IE is so amazing how it works. Yesterday I never really got satisfied. I had made a meal because DGS was here and I don't think I really wanted it. I seemed to be hungry all day. This morning, I got up and wanted a shake about mid-morning. I haven't been hungry since. So far nothing comes to mind that I want. DH doesn't seem to be hungry yet either. We kind of winging it today.

How wonderful that we can eat when we are actually hungry without guilt and not eat if we are not.

We are all learning at our own pace how IE works for us individually and I think that is wonderful.

What do you do when you are hungry but are doing something then when you are finished you're not hungry?

When I read the overfed head book one thing that struck out at me was that eating intuitively is something we're all born with. It's a skill we all had and then unlearned. So you're tapping into your past knowledge. You lost it along the way but you're finding it along the way. No big deal, it's something you already know how to do, no big deal. That's what's so easy about it. Way to go!

Nothing. That just means I wasn't truly hungry to begin with. Hunger only goes away by eating. If you can distract yourself long enough for hunger to go away then you were craving food for something other than hunger b

Right answer wannabe! But I will say that even real hunger ebbs and flows so I can be starving and if I can't eat the intense urge passes. But it usually returns before very long.

I just got an email from summertomato that I thought was also worth sharing. I like this gal, she's a little paleo with excluding things but otherwise I like her approach.


Summer Tomato: Surfing the Urge: How to Quench Cravings

Surfing the Urge: How to Quench Cravings
Posted: 10 Feb 2014 11:00 AM PST

Photo by Aristocrats-hat

You probably know by now that I’m not the biggest fan of willpower. It’s weak. It’s fallible. And it often backfires when we need it most.

If you were dating willpower I’d tell you to dump the jerk immediately. Seriously, you can do better.

The reason I’m so hard on willpower is because the vast majority of the people I talk to still believe it is the solution to their health and weight struggles, and it’s not.

For long-term goals, willpower is far too unreliable to carry you through. Eventually it will break down, and the rebound you experience will be far worse than if you weren’t trying to control your behavior at all.

That said, willpower can be incredibly powerful for short-term goals. When you need to study for an exam or tolerate your family during the holidays, self-control is often your greatest asset. The most effective foodists must learn when and how to use willpower to your advantage, and when to let it go and fall back on habits.

When it comes to food, one of the best uses for willpower is when you’re experiencing cravings. Cravings are internal signals that drive you to act against your better judgement. They can come on suddenly and be intensely powerful, driving all else from your mind except the object of desire.


Cravings are insidious because they do not reflect a real need or emergency, but they seem to hijack your brain into believing that the universe cannot continue unless you get what you crave.

It’s almost like it isn’t you that controls your mind anymore, but some dark force that conspires against your best intentions. Giving into cravings feels so necessary when you do it, but totally icky afterward because you get this sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t you calling the shots. It’s almost like someone else took over your brain.

Fortunately, cravings can be tamed. But the most effective method for quenching cravings is very counterintuitive, so will require practice and a bit of faith in the method.

First, if you’re experiencing cravings regularly you should always start by ensuring your habits aren’t triggering cravings more often than necessary. Be sure you’re eating a wide variety of nutrient dense foods, and not lacking any major nutrients like protein, slowly-digesting carbohydrates, fats, vitamins or minerals.

Also use techniques to reduce stress, and put yourself on a regular schedule of eating, sleeping and exercise to optimize your natural biological rhythms.

Remove obvious triggers like candies and other snack foods from your house and office if possible.

Even under ideal circumstances, almost everyone will experience a craving at some time or another. When these hit, don’t try to fight them or distract yourself from them. As we’ve seen, these techniques tend to backfire and induce more frequent and intense cravings down the line. And when we give in, we tend to go overboard because of the what-the-**** effect.

Instead of fighting with your craving, use a technique called surfing the urge. Urge surfing is a technique for riding out a craving without giving into it. I first learned about this technique in Kelly McGonigal’s brilliant book, The Willpower Instinct, which is the best book I’ve read on self-control and behavioral change.

Surfing the urge is based on mindfulness practice, and has been shown to be far more effective at increasing self-control and decreasing relapse than methods that rely on distraction or trying to push the urge away.

The first essential component of urge surfing is understanding that all cravings eventually pass, whether or not you give in to them. The secret to getting through the craving is riding it out like a wave.

Instead of being afraid of failure and wishing the urge would away, observe it passively and without judgement. Understand that it will come on suddenly, grow and build, peak, then crash and dissipate.

Cravings almost never last more than 30 minutes, so once that time passes you will be in the clear.

Next time you feel a craving come on, don’t panic. Instead find a comfortable seat and sit up straight. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. When the discomfort of the craving grabs your attention, notice the feeling without judgment, as if you were on an alien planet and just trying to observe an interesting new phenomenon.

Notice if and where the feeling manifests in your body. Is your heart beating faster? Are you salivating? Is your jaw tense? Are your hands sweaty? Observe how your body reacts to the craving, then gently take your attention back to your breath and let the feeling go.

This urge surfing technique has been shown to reduce the intensity and frequency of cravings. More important, it makes it much less likely you will give in to them.

For this technique to be most effective, practice mindfulness when you are not experiencing a craving. Try spending 5 minutes each morning just sitting and focusing on your breath. When you notice an itch or a discomfort, observe it passively without acting on it. Notice how it dissipates without you doing anything. Bring your attention back to your breath whenever you remember.

You can learn the full urge surfing technique from scientist Sarah Bowen in this audio file.

Have you tried mindfulness or surfing the urge to quench cravings?


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I really admire those of you who are succeeding on Intuitive Eating but I really fear that it would never work for me. I am definitely a compulsive overeater and would eat candy, ice cream, and cookies all day long if I let myself (which I have in the past). I have to make an effort to plan out every meal, write it in my food diary, and keep track of my calories, carbs, protein, etc. How does anyone get passed the "I want to binge" mentality???

TN have you read the various books? You can get past it and so freeing...

I'm totally new at this IE stuff but I can tell you that I thought the exact same thing. I'm not lying and this is not "working for me" in the sense that its a diet. It's working inexplicably and the only way I can describe it is that all the planning, counting and taking care with food did not work no matter how many times I did it. It always failed in the end. I could stick to it for a while maybe a long whole and inevitably I got sick of the restrictions. The Overfed Head is a quick read, it's free to download and is a good intro to IE. I read it hesitantly but it made me realize what I really wanted - to be free of food restriction!

Food restriction has been the main culprit of my demise. I have always thought of myself as a diet failure. I can't stick with any diet long enough. As soon as I see results I binge. My experience with diets have been very short but extremely frequent. And I lose a pound, and gain 2lbs. It's subtle but it happens every time. I couldn't face another "lifestyle change" or another restriction. I didn't want to become a person who gave up a whole group or have to watch what I ate forever. Truly, I just don't want to think about food. I DO have nutritional goals - I want to eat more veggies, rely on less carbs and grains and not eat sugar very often. But I'm not willing to restrict these items as a means to losing weight because every time I've done that I've ended up binging. All these things are around my house right now, sugar, cookies, cereal, chips, etc. I can't explain it, but I don't crave them.

Is there any way to get intuitive eating its own forum or subforum? Seems like one awfully long (years!) thread. And it seems like it would be helpful to have individual threads instead of post after post on the same thread, where people can have their own threads on a particular topic under intuitive eating because it seems like there is a lot to say on the subject which need their own topic headers.

That may be helpful Mazzy. Or maybe we can post in the weight loss support forum or the chicks in control forum and start any thread with the label IE. just thinking out loud, dont know if that's helpful but I will say that I haven't gone into the IE thread before because it was so long and I didn't want to read through it. Luckily someone started this thread a couple of weeks ago and so I popped in and here I am.

I was just remarking to myself that I don't know how I found myself here because I probably had very little incentive to start IE. I feel like I literally fell into it.

The noise is ending.

I've been doing IE for almost 2 weeks now I suppose and it's been going well. I'm not perfect and I'm still trying to figure out what real hunger and real fullness are. But it is getting easier. I also still think about food a lot and I have a lot of unanswered questions that arise. I'm ok about thinking about food because I'm thinking of it in a whole new way right now, not as an enemy but as something to enjoy. I know I have to make peace with food and in order to do that I have to eat it - appreciatively and mindfully and not be scared of what it will do to me.

When I say the noise has stopped I mean that the constant struggle to avoid food has ended. I don't fantasize about binging, although I do plan my meals. I'm not in a constant heated dialogue with myself about what I should have done and how much I should've eaten. The impulse to do it is there but there's nothing that I have done that warrants me to scold myself. I've gone back a few times and tallied up calories (couldn't help myself) because I was pretty sure I had over eaten... nope, well within a normal calorie range, much lower than I suspected.

But it's a long road ahead. I want to eventually be one of those people that doesn't ever think about food. I also have nutritional goals in mind and wish to be someone that craves more healthy food. Normal eaters are able to set guidelines for themselves, like eat more leafy greens and avoid sugar without setting themselves up for a binge and I eventually want to be like that, able to steer my eating habits without going off the deep end into a binge.

Wannabe I think really the point is we need to plan and think about food in a level proportionate to other things. Heck when you go on vacation you plan for lodging and what you want to be sure to see so you can make a reservation but once you've done that you can let it go and be glad you can think about other things.

You have to plan enough of food to have what you need to fix it when you're hungry otherwise you settle and just eat. A planned meal is savored. I also love that quote in IE book that says if you don't love it don't eat it and if you love it savor it. It has made me shove away lots of unsatisfying meals as just not worth eating.

The other thing on hunger and fullness is it doesn't need to be perfect at all. Honestly if you get a little full at one meal, you will naturally wait longer or eat less at the next which what normalcy is all about.

I quit writing down and logging what I eat and counting calories. In the past I would do that until I was at what I felt was like the end of watching and then there was the event of freedom to be done with that and the tendency to overeat and be "off" instead of "on". So that is a definite difference for me. When people want to get together or go out I'm like sure thing! Instead of waiting until I'm through the "on" thing. I order what I want and take home and leave what is too much.

I joined a health club and have put some energy into working out. I have time with retirement, but doing yoga, Pilates, walking and doing the weight circuit. Yesterday I was tired and darn it I just stayed home and read a book, took a nice walk toward evening. I do think if you feel you need to do something to edge you fitter it's better to move than cut food just try to enjoy it.

It's only been about a month, but I can feel the right mindset and just a general sense of calm. So we shall see, as it goes, one day at a time.

Heck I don't know what it takes to start a new forum. I will see if I can find out and let you know. I have retirement time for such endeavors. ;)

Here's what I got back on starting a separate forum starting threads with IE might give us a way to separate the thoughts not sure monthly helps the issue we are trying to solve.

Hi Cindy,

The owners of the forum (Internet Brands) do not wish to add additional forums to our lineup. At this point, it might be better to find a way to organize the dedicated IE threads within that forum. Have you considered a monthly IE thread instead of starting a new one after 500 posts? It might allow shorter threads that are easier to navigate, while organizing them for reference.

Suzanne


On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 10:42 AM, CindySunshine @ 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community <[email protected]> wrote:
The following message was sent to you via the 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community Contact Us form by CindySunshine.

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Hi I've been posting and reading several weeks on the Intuitive eating thread under general diet plans and support. It gets long fast and there are clearly a series of topics that could better be handled as separate threads.

I am sure you want to keep the number of forums under control but wondered what the criteria are to set one up.

There is a lot of crossover actually with the chicks in control thread anyway I offered to check what it would take to set up an IE forum someplace.

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User Name: CindySunshine
User ID: 224182

Hi CindySunshine thank you for using part of your free time to look into this - I can't wait to be retired one day!!!

I can understand why the moderators would not want to expand the forum, it's completely understandable. I do think there should be more IE presence though and we should claim a spot for ourselves. And I think that the General Diet Plans forum is not the right place for us considering that IE is the opposite of dieting lol. I quite like the Chicks in Control forum, it's mostly about eating disorders however IE is probably the only way that I have found a bit of control in my life, even if it means giving up control through dieting.

So unless there are objections - and please chime in here everyone! - I might start a thread there with the preface IE just to get the ball rolling. And I definitely think that this thread should be renamed the February IE thread and we can start anew every month, like I said before, I never picked up on IE because the one thread devoted to it was too long for me to jump into and has no other presence on the forum. And it's kind of a ridiculous concept to anyone that doesn't understand it - I know that I truly thought it was bonkers before I got curious.

Here's the new thread in Chicks in Control http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/chic...ml#post4943743

I sure hope everyone is having a great weekend! Me, I'm stuck with a terrible cold and a sick toddler and surrounded by snow. I'm so tired and sleepy and bored out of my mind. I've not been eating much but I do have to point out that IE is super hard while sick. I'm having a hard time discerning my hunger/fullness cues. I'm not bothered since I'm sick and not eating a lot but it's amazing to me. One of the things that attracted me to IE is that it is skill based - its a out learning to behave around food and learning to read your own satiety cues. Ots not about what to eat but about how to eat. Unlike a diet which has a win or lose aspect to every food choice i strongly feel that I'm getting better as I go along and forgiving myself if my skills aren't perfect yet.

Another thing that I realized attracted me to IE is the utter unfairness of diets. I used to feel total acorn at people who ate. Like giada di laurentis for example and others like her who seem to cook and enjoy foods that are perpetually off limits to me. How can they? Why can't I? And now I kind of understand why they can and I couldn't. I'm also so happy to let go of my divorce proceedings with carbs. It looks like we are getting along much better nowadays without hurting eachother :)

Make sure to check out the new IE posts in chicks in control. And please add your own!