Yes I'm starting to find that the "mouth" cravings that I get aren't my body telling me what it needs. I've been having mouth cravings for chocolate all day (chocolate raspberry jelly sticks in particular, omg). The true needs are so much more subtle and nonspecific. I was hungry just a few minutes ago and I thought about different sorts of foods and combinations. I got stuck on two roasted chicken breasts (leftovers from another meal) and a little bit of cottage cheese. Cottage cheese or chicken alone wouldn't have done the trick. I guess I needed some more fat and protein- this makes sense because I've been eating a TON of carbs lately. Last night for dinner I had a big bowl of mixed vegetables. So it seems like things are balancing out over time.
After some food journaling for the past week my nutrition therapist has concluded that I don't allow myself to get full. Perhaps I'm still not quite sure what fullness is supposed to mean or what is the right amount of fullness. But apparently I'm not getting full enough, especially at breakfast and when I don't eat a good hardy breakfast I set myself up for overeating the rest of the day. So I'm currently working on having a good breakfast... GOOD = enjoyable, plentiful and unrestricted. Wow, good used to mean something else entirely. I'm so good!
I put my scale away over the weekend. I have been weighing myself everyday, sometimes several times a day, for the past several months. It really determines my mood and how I'm going to eat for the day which is really crazy. It has me nervous not having it. I feel like I'm going to step on it one day and be completely shocked I weigh so much. Today I have felt like I have to be "good" so the scale will move in the right way. I know I'm looking at all this as weight loss but the thought of weighing more than I do has me scared. I am giving myself permission to weigh 1x/week. It's so crazy how a scale and a stupid number can really rule your life.
Over the weekend I tried sticking to just 3 meals/day. I got this idea after reading about the No S diet. (no snacks, no seconds, no sweets except on S days Sat Sun). Pretty much eat 3 good meals/day. I can't do the no sweets as it would stick me in deprivation mode but I am a grazing snacking queen! So I ate 3 full meals each day and it was interesting how I never got hungry between. I'm not going to be restrictive about it and if I was starving between I'd eat for sure but it really helps me judge whether I'm hungry or not.
Wannabeskinny...maybe I never eat until I'm completely full either but knowing I am only going to have 3 meals/day makes me eat a full meal.
Hey guys couple random thoughts this rainy Monday morning.
So just quick review I'm one of this yo-yo dieters who goes up and down 15 pounds all the time and like Southern Maven I turned 60 last year you would think by now I would have figured it out. I retired in December from a busy stressful career and really had the past 3 months to get my act together. I wasn't working and my husband goes back and forth to the Florida house so I had a fair amount of time to be able to be alone and get in touch with myself. Really my only goal since January has been to relax and get my eating and exercise in positive motion.
Anyway I'm two weeks from heading back north and feeling really good. I spent a couple weeks kind of getting myself off the holiday overeating cycle but after that turned to IE that had worked for me so well in the past. I read the Tribole book 15 years ago and had great success for about a year and then things got stressful and I gave up on it.
This time I have been taking care of my soul and doing things like yoga it has been a real improvement for me and when I am calm and present the rest of everything goes better.
I haven't weighed myself but I have dropped a couple sizes and can fit into all my favorite clothes again. I went shopping the other day and went through my classic wishing I was a few pounds thinner dressing room ritual, but I have absolutely resisted the urge to restrict eating. And the draw was so there to do it but darn it I am much happier at this sustainable size and refuse to go back to the yo-yo place. If the darn styles would just get rid of this skinny jeans thing it would help!
I really love good healthy food and I like to cook (plus we have a big vegetable garden in our house in Illinois). It helps me a lot rather than focusing on restricting eating to relish eating so I regularly peruse recipe sites like Epicurious going through the healthy recipes and add a half dozen things that look good to my recipe box and make sure I have ingredients for a couple of them. Then I make something really good and sit down with a pretty plate and enjoy it. If I don't eat a meal and sort of graze through the day I'm never satisfied regardless of how much I eat.
The other thing I started recently was weight training to supplement walking which I've done since I was 20 (admittedly with some breaks when I was in a bad place but I'd come back to it). I am working on doing real stuff with heavier free weights. I don't see exercise in a negative calorie way but I do think you look better at any size and it's something to focus on if you feel the need to do something rather than restricting food.
Anyway it is proof AGAIN to me that IE is absolutely the way to go. I don't miss logging calories one little bit, either. And I sure as heck am not going to miss the binging and regain cycle. So I'm only a few months in but so hopeful.
After some food journaling for the past week my nutrition therapist has concluded that I don't allow myself to get full. Perhaps I'm still not quite sure what fullness is supposed to mean or what is the right amount of fullness. But apparently I'm not getting full enough, especially at breakfast and when I don't eat a good hardy breakfast I set myself up for overeating the rest of the day. So I'm currently working on having a good breakfast... GOOD = enjoyable, plentiful and unrestricted. Wow, good used to mean something else entirely. I'm so good!
Good for you! I find that if I don't eat a large breakfast I have to eat a few hours later, which means that I just get hungry for little nibbles every few hours. I find that way of eating for me kind of stressful- I wish I could go for just three meals a day rather than eating every few hours. I'd rather not think about what I want to eat and I find meal times pretty boring when I'm being mindful. I just want to be done so I can resume other activities.
Last night I ate chicken and cottage cheese for dinner. I wasn't hungry for several hours after that. I'm going to try incorporating more protein into my meals and see if that keeps me satisfied longer. I'm honestly getting a bit tired of the refined carbohydrates at this point. I just want fruit, vegetables, and quality protein.
I'm new to the whole IE thing, but I'd really like to join this community!
short intro about myself, I'm 20 and in college. Last year I gained the typical freshman weight, but I spent the past year counting calories and restricting to get to my goal weight.
I reached my goal weight a little over a week ago, but it just hit me. I couldn't live being obsessed, weighing food, feeling starving all the time anymore. I was going a little crazy, and I want to live and eat in a way that's healthy for the rest of my life.
I read through all the IE posts and Overfed Head, so I'm going to dip my feet in and move away from calories to hunger. I'm so happy to have found this group as a support source!
Do any of you struggle with feeling full, or knowing when to stop with a meal? I felt in tune with my body's hunger this morning, wasn't really hungry when I woke up, so I didn't eat until I felt hungrier at lunch time.
However, this night when I got hungry I started eating and had to keep asking myself "am I hungry or am I just enjoying the way this food tastes?" I think it was probably more of the second than the first, but after restricting for so long I just allowed myself to keep eating until I felt satisfied....am now feeling kind of guilty
How have you learned to differentiate between feeling full and just enjoying the food?
Hi Koalifornia21! Yes, I struggle all the time. For a long time I relied on eating low cal foods, so I could stuff a lot and still not gain a lot of weight. So for me to stop when I am not hungry any-more is hard, I still want to eat for the taste of it. I think if you have to question yourself whether you are hungry or not, then you are probably not. At least for me, when I am hungry it is clear, I don't need to check if I am hungry, it is quite obvious (I mean I feel hungry). When I have to question, then it is more often when I wish I was hungry so that I could enjoy the food. Kinda "Am I hungry yet?....Am I hungry yet??....I wish I was hungry now!".
I can think of two options:
When you think you may be full - stop. If you feel hungry 10 minutes later - eat.
Or just eat to your heart's content, but then still wait until you get hungry again to eat.
I am very new to this too, but I think I will try the second one myself, because when I stop before I feel full it still feels like deprivation. And, if I overeat a little, it should simply mean that I will not get hungry that soon.
First off yes this is hard and yes it does get eaiher. I agree with Cinnamon completely it does not have to be perfect and either approach works. My husband totally is the second type and he wants to EAT to over fullness but then he waits forever to eat again and he totally responding to his body signals, has never been overweight and is very naturally intuitive. But that doesn't work for me at all and I really don't like that stuffed feeling anymore.
I think it is hard to gauge hunger if you are either too hungry to start with or you are eating really light things. So if I'm starving, I'm going to just really eat and go into a food coma for awhile. And if I'm eating something like a huge salad or popcorn, it is also difficult. Plus much of the time after you've done it awhile, at home I find I've gotten pretty good at simply putting the right amount of food on my plate for my hunger level and rarely leave much behind (but sometimes I do).
The whole thing is more applicable for me now when I'm in a restaurant and you get the proverbial huge portion. It's clear when they set it down it is too much and the question is where are you going to stop. In the original book the authors talk about the "last bite" signal and I really like to think about it that way so after you've gotten through those initial bites that taste just so fabulous I start to sort of side brain monitor myself and really do find I get to a point where a mental switch says ok you are completely satisfied, I do not want to ruin this lovely meal being overfill and that is the "last bite". At that point I set down my fork and like the book says I will nudge the plate back a smidge and sit back in my chair take a sip of water or wine as the case may be and focus on chatting. My husband knows that is his signal to dive in and eat anything he wants that I have left behind LOL. I certainly have been known to go back for a few more bites but usually not much.
But honestly it doesn't need to be perfect just neither leave yourself hungry nor get overfull to discomfort and then wait til you are hungry again and do it over at the next meal.
Last edited by CindySunshine; 03-26-2014 at 07:19 AM.
Do any of you struggle with feeling full, or knowing when to stop with a meal?
after restricting for so long I just allowed myself to keep eating until I felt satisfied....am now feeling kind of guilty
How have you learned to differentiate between feeling full and just enjoying the food?
Welcome to the forum. You'll find that IE can specifically help with calming your anxiety and obsession around food. Any kind of diet at all can make food a virtue rather than nourishment and when we scrutinize every food decision we make it can cause a lot of angst so good for you for wanting to address that now.
Have you read any of the IE books?
When it comes to fullness/hunger you have to remember that this is a skill. It's not something you do or don't do. It's not something you did successfully or something you failed to do well. It's something that you can work on a little bit at a time and like any other skill it's possible to go 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Sometimes it's easy to identify hunger and other times it's not. And sometimes you won't care at all about hunger and want to eat anyway and THAT'S OK TOO! As long as at some point during your day you acknowledge your hunger and fullness then your body will start paying more attention to it because your body craves to be nurtured by you, have some faith in it and it won't let you down.
So this is how I approach it. I ask myself if I'm hungry and if I'm not sure I wait a bit and ask myself again. Once I've established that I am hungry I set out to eat what I want to eat. At first my eating is impulsive, so I allow it to be. I remain mindful but I make sure that the first few bites are quick so that I get rid of that urgent initial hunger - but I do try to eat slowly enough so that I swallow one bite before taking another... it's amazing how quickly people put food in their mouth before they're even down chewing the previous bite and I'm no exception! After the urgency is calm I slow down considerable. I put my fork down between bites. At some point, usually about halfway through I leave the table. I'll do anything to take a solid 2minute break from eating. I may go to the bathroom, I may go get a glass of water, I may do some little chore, anything to get away from the food. When I go back I tell myself that I'm allowed to eat as much of it as I want... honestly though when I return I'm so level headed and so aware of how full I am that I know exactly how many bites I want to eat if any at all. This has helped me the most and it's getting easier!
Hunger and fullness are the hardest part of IE for me to master. I've been doing IE for about three weeks and my techniques of feeding myself have evolved even over that amount of time. At first I was very weight loss oriented so I really wanted to make sure I didn't overeat at any meals. I constantly left the table more or less satisfied- I was no longer hungry but I wasn't satisfied, either. This meant I would be hungry in a few short hours and it began driving me nuts.
Now I eat until I'm full but "full" means different things for different people. For me it's not based on how my stomach feels. I can feel full without feeling food in my stomach, or conversely I can still feel hungry and feel like my belly is sticking out. It's this very subtle point of complete satisfaction. It's the point at which I don't need any more food. A good way to know when I'm approaching this point is that food stops tasting as good. The first few bites of food that you eat when you are hungry are incredible- I start salivating and it is very pleasurable. Then as my body reaches satisfaction that feeling goes away. What I've learned is that I still may be hungry for more even after that feeling of bliss goes away- and that's okay.
I have only "stuffed" myself once since beginning IE. I was playing a computer game with friends and shoving food in my mouth quickly. After I was done I clearly knew I had eaten to much. My stomach felt uncomfortable full and I felt yucky. I try to remember that feeling so that I don't get too much anxiety over whether I'm full or not. It's amazing to me that I used to feel that way after every meal. I try to remind myself how far I've come from just mindlessly eating ALL THE THINGS. My body actually does a pretty good job alerting me to hunger and fullness after all these years of dieting, overeating, and bulimia. I'm actually quite surprised how intact my signals are.
...My body actually does a pretty good job alerting me to hunger and fullness after all these years of dieting, overeating, and bulimia. I'm actually quite surprised how intact my signals are.
This is what the meaning of self-love really means. Trust yourself and cultivating the gifts you were born with. Hunger is not scary.
Thanks for all of the feedback everyone! I really appreciate it.
Even though I've only been doing this for a couple of days I'm amazed at the relief I've felt around food! It's amazing actually. I had gotten to the point where if I nibbled on a cracker I would feel anxious until I looked up the calorie content of said cracker, guessed what proportion of it I had eaten, and then logged it. Needless to say I was getting a little crazy about it. I felt like food and thoughts of food were ruling my life!!
However, these past few days, after I've given myself permission to eat WHATEVER food I'm craving, I've been surprised to see how much less time I spend thinking about food. I know it will be a long time before I relegate food to its normal place, but it's nice to not feel like it's hanging over my head all day. The thread about not being afraid of hunger really struck a chord with me.
So fat I've read Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Trioble and the Overfed Head. To be honest I had a difficult time with Intuitive Eating book, but Overfed Head really impressed me. It was really eye-opening and just relieving to read. I don't want to be on the dieting/nondieting cycle for the rest of my life!
One thing I'm really surprised about is the odd times of day I feel hungry. So far I've found out that I don't wake up hungry, it hasn't come until later in the day...Were any of you surprised by the randomness of the times you're hungry at?
Again, this is such a great community and I feel so lucky to have found you all! My mom is really big on "health" and "nutrition" (she was a personal trainer for years, has restricted to low carb for as long as I've known her) so this isn't something I can talk to her about. She repeatedly tells me I'll never be able to rely on my hunger/fullness to maintain my weight, but hearing from you guys has really given me hope!
I'm glad you're finding relief in this way of eating. I found that I had immediate results, too, with a few bumps along the way. One thing I found in the first week or two was the urge to get back on a diet. I'm very overweight and I have joint pain when I walk so it's hard for me to be patient and do things intuitively sometimes. I just want the pain to be gone NOW. Well I'm dropping weight and feeling better and more mobile each day so I'm less worried about that now.
I too have found that I'm hungry at odd times but I've become more attuned to my body and I sort of expect it now. I know that on weekend mornings I'm not usually hungry for breakfast. I think this may be because of abundant sleep or the fact that I don't wake up early and start walking/commuting to work. I also sometimes want a snack before bed time, especially if I eat an early dinner. All these feelings were frightening at first because I wasn't used to demand feeding myself. I just stuffed myself at each meal so I didn't need to snack in between.
I did very poorly yesterday. I ate breakfast and lunch and was attuned to my cues and ate accordingly. Then at dinnertime I made fried chicken that hubby's been asking me to make for a while now. As I was fixing dinner I knew that I was not at all hungry, not at all! But I never eat friend chicken and never ever make it! I knew that if I waited an hour or so that I would get eventually hungry but I decided to eat anyway because how often does one get to eat chicken right out of the fryer??
My lack of hunger cues were very strong, my body was explicit - do not eat! And I did it anyway and you know what, once I started eating I had no problem continuing. This is bad. Thumbs down on honoring my hunger!
