Carolr I am ready to start Chapter 4 of the book. I haven't gotten to the diet part of it so haven't gotten into the rules yet. I don't think I will go with rules per se either. However, I am understanding more about why IE works. What I read today in the 3rd chapter just makes sense to me. I see how eating when you are not hungry can make you gain weight. I think it is equivilant to overeating when you continue to eat past satisfaction. Also I was surprised to learn that sometimes "diet" foods may have more calories than it shows because the companies do not have to tell us "everthing" that is in it which means it might be less calories to eat a small portion of the regular food rather than "diet". So I think I'm going to get a lot of good from it. I am eating "normal" now but I am not overeating. It really goes back to IE's rule of thumb. When your are hungry, eat what you really love and enjoy every bite and stop eating when you start to feel full or satisfied. I do like what she says about the fact that if you are eating something and you are satisfied before you finish it that you could save it and finish it later if you want.
To me it kind of compliments IE and explains enough of how some foods affect the body which helped me too. It was interesting to me to learn that when we get hungry and want something sweet that the sugar makes you feel satisfied quicker. Which helps me understand why I went from being a person who never ate sweets to one who wants it now. I also see why that in small portions it won't hurt me either. Thus reinforcing the IE idea that there are no good/bad foods. She also explains why there might be times when eating out that the cheeseburger might be a better meal than a salad calorie wise so we can have the cheeseburger if we want it. There are many other things I found to be quite interesting and helpful as well. So you can see how it has been a good addition to IE for me.
Optical Goddess She does mention how some people think because of the name of the book that people think this is a vegetarian woe. She is not a vegetarian and so far I haven't read anything about that. So far I've only seen her tell how to beware of labels and how the foods affect us. She seems to feel we should eat the foods we love, and as you said when hungry and stop when we are satisfied. You may not need the book. I think I do because I am the type of person who needs to understand the why's of things. I used to drive my poor Mama crazy with the all my "why's" when I was growing up.
I'm going to a dinner with the ladies in my neighborhood tonight. It is going to be so nice to be able to eat a little bit of what I want and not feel guilty about it when I'm through and get back home. Freedom to enjoy feels sooooo good.
I was having a conversation with the hubby today. I was telling him I thought I was at least 10 lbs overweight but also told him that the only time I was able to reach 135 lbs (which would be the "ideal" for a person my height) was by eating between 700 and 1000 calories a day. I've been 150 lbs since high school (when I definetely was the fat one) which got me thinking that maybe this IS the weight my body is good at.
So, husband interrupted me and said "you are a beautiful woman. Everyone thinks you're skinny but you. You just need to stop thinking about this and move on, just quit worrying about this."
I couldn't talk after that.
Maybe I should just quit worrying about this! After all, that is the main purpose behind IE, and that's where I've been heading for the past 3 years now, when there was a click in my brain and I understood a lot of things about my body and my distorted body image problems.
But if I quit worrying about it, if I do move on (and I don't know how to), I am so afraid that I will end up like my mom: at 300lbs for the last 21 years, after she had my brother.
=(
Maybe I should just quit worrying cold turkey... but that would mean not checking 3fc anymore... maybe I'll just check the IE thread and that's it...
I don't know...
Maybe it's time to cheer myself dor all the pounds I haven't gained instead of beating myself up for the ones I haven't lost.
ALO22 Personally that sounds great to me. I am happy for you. My DH tells me all the time that I would look good at 150 lbs. I've pretty much decided to do what I'm doing IE and do the same thing you said. Just check on this IE thread from time to time.
Reminds me of a conversation I had with my husband. I had been wearing lots of skirts and pajama pants, and avoiding jeans because they don't fit, or don't fit well. As I was going through my closet I said, "Man, there's a lot of clothes that I can't wear since I got fat."
He:"You're not fat."
Me: "Yeah, right, I am fat. Hence why I can't fit my clothes."
He: "True, you may not fit your jeans but you're not fat."
Me: "Well,I'm certainly bigger than I'd like to be..."
He: "Yeah, you and most of the population."
He also has said that I'm more fun to be around since I stopped dieting. Oh, I still have my days, still binge a bit, but it is starting to click, that the binges aren't satisfying anymore.
Re: the Eden diet... in what I was reading, the vegetarian idea came from " And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. Gen. 1:29
Looking back on my source, it wasn't the real deal book, it could be someone just taking a few verses and running with it.
Today I write from the depths of a binge. I had given up sweets for lent, but then noticed I was inhaling salt free pretzels and never being satisfied because I wanted the 'nilla wafers. So I had them. And I was satisfied...for about 5 minutes. It's been down hill from there.
It's a tough call because I am trying to get back to the IE principles but I am also gaining weight and girth.I do not want to diet but I also don't want to have to buy new clothes .
Not sure what happenned. I just feel kind of out of control and it's been difficult getting back to eating a good breakfast, a balanced lunch and healthy supper, the way I used to eat.
Weight wise, the irony is that I hated being 160 Hated it! Now I wish I was...
I'm going to be getting a pair of shoes for walking andwhat not, so I can go out and walk outside. I flirt with the idea of running but find that I really don't enjoy it... I also have a nintendo wii fit, a standing punching bag, the Jillian Michael's 30 shred, a weight lifting apparatus, and the knowledge of calisthenic moves like various push ups, ab moves, leg things... it's just _using_these things. I either excuse it as that I didn't sleep well last night- I didn't, got about 4 hrs of fitful sleep- or that i need to have a plan and can't just work out arbitrary with out something to follow.... Meh!
Optical Goddess, I had the same thing happen last night. We have company and my dh fixed snacks at 10pm. They tasted wonderful....popcorn, summer sausage, crackers, pop, cheese and grapes. I just couldn't get full and we had supper at 6. I was hungry and I didn't stuff myself but I can't imagine that I really needed that. Today is a new day and I ate a really small brunch. The next 2 days I will be cooking for 300 people so hope to not even think too much about hunger. Do you ever think you wait too long and then you can't get full? That happens to me. But I don't like breakfast, never have so lately I've been eating later and enjoying it more.
Carolr I can't imagine cooking for 300 people. I would be too tired to even think about eating I do believe.
I went to eat with the ladies in the neighborhood the other night. It was so nice to be free to eat and not feel guilty about what I ate. I ate a little more than I should have, but found I wasn't as hungry the next day. Reading The Eden Diet is really helping with my IE. I'm learning that when I eat what I like when I'm hungy, even if I eat a little more like I did the other night that my body will automatically adjust which is what I learned as I just finished reading chapter 4 "Rediscover Your Hunger Signals" and it is very helpful info helping me to understand IE and helping me to allow IE to work for me better. Helped me to understand more about how Intuitive Eating works. I found it interesting to learn that when we allow ourselves to feel the hunger signals that our stomach is able to shrink because when our stomach is stretched sometimes it cannot always feel hunger because it becomes numb to the signals of hunger and fullness. Thank God I haven't I am able to feel them. Little faint sometimes, but I'm finding that they are there. However, she explains that we should never allow ourselves to get too hungry either. I guess your experience explains why.
For those confused about the Apple/Cake test, she also explained about that. Basically in a nutshell if you are hungry enough to eat the apple then you can eat the cake or whatever it is that you are wanting to eat. You just don't get to eat it until you are hungry enough that you would eat the apple. However, she said some people could binge on apples so you may need to find some of other food to test instead of an apple like maybe celery that you would only eat if you were really hungry. I think it is so we know if we are eating it for the right reason... Hunger.
I think I needed this book and what I'm learning to clarify IE for me. It is making it all come together for me. I don't feel like I'm dieting because for me "this is Normal Eating". This is the way I ate until I was convinced by people that I had to eat 3 meals a day and that I had to more food etc. If I had continued eating through the years like I did when I was thin, I never would have had a weight problem. What a shame and what a waste of 46 yrs of my life.
I have decided to ride this binge out...for learning purposes.
I've written down everything I've eaten, and how I felt before /during/ and after eating it. I can tell you that 1/4 of the food would have satisfied true hunger. If I can either understand my bingeing behavior or at least be sickenned by the amount of food I can take out in a binge, this whole thing won't be for naught.
I still think about running....kind of like I think about pixie cuts. I love short hair, like Halle Berry hair. It's so cute, yet sexy...but I can't have it. Tried it once and it comes out like an afro because of my curly hair. Or old lady hair, like a helmet of curls...not cute, unless I'm 12....
I have a fascination with running. I want to be able to do it but it never pans out. I try the Couch to 5K thing, but I always feel like I'm gonna die....
Optical Goddess Looks like you have a good plan journaling what you eat and how it makes you feel. Maybe you haven't found what your body really wants to be satisfied. I could be wrong so please share with us what you learn, it could be helpful to some of the rest of us especially me. The sure is a process learning as we go, isn't it?
Skip down to this one (the article quotes several persons), I thought it was nicely said:
A More Natural Approach
Ellyn Satter, a registered dietitian and family therapist, is the author of “Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: How to Eat, How to Raise Good Eaters, How to Cook.”
The best way to promote healthy eating without ostracizing obese and overweight Americans is to emphasize eating competence: seeking food rather than avoiding it, providing rather than depriving.
A public health campaign should not say what to eat, how much to eat or what to weigh.
This approach is based on natural biological and psychological processes: hunger and the drive to survive, appetite and the need for pleasure, the social reward of sharing food and the tendency to maintain preferred and stable body weight. A public health campaign should not say what to eat, how much to eat or what to weigh because it contradicts those natural processes. Instead, it should encourage people to have enjoyable, regular and reliable meals; to go to the table hungry; and eat with attention and focus until appeased, then stop, knowing another satisfying meal is coming soon.
Research shows that people who take this approach to food and to eating are healthier physically and mentally. They have lower body mass index, more desirable blood lipid patterns and lower blood pressures. They feel better about their eating habits, are more physically active and express greater satisfaction with their weight. They are also happier socially and emotionally and are more effective in managing their lives, more self-aware and more trusting and comfortable with themselves and with other people.
Maybe I should just quit worrying about this! After all, that is the main purpose behind IE, and that's where I've been heading for the past 3 years now, when there was a click in my brain and I understood a lot of things about my body and my distorted body image problems.
But if I quit worrying about it, if I do move on (and I don't know how to), I am so afraid that I will end up like my mom: at 300lbs for the last 21 years, after she had my brother.
Maybe I should just quit worrying cold turkey... but that would mean not checking 3fc anymore... maybe I'll just check the IE thread and that's it...
ALO22, I think it's a really good idea to just check in on this thread. That's what I do many times. If I get over on the other ones and spend time reading, I end up trying to "diet" again. Even the simple calorie counters with all their enthusiasm are enough to send me off the deep end.
Hi, ladies...I've come to the conclusion that my eating IS disordered now. I wouldn't have said that before, but it's clear to me that it is now. This is due to 33 years of trying, and usually failing, to get back to my original weight of 120.
I'm driving myself nuts with the way I constantly buy foods that "fit" either the low carb way of eating, or the calorie counting way of eating, or just all out eating whatever I want--and I can swing back and forth among all of these approaches in the SAME DAY, and wind up discouraged, frustrated, and feeling bloated by the end of the day.
This is disordered eating.
Also contributing is a real fear of what certain foods are going to do to me.
My brother in law died of a heart attack in February. This week, my young (32) son in law went into the hospital with a bunch of stuff wrong--gall bladder pain that was doubling him over, and blood sugar so out of control that he was on the verge of diabetic coma or even death.
I don't want to go through stuff like this, so I immediately try to jump back on the diet wagon, but it just doesn't work, and I end up eating what I would have rather had in the first place after I ate what I *didn't* want on the diet.
If it's true that we should follow our "gut instincts", then I really should back off the scale again, quit fooling around with Spark People, quit reading the low carb boards, and even the regular diet threads here at 3FC, quit listening to my sisters that are having success calorie counting--and do what I think is right for me, which is wear my pedometer and be as active as possible, and eat foods that I LIKE, in smaller portions (but not measured), and don't weigh myself every day.
I know I've said those same things here countless times. Why is it so hard to go against the peer pressure of "what everybody else is doing or recommending", and do what I feel would work for me? Why do we no longer trust ourselves?
I weigh 280 today. That's 160 pounds more than what I weighed in college. A HUNDRED AND SIXTY POUNDS!!! What am I going to do to get closer to the 120 than the 280?
I'm just thinking all of these things to myself...
