Intuitive Eating: The Common Sense (Non)Diet
Is the "eat what you want, when you want" strategy right for you?
Charlotte Andersen By Charlotte Andersen
Intuitive Eating: The Common Sense (Non)Diet
What would happen if you ate chocolate chip cookie dough for every meal for two weeks straight? Conventional wisdom says "disaster." And yet this is exactly how Geneen Roth, author of many books on intuitive eating, saved her sanity, gave up dieting forever, and ultimately lost 40 pounds (and kept it off for more than two decades).
Roth's story started like many others with chronic yo-yo dieting and chronic body dissatisfaction, but instead of continuing down that road, one day Roth decided she was finished telling her body what it should and shouldn't eat. It was time to let her body tell her what it wanted. This small change turned into a revolution, and by the time I discovered Intuitive Eating three years ago, it had grown into a phenomenon of Oprah-level proportions. (Seriously--Oprah loves Roth.)
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive Eating (IE) is a style of non-dieting that teaches people to trust their body's signals--the opposite of what most diets do. Rather than trying to "suppress your appetite" or "stoke your metabolism," you focus on eating what your body tells you it needs and wants and stopping when you are full. Therein lies the best part of Intuitive Eating: you eat what you truly want, when you want it. It's also the hardest part: you eat whatever you truly want, only when you truly want it.
A common misconception with IE is that it's a no-holds-barred food fest where you eat anything and everything without limits. While that may sound like diet heaven at first, it would not make your body feel good in the end. And eating what makes your body feel its best is exactly what you are trying to do. You discover pretty quickly--once you start paying attention--that eating bags of jelly beans every day makes you feel tired and sick, while filling up on a salad with protein, veggies, and homemade dressing is energizing (and delicious). It's that slight change of perspective--it's not that the jelly beans are "bad" or "off limits" but rather that you don't feel good when you eat a lot of them--that makes all the difference.
Why I Chose Intuitive Eating
Having grown up hating my body and feeling betrayed by my appetite, I struggled with eating disorders for most of my life. Finally, as a mom of four children, I knew I had to find a better way to deal with my weight. My kids needed a healthy example, yes, but most of all they just needed me, and I couldn't be there for them if I was obsessed with food. In one of the most gut-wrenching decisions of my life, I decided to follow Roth's example and forget all my "food rules." No food was "good" or "bad" any longer. There was only one condition I placed upon my eating: I needed to be conscious of my food and fully present when I ate it.
Within a few months I'd easily lost the last 10 pounds of baby weight--without dieting, counting calories or giving up dessert--and I've stayed within two pounds of that weight for the past three years. For someone whose weight fluctuated more than the stock market, this is nothing short of a miracle.
How to Start Eating Intuitively
The first step is making these two little changes:
1. Eat un-distracted. Sit down with no books, no TV, no computers, and (at first) no serious conversation to distract you. Without making judgments about it, you want to pay attention to everything you eat. Note how it tastes, how it smells, how you feel when you eat it.
2. Eat only when you are hungry and stop when you are full. I thought that years of stifling, ignoring, or masking my body's hunger cues would make this impossible for me, but our bodies are smart. As I learned to trust mine, I learned that it would, in fact, tell me when it needed food and when it didn't.
It's hard to eat this way in a world with TV screens in restaurant tables and unlimited appetizers. Pushing away your plate when everyone else is still digging into their food is hard. Eating a piece of rich dark chocolate when everyone else is giving up sugar is hard. But none of it is as hard as fighting your body for the rest of your life. Doing these two things will make a huge difference in how you think about food. Food is not a punishment or forbidden fruit or even a decadent excess; it's a life-sustaining gift.
When I was in Overeater's Annonymous back in TX, we followed an extremely low carb diet. One night at one of our meetings, a woman came in and said "I hate to tell y'all this" and told us her story. She had lost lots of weight and had not really followed a diet. If se wanted a banana split, she said she had a banana split. However, that was her meal... sometimes for the whole day. We set there absolutely shocked.
When I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes, DH said "She can't eat sugar can she?" My doc said "Yes she can. If she wants ice cream, she can have it in place of a meal if she wants to". I guess we have a habit of making rules of what we can and cannot have. Wierd. Isn't it?
Hello. I hope you all don't mind if I join in your group.
I am almost finished reading Overcoming Overeating for the 2nd time, I have also read Intuitive Eating 2ce as well plus countless other books, but those are the 2 that I bought after I borrowed them from the library. I also read the othernight the ebook from Thintuition.
I do have a question that I feel mixed on. I have read that some suggest to eat breakfast or eat by 3 hours of getting up, but others say not to eat til hungry. I usually am not hungry for breakfast so sometimes I don't eat, and somestimes I do. It's 1pm now and I have not eaten anything yet, just starting to get slightly hungry.
My question is has anyone else struggled with this? How did you handle it? Did your body just finally even out? And probably my biggest probelm is how do you stay on track with IE? I get on the wagon do good, then just fall off. And its turning into a dieting like cycle that I dont want to happen.
Thanks. I am looking for some support in this journy and there just doesnt appear to be alot in this approach.
I usually am not hungry for breakfast so sometimes I don't eat, and somestimes I do. It's 1pm now and I have not eaten anything yet, just starting to get slightly hungry.
That's just fine. I lost 40lb with IE but have never been able to get the last 30 off. So I don't think I'd be much help.
chantal Welcome!! I have times that I'm not hungry for breakfast either. When following a diet, I get in the habit of eating breakfast and then I seem to want to eat whether hungry or not. I prefer not eating when not hungry.
I've been reading a lot about paleo/primal woe. I read where some use it and eat Intuitively although they don't call it that. I've given up gluten/wheat because I think I have a problem with it. I do like the idea of eating fruits, veggies, protein, dairy and (some grains on occasion) which I don't think is 100% paleo or primal. I think it is more low carb, but not too low. Some eat more veggies than other stuff and that is the way I want to go with it. So I am trying to get back on IE track eating that way. I love this time of the year when it is getting cold out as I love more volumetrics type eating of soups and stirfrys.
Thanks for the input. I have been eating <again> since last Fri strictly by hunger, with the exception of last night I had made apple crisp for dessert and had some, I don't know if I was hungry bc I did not check in. I ate what I dished and that was it.
I had followed IE about 2 years ago and lost 10 lbs without even noticing. Then the holidays came and all though I did not gain anything I started eating non-mindfully again. Last year I went to school FT for liscensed nurse and did well til the end, I put back on those 10 lbs. So here I am getting back into the swing of things. I have 40 total to release. I have been walking again too. I am job searching so I am trying to get the walking in while I can.
I think for me my big thing is having no real accountability, and I know I need it otherwise I just fall off the wagon.
Chantal - Good luck on your job hunt. I think the main thing to remember about eating the apple crisp is that you didn't do anything wrong. You ate what you wanted and no more. I would consider that to be an accomplishment... a + not a -.
I haven't had breakfast this morning. Just had a cup of coffee. We will be going to Charlotte after DH gets blood stick this afternoon so we will eat out then. Not sure if I will eat anything before then or not. Just trying to get back to the place where I know when I'm really hungry. I would like to know the difference in "true" hunger and when I just want the "taste" of something. I think that would be a tremendous help to me.
Wierd. Isn't it?
