I'm always very hungry in the mornings (no matter how much I eat the night before), so I always eat a decent breakfast, although I've noticed that the portions that satisfy the hunger are about the same as any other time of day.

Although we're not supposed to eat when not hungry, I do wonder about breakfast. On the extremely rare days that I don't feel hunger in the morning (and don't eat), I experience headaches and grouchiness an hour or two later instead of the more regular empty-tummy-slightly-churning hunger pangs that I am used to. This last time I woke up un-hungry, I had a cup of chai tea anyway and continued my morning. Then I was "normal" hungry 15 minutes later. I wonder if I just needed a little something to wake my hunger up? Strange.

You know, I wouldn't mind losing an extra 10 lbs. eventually. Sometimes I think about eating less, but I worry about jeopardizing my progress and getting my body used to maintaining with fewer calories. I am very happy that my weight has stabilized so well because I don't worry about gaining out of the blue like I used to. This is the most success I've ever had keeping my weight down. Eh, who knows? Maybe those last ten will still happen naturally.

Katerina, I was reading your blog. Where do you live that you are 2 hr. away from a town? Wow!!! You must have a garden in the summer. ha!

Managed to read Dec., Jan. and Feb. Very interesting.

I live in rural Alaska. It's beautiful, but I've been here three years and am now ready for a new duty station. I probably would garden in the summers, except for the short season and my black thumb! I have been thinking of trying an Aero garden, though.

My son was in Alaska for a year or so. We visited once and it was beautiful....a six hour plane ride, however. He was glad to get back and now lives in Seattle...quite a bit closer. He works for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Hi everybody! I am so happy I found you! I have been recovering from compulsive overeating and I landed on doing intuitive eating without even knowing it. Of course I have tried the diets and of course they did not work. I have been working on myself and emotional eating for over a year and did some junk food abstinence, after last binge almost 2 months ago (a diet consequence), I knew I cannot control food and just had to let it be what it wants to be. Scared, crying, I just ate what my body wanted and tried again one day at a time.

I am getting better, not planning, thinking and worrying about food so much, feeling light as my body does not like being stuffed and so i must listen. Weighted myself in the beginning of Feb and I was 2 pounds down from the beginning of Jan. Committing to not checking my weight until April as I have to focus on eating and not weight.

Thank you so much carol3639 for the lovely posts above about fear and the positive affirmations. I now allow myself to eat chocolate and I don't actually want it most of the time. How shocking, so shocking. I prefer apples and dried fruit! My body seems to have some superior intelligence, this letting go works!

I have some fears from fat food and creamy stuff, I think they make me fat. Experience shows that if I eat low fat, I eat a lot, if I eat normal fat, my body stops earlier.I suppose I need to admit that I am powerless over it all, I am not to control it but to eat it and trust that the right thing would happen. It is so hard tho, I just fear double cream, I don't know why, I think if I start eating it, I will eat so much and hate myself.

As for breakfast, I used to be on SBD so I cooked eggs and ricotta, as I got better i started adding cereal and fruit in it. Then i followed my body and all it wanted was nuts, dried fruit and some weetabix. That was 2 months ago, I still love it. I used to think nuts make me fat, they obviously don't. Now I buy mixed nuts and let my body choose which type it wants. Its fantastic!

I am hoping I can surrender more and just trust and let go! Thank you for being there so i can read you and have hope! Good luck everybody with enjoying food and being attuned to natural instincts!

hope for recovery!

Thank you carolr3639! I have been finding it hard today as I ate some creamy fat stuff last night and today my body wants to chill and eat little and take it easy. I just want to be full and eat but I know this is not what my stomach wants. Just old bad unnatural eating habits. I am feeling a bit heavy today but I want to give up trying to control weight. Who on Earth decided that women should be skinny and thin I don't know. Who on Earth decided that we should control weight. I am in a weird mood today, I don't know if this is making sense but I just feel that there is no need to control weight because it should naturally be what it wants to be as long as I don't interfere with greedy emotional eating and deprieving myself.

Your body was designed to survive times of famine, thank the Lord. So when you cut back, your metabolism slows down. When you eat between hunger and satisfaction you will gradually lose weight. The key is go eat when you are hungry and not overeat.

Thank you! I do need to be reminded that I cannot cheat - meaning eating less does not lead to weight loss but to slow metabolism and overeating. I just need to follow my body - I am amazed at its choice of one fruit over another, I also love salt, I think I starved myself on it over the last few months so today I add it to my food. I will just try to eat and not stuff myself.

Looks like you don't have far to go, hope. How are you doing? I'm still trying to finish Naturally Thin but it is kind of "diety".

Hi Everybody,

I haven't been here in a lllooonnnggg time. I've been doing different things (diets) since I learned I had diabetes last summer. I did manage to lose a total of about 26 lbs for the yr last yr which I was pleased with. I've had the blood glucose down to normal when I eat the way my body likes me to eat and not the way a diet tells me to eat or that I shoud eat.

While I do know there are certain foods my body doesn't tolerate, I also know that I have no desire to count any thing or to eat as much or as little as a diet says (seems to set me up for failure). Also I've learned that just because one person particularly a diabetic can eat something doesn't mean that I can. Example, grains like oatmeal may help keep some diabetics bs stay normal or in normal range or keep it from going up so fast, I even showed my numbers to my doctor... my bs reading shoots up over 200 mg/dc when I eat it. If I eat the number of cals or carbs or pts some diet say I need to eat, I find am either stuffed feeling or want more and become stuffed. Perhaps IE thoughts are just too engrained in my mind. I don't know, but I can't tell sometimes if I'm really hungry or not. I thought about the books I read about people who successfully lose weight and kept it off back when I was doing IE. Many didn't so much as diet as they changed as they did what they their Lifestyle woe. So I decided that is what I prefer to do. As I think back to how I ate growing up, I realized that I am a "habit" person. A habit becomes a "Lifestyle". If I make my own habit of my own woe for my health (diabetes) then I will have my own lifestyle of eating rather than a diet that I am eating. Don't know if this makes sense to anyone else but it does to me. My doc told me that "any" diet will work if you just find the one you can live with. He also told me that he can tell who works at correcting the diabetes and who doesn't. He said the ones who do are successful. I plan to be one of those success stories and I believe IE can help me do that. Diets tell you have to eat different foods everyday and maybe you should, I don't know. I know of a woman who has been slowly losing weight and is healthy who eats some of the same foods everyday. I saw her before pics and she really looks good. So I have to wonder how much of the rules we get on diets are more hype than necessary. JMHO

I need to go back through the IE thread and do some reading to catch up on who is still here that I remember from when I was here last Carolr (I know you will have some good stuff for me to read )and I want to get to know the newbies I don't know. So if you don't mind, I would like to come back join in to this IE thread again.

Have a great week end and I'll see y'all next week after catching up on reading.

Thanks

back Trish. I have a friend with diabetes and the doctor told him to just eat less of everything. I couldn't believe my ears. Glad to hear of your 26lb weight loss. Come often.

Thanks Carolr I'm glad to be back.

I've been reading the thread and came across info on Am I hungry.com and went over and read some and took the test. Boy did she peg me right on the money. I have so many books that I don't know if I can buy another one, but am definitely thinking about it. I now understand why I have such a problem with food and trying to get back to IE. As I've shared before when I was here way back when, I grew up pretty much an IE. I had to learn to eat my way to dieting and gaining weight and fighting this battle. According to the test, I have strong Instinctive eating abilities (for lack of better word), but since I'm trying to eat "good" foods and be "good" following a diet I end up with a struggle with Overeating/Restrictive Eating. If I can get rid of the Restritive ideas of diets, I think my Instinctive IE woe will finally come back into play.

carolr If you don't mind, please share with me your thoughts about it. I am going to take their newsletter and read all I can online. In your opinion, do you think that will be enough?

I'm thinking that sometimes we just have to know the "truth" to be free and hopefully this is what I needed to read about myself through this test to be free. Example, I got up this morning and really didn't feel that I needed or even wanted anything to eat, but because diets drilled into our heads that we "have to" eat breakfast... I ate a 1 egg omlette. It was good, but I really could have done without it because I got up late and knew DH would be up shortly and he would be hungry. I ended up feeding him and then making me something because it was time... NOT because I was really hungry. I didn't really enjoy the breakfast as I ended up rushing through it so I would be able to enjoy the meal I had in the oven for later. If I had taken this test before this morning, I would not have eaten the breakfast.

Trish, I think I've read that book and wasn't too crazy about it but her emails are good. My favorite book is The Overfed Head by Rob Stevens... short but to the point. I used to be on an IE yahoo group but they seemed to be big on fat acceptance which I wasn't interested in. The originator of that group was really good but she passed it on to another.