pleased. Sent most of the food home with the guests and saved only enough for one meal today. I threw out the dressing so I wouldn't eat it. I'm up a lb, but that is only because the homemade noodles was cooked in store bought broth and had way more salt than I ever eat. That should come back down tomorrow. I am really thrilled with the way things went. 
I got on the scale again this morning and it's still the same! I'm so happy. 
I thought I must be imagining things, but it is actually true! 
