The Overfed head book if you open it on a search engine on your smart phone you can download it directly to your iBooks. I read a lot on my iphone, especially when I'm commuting on the train.

Well I am working on getting ready to close down the Florida house for the season. I really hate doing this, it's been so peaceful and relaxed and this is a few days of focused effort and a big change in routine.

So one of the items is "cleaning out the refrigerator" and pantry, but getting rid of perishables. I have been trying to groove into this the last few weeks and not buy more than I needed but I also hate to go to the grocery store repeatedly so I did what I could. I'm down to the last two days and surveying and trying to figure out how much I can eat and decidedly am NOT thinking intuitively about food. I ate a bowl of fruit and made a bacon sandwich to use up the bacon sprinkled grape tomatoes on it to use up the tomatoes. I'm sitting here mindlessly eating it planning everything else I needed to do and had one of the "what the heck are you doing girl" moments. Honestly I wasn't really even hungry for breakfast at all and the bacon sandwich was ok but not really tasting all that great.

Geez!

All the work to get in touch and the first busy day I fall right out. I'm not even that nutso on food waste but it as more the planner in me.

So I am taking a time out with a mug of coffee. What is left in that refrigerator goes to the neighbor or in the garbage but I am not going to eat it.

Back to mopping floors...

Patty,

A major turning point for me in IE was recognizing that there is more than one voice inside me. It's not that my body says "Locke, you are hungry and you want toast and eggs." IE is a combination of listening to all of the signals that your body is giving you and reacting to it by providing what it needs. The numbers on your blood monitor are just another signal that you need to take into consideration when you are feeding yourself; it is necessary information that you need in order to honor your health and hunger.

I'm finding myself in a strange place lately. I've been very unhappy for a long time. I'm in grad school and I'm burnt out, no friends in my city (I've been here for three years), no family, etc. I've struggled with my ED, self esteem, compulsive drinking, depression, etc. I had a sort of personal epiphany yesterday. My unhappiness doesn't stem from my childhood, or the kids who made fun of me in high school. It comes from me thinking that happiness is obtainable if I do (x,y,z).

I have this vision of me as a thin and successful person with a husband and kids. I think if I only have those things I could be happy. This is just simply false. Happiness is within reach right now. Shakespeare said it best: "There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so." I can have happiness in the moment, it is right here if I have the right attitude. Also, my very beliefs about happiness prevent me from obtaining the things that would make my life better.

So what does this mean, practically speaking? It means I am throwing away the scale. I'm not going to wait until I've lost weight to try to go out and date or make friends (yes, this was my plan, and a dumb one at that!). I'm no longer going to be waiting for my vision of who I should be to materialize. That's not to say I'm going to stop IE or stop trying to further my career. It simply means I'm no longer going to hold my breath waiting for some ideal vision of the future to come into being. Happiness is here- I just need to be kind to myself.

All food talk aside, emotional eating is a byproduct of low self esteem. Of course nutrition is important and getting my eating and weight under control is a big motivator. But the most important thing I've learned from IE is that I need to provide myself with lots of nourishing food and thoughts. It takes time to counter negative thoughts but this is the most important thing you can do.

At first it feels fake and pretend. I look in the mirror and the negative thoughts just whoosh through my head at an alarming rate "you're fat, you're ugly, your thighs are huge, look at your bulging fat" and that's just a few. I immediately stop myself and say "no, that's beautiful, that's proportionate, I look like a real woman, I'm quite beautiful, I love my hair." It feels like a sword fight. You fight every negative thought with a countering positive thought. It's so unnatural at first.

I've been doing this for a couple of months. Recently thought it's gotten much easier and at times I catch myself looking in the mirror and thinking "wow I look good" without any negative thoughts. Truth is in reality I don't look much different than I did a couple of months ago, but that negative voice is not very loud anymore. You CAN change that voice, changing how you feel about yourself is so much easier than changing your outside. I know that sounds crazy but as long as those changes happen on the inside then the outside becomes less of an obstacle.

I needed to read this tonight Wannabeskinny. The thing I valued most while I was at my lowest weight were my extremely visible hip and rib bones. I don't know why I even think that having protruding bones is attractive, but since I've put on a bit of water weight, I can't see them anymore. To be honest it's made me feel like I've suddenly become less pretty, and in some ways I've been beating myself up mentally, and feeling like if I want to look "pretty" again I'm going to have to go back on a diet.

But I am going to resist those thoughts and stay with IE! I think your right about providing yourself with nourishing THOUGHTS as well as food. I may have been doing the food bit, but as for thoughts - well I've just been my own worst enemy in some ways.

I also want to chime in and add on a positive note that after reading your posts, Locke and Cindy, I decided to try to focus more on how the food made me actually FEEL after eating it.

It started for lunch when I was thinking about what I wanted to have, my first thought was cookies! but then I was surprised to hear my mind tell me that a chicken bowl would be just as yummy. Well, I got the cookies anyway- just because - but I ate them really slow, and then monitored how I felt afterwards. I noticed that they left me with a dull headache, and that my teeth and tongue felt coated in an unpleasant layer of sugar...not a good feeling!

I'm not saying that I'm suddenly at the equalized-food destination, but I'm definitely on my way there. Honestly, for the past two and a half weeks I've allowed myself to eat ANYTHING and some foods I thought I would love have turned out to not even be that enticing once I let myself have them. Two weeks ago I bought some Reese's peanut butter puffs to have for breakfasts...they don't even tempt me! It's been two weeks and I've only gone through half the box. I've noticed the same thing with a lot of other foods I thought that I would be uncontrollable around.

I know in Overhead Head he mentioned his roommate that survived off of portions of gelato and cookies and whatnot, but the thing is I think IE may be really individual to everyone. She may have felt perfectly fine eating those foods all the time, but eating that food all day just makes me feel sluggish and head-achy. It's great that that works for her, but I'm ready to start bringing back in a little balance to my meals.

Like everyone on here has said UNCONDITIONAL allowance of every food really has been a necessary step for me (and not one that I'm done with) but I'm slowly beginning to realize that I don't feel deprived anymore - and with that realization the "tempting" foods are really losing their power over me.

Thanks! I'm not the best with keeping up with technology so didn't even have that app on my phone. I downloaded the app and then downloaded Overfed Head into it. Great to have it so handy!

I'm thinking about taking a break from 3FC for a while. This little thread and a few others seem like islands of sanity in the middle of a hurricane. Many people here are so unhappy while they are forcing themselves to obey little tricks and rules so they can "beat" hunger and their own bodies into submission. Through IE and some other methods I've come to realize that all of the diet tricks that are taught, the small plates, no carbs, eat an apple instead, chew gum, don't eat in bed, etc. are all wrong because they aren't addressing the underlying problem.

Dieting as an approach to weight loss is a great example of the tail wagging the dog. You can force yourself to act in all sorts of silly ways in order to lose weight, but it doesn't fix your relationship with food. The binging, overeating, and loss of control are the symptoms and not the disease. I don't like what I see here other than some of you really supportive people in IE.

I don't want to focus on weight loss anymore. I want to live my life. I think that I've got the grounding I need in IE to keep working on that process. I've been wanting to quit coming around here for a little while now. I just don't think it's healthy to be constantly reading about the different dieting things people are doing, and the self hatred of people's bodies that is oozing off of every post.

My goal is no longer weight loss. My goal is to love myself and my body and to honor my needs. This is (in general) not a community that shares those goals. I may come back after I see how this goes or I may pop back in from time to time but I think I'm going to try not reading the dieting forum so religiously. You folks have been great and I wish you well in life and on your respective journeys.

It's understandable Locke, we all need a break from time to time and if this is one of those times then go for it. I know what you mean about getting frustrated with diet tips, everyone is trying to be helpful. The most damaging are the daily posts of people who come back with a regain, those are heartbreaking. Especially since they blame themselves over and over and over again. I always heard the words "diets don't work" but it meant nothing to me. I heard "I haven't tried hard enough to make this diet work."

Be well and come and visit us when you're in need of support here.

Yes I totally understand. In the end "normal eaters" whatever the heck that means anyway don't spend hours on 3FC to dissect their eating habits.

As I said, I am returning to Illinois tomorrow morning, me and my little Shih Tzu will be riding on a jet plane and I'm planning to settle in and enjoy good habits. I surely will check in from time to time and may well need to realign at some point better sooner than later. In the meantime I am cheering for everyone's continued success and happiness.

I try not to dissect my eating habits at all on 3FC. I'm really focusing most of my energy on staying positive and keeping in tune with my hunger/satiety signals and enjoying the food that I eat without guilt.

But things are getting tough for me right now. The next 3weeks are extremely stressful with my job. Once the 3wks are over I'll be fine but the stress right now is keeping me up at night. I'm having anxiety attacks in the middle of the night and it's terrifying. I also feel paralyzed by stress during the day, and by paralyzed I mean I don't know what to do, can't focus, and lose all sense of getting things done one at a time. I lay out XYZ tasks and then instead of doing XYZ I go and eat and don't do anything. So my eating is a bit erratic these days. I'm holding on best I can but my go-to stress relief is eating.

I'm having a good morning so far but I feel an impulse to diet today. I changed my routine a little bit this morning, before I was waking up - coffee -breakfast-chi gong- out for a walk. Today I woke up - chi gong - coffee - breakfast - and will be heading out for our walk soon. Breakfast was super tasty and I ate mindfully. 2 eggs scrambled with fresh spinach and feta cheese, a slice of salami and half an english muffin with a dash of strawberry jam. I'm still getting used to the idea of having such a substantial breakfast but I find that the yummier the breakfast the better my day ends up nutritionally.

I have to be very diligent right now about stress-relief since I'm in total work mode and will not see any downtime until May. And the diet thoughts come in when I'm stressed because they make me feel in control. Breathe in and out!!

This week I've really been working hard on eating mindfully and I had a big realization out of doing it. I've realized that I have never fully chewed my food. It may sound weird! But when I'm not eating mindfully I chew quickly and swallow food that is bigger in size and it gives me a "lump" feeling in my throat. I've ate like this for years but I guess I've focused on eating so quickly that I never realized this. So this week I have been chewing my food all the way up and it has been a real eye opener. Another habit I had was not even swallowing all the food but keeping some in my cheeks. This may sound really strange but it has made a big turnaround for me! I actually feel like I've made progress this week. Oh and one other thing is I put the scale away for good. I did this a couple weeks ago and I couldn't stand it anymore and got it back out. I've realized what a psycho it's making me and it's so not worth it. I'm done with it. Feeling so much free-er this week!

CountryLiving, congratulations on these significant insights.

It really is amazing what we discover about our eating habits when we really stop to eat mindfully.

I am so happy for you that you feel you are making progress! And I completely relate to your feelings about the scale. Over the last few days my clothes have been feeling looser, and that has ever so slightly tempted me to pull out the scale. But I know it's such a trigger for me that I refuse to do so. I'll satisfy myself with the fact that I have likely dropped a pound or two and enjoy it - no need to quantify it with a number.