Locke, I completely understand how you feel. I took a break for about a month and it really helped me. We would miss you here but understand if you need to go your own way for awhile. I love reading your posts. They are so insightful and I often find things in them which are so pertinent to my own journey with IE.

I find myself reading the other posts less and less, as they are so negative and depressing. And some of the know-it-alls are really getting on my last nerve. At least they leave us alone here. For that I am grateful.

Save travels, Cindy!

Check in with us when you can.

Hi Everyone,

The past few days have been smoother sailing with IE, I feel that I'm getting a better hang of it, and really getting a lot more in tune with my body. However, this morning I woke up and just felt "thick" like I was retaining water or something. My clothes didn't feel as comfortable and I was feeling kind of down on myself so I called my mom to talk to her about it - I know where she's at with food so I have NO idea why I did that.
She basically told me that if I want to stay thin I'm just going to really have to keep an eye on portion sizes, stay away from junk foods, and only eat healthy meals. "I know you're only eating healthy things anyway." she said. Umm, good things= she's not at college with me! Considering this past week that my staples varied from cupcakes to chocolate chip cookies I definitely have not been.
Afterwards I just felt kind of guilty, like wondering if IE is going to work for me, and if my mom is right...I know it was absolutely silly to reach out to her about this issue, but I don't know who else to talk to about it. I don't want to burden my friends with my body image issues! I know that I have gone up in weight, and I guess I'm just kind of scared/wondering when it's going to stop.

You reached out to your mother because you love her and you need her support. There's nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately it sounds like you're looking for validation, but I don't think you will get that from her or from anyone who is truly uncomfortable with IE. Never ever feel the need to report to her what you eat and what you don't eat, it's completely unecessary for your mother to keep tabs on you and what goes in your mouth so don't give her license to. Just be like "Mother, I'm trying to talk to you about the exam that I just took and the party I went to, why are we stuck talking about food? It's sooooo boring!" And really, isn't it?

I was speaking to my mother the other day and she's considering going to a dietician. Now my mother is a thin person, she likes her carbs a little too much but she basically is a natural-born inutitive eater. All her friends go to dieticians and get prescribed nutrition plans. Basically the dietician gives them a menu for the week with exact portion sizes. I guess this might be good for some people who do not underestand the important of balance in their meals but I don't think my mother is one of those. I'm afraid she'll go down the path of dieting but I haven't been able to talk to her about my IE yet. I did tell her that I am seeing a nutritional therapist and she said GREAT and went on chatting about her friends dietician, she must have assumed that I meant I was seeing the same kind of dietician that she is seeking out. Ok that's enough talking for my mother about this for now.

Koalifornia, my advice to you is to stop seeking external validation about what you're doing. IE does not need to be mother approved or approved by anyone but yourself. In fact, seeking validation from others will continually put you in the diet mindset. This is an internal thing, you should focus on listening to your own body, not listening to what someone else tells you about your body. Talk to your mother about other things, stay away from this topic. If your relationship with your mother is based on food-talk then you can change that, there are other ways to build a relationship with your mother other than food/nutrition/health and you have to explore that.

Greetings gang! I have managed to get relocated back north spent the last week in getting the southern place clean and packed and out on ice for the next visit and gotten resettled.

First off Kolali, I don't know what to say on advice. Only you can decide how you want to live your life but there will be advice everywhere and you can find support for almost any strategy. I sure understand you turning to your mom and wanting a wonderful bonded relationship with her especially with her expert knowledge status with her profession. Just recall why you wanted to make a change in the first place and assess your own readiness. For me it took awhile to really have my mind click and if you aren't there yet respect that.

Another thing that is sort of coming into focus in my brain is what you might think of as the range in IE. The more you can sincerely enjoy healthy foods and find them satisfying and joyful and the sort of less full you need to get and the more you can enjoy exercise, the thinner you are going to end up. The trick is to honestly not restrict but come from a point of feeling wonderful and it's just something you have to feel. And I suspect it varies from time to time depending on your life at the moment.

Last week for me was crazy and moderately stressful for me. The good news is I never really over ate, but I clearly wasn't in tune with hunger very well and my exercise dropped off since I was busy although not particularly active. So one of the things I did after I got home and rather found myself staying in that non IE pattern was to take a day to focus back to very mindful eating, get good and hungry, pay attention and stop and man it felt so good! I could just feel this wash of feeling happy at the end of the day. Now that was motivating!

The other great news was I had to do a major closet cleaning. I still had all these work office clothes that I honestly haven't worn in 4 years and I knew for sure I'm not wearing them again so I filled three big bags to take to charity which gave me room to put my summer things from Florida neatly in place.

My really happy moment was uncovering these really cute Anthropologie print shorts I got several years ago. I took a deep breath and tried them on and they FIT and they are a size 4. Man that just out the icing on the cake. :)

Hi wannabe , I think you said exactly what I needed to hear, I need to learn to trust myself and my own body more. I can be really indecisive at times, and I have trouble trusting my own judgments a lot of the times. In fact I reread overfed head and that's something he mentioned often, that we need to trust our own bodies to tell us what we need, not a diet. Or friends or whatever. I have made a full commitment to IE because I think it's truly the right way to treat my body, but it is difficult when what I'm doing feels kind of counterculture. But you're absolutely right, I don't need to find validation anywhere outside myself when it comes to food!

Thanks for your input Cindy, and congrats for fitting into those shorts! I'm definitely at a place where I'm never going back to a diet, I really believe that IE is the right way for me to live, but I do struggle at times. I agree with you that eating more health focused foods will lead to a slimmer body, and even though I enjoy a lot of healthy foods I think that Im just going to really try to tune into my body - and if that means having pancakes when my body wants it, then that's what ill have. I have found that there are some healthy food I really enjoy and those are the ones I will keep eating, but I've always hated yogurt, so I'm not going to make myself eat it anymore!

One question I have for you both is how do you grocery shop? Planning ahead for meals is hard for me because I don't know what ill want to eat later in the week. Do you just buy foods that you know you enjoy and go from there?

I've always hated yogurt too. And I always forced myself to eat it religiously in the mornings sprinnkled with healthy sawdust and flax seeds and chia seeds and whatever kind of healthnut stuff I thought would be a healthy breakfast. It never satisfied me and I was always scrounging for other things. So I completely released myself from the responsibility of eating it just because it was good for me.

....guess what... I crave it now. Not everyday but darn it I want my yogurt now. I can appreciate it now in a real way rather than a "must do" way.

Grocery shopping is very relaxed. I have a habit of going to the market every day. I also have a husband and a kid and must cook for them so it's not just about me. As a family we have a weekly menu:

Monday - vegetarian night
Tuesday - seafood night
Wed - grilled chicken night
Thu - soup night
Fri - pasta or pizza night
Sat - wild card
Sunday - roast or bbq

So I buy everything we need for the dinner we decide. I also tend to pull things off the shelf that appeal to me. Like chips and bread and cookies and stuff. Before that made me guilty. But now I can keep that stuff on my shelf for days before I even tap into it.

I'm back!

I definitely need the daily reminders to eat sensibly and stop when I'm full. The last few days have been... meh. I haven't binged but I've been consistently overeating. Anyway I guess I needed the reminder that I need this community! :) Glad to be back.

I sometimes don't eat at supper but then in the middle of the night I'm hungry and can't sleep. Is it better to eat something then even if you are not particlarly hungry?

First of all, great to see you back! I wondered where you'd been.

Are you asking if you should eat supper even if not hungry at that time to avoid the middle-of-the-night hunger? If so, I would say no. I think it would be better to eat if you wake up, even if it's in the middle of the night. That's just my opinion, though.

I often don't eat "supper" because I might have eaten a very late lunch. I generally don't wake up from hunger but occasionally I do. I don't eat then but that is ONLY because for some strange reason I cannot eat in the middle of the night, no matter how hungry I am.

Strange, I know - but just one of my quirks. Fortunately I rarely wake up hungry.

I'm the same way. I won't eat in the middle of the night, ever. It's never kept me up for more than a little while, anyway.

I agree. I would not eat if you're not hungry. But then again I don't know how sever your middle-of-the-night hunger pangs are.

Usually I will wake up because I ate too late at night or ate too much and that's awful. But I've learned that real stomach hunger is easy to ignore in the middle of the night. If I do wake up hungry at say 2am I promise myself a tall stack of pancakes in the morning :devil:

Hey guys breezing by but just saw this and thought it rather summer up a lot of what we are trying to say. It was referenced from that Isabel Foxen Duke material I have been following,

Can You Really Be Addicted To Food?
By Jodi Rubin, ACSW, LCSW, CEDS

I am frequently asked about the idea of “food addiction” and have wanted to formally address this idea for quite some time. Then I came across the amazing blog written by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDRD, Fiaedp, FADA. You may recognize their names and may even have their amazing book, “Intuitive Eating,” on your bookshelf!

Evelyn addressed the idea of “food addiction” clearly and concisely so I figured why mess with success! Here is her original blog post:

Can You Really Be Addicted To Food?

There has been a lot of media attention on food addiction research. Scientists are curious about this possibility because the brain region (and neurochemicals) involved with substance abuse, are also implicated in overeating. But there are a lot of reasons, other than addiction, that can explain the rewarding aspect of eating.

Survival of the Species - This brain-reward system is believed to be necessary in order to ensure human survival. This involves the brain chemical, dopamine, which triggers both a pleasurable feeling and motivation behavior. Engaging in activities necessary to survival (such as eating and pro-creating) triggers a rewarding-feel-good experience.

Hunger Enhances Reward Value-Hunger by itself, enhances the reward value of food, in which more dopamine is triggered. For example, you might find yourself suddenly interested and motivated to cook a meal, if you discover you are hungry. Dieting (which can be a form of chronic hunger) also has this effect.

Pavlovian Conditioning- The dopamine effect could be attributed to Pavlovian conditioning (recall the classic study, in which Pavlov’s dogs salivated at the mere ringing of a bell. This anticipatory salivation occurred because the dogs were conditioned to receiving a treat after a bell rang, each time). This is not addiction.

Dopamine Deprivation? Many pleasurable activities trigger dopamine, including socializing, hiking, and playing games. The great majority of people I see in my practice who binge-eat, are often leading very unbalanced lives, which “deprives” them of the dopamine benefits. When needs are not being met, food becomes even more enticing, more rewarding.

Music Lights up Dopamine Brain Centers. Recently,a new study showed that when people listen to music, it lights up the same region of the brain (nuclear accumbens), which has been implicated in the euphoric component of psychostimulants, such as cocaine [Salimpoor 2011]. Just the anticipation of hearing the music lit up the dopamine brain centers. (Yet, I really don’t think you can make the case for “music addiction”)

Food Addiction Studies Limited & Flawed-The research on “food addiction” is way too early to be drawing any conclusions. The great majority of studies have been on animals. The limited research on humans has only been brain-imaging studies with a very small amount of people and not much exclusion criteria [Benson 2010].

Yale Food Addiction Questionnaire- has generated a lot of headline news. Yet, upon a closer look, the questionnaire seems to actually be measuring compulsive eating or rebound eating from chronic dieting [Gearhardt 2009]. Here is a sampling of the questions:

I find myself consuming certain foods even though I am no longer hungry. (Classic compulsive eating or distracted eating can cause this).
I worry about cutting down on certain foods. (Chronic dieting and overeating can cause this)
I have spent time dealing with negative feelings from overeating certain foods, instead of spending time in important activities such as time with family, friends, work, or recreation. (Chronic dieting and compulsive eating can cause this)
To read more questions and details on scoring the questionnaire see [ http://abcn.ws/dN8FcI and Gearhardt 2009]

Studies Show Eating “Forbidden Food” Decreases Binge Eating–Finally, there are three studies to date, in which binge eaters, eat their “forbidden foods” as part of the treatment process. [Kristeller 2011, Smitham 2008] Binge eating decreased significantly in all of these studies. If food addiction was a causative issue, you would not expect these types of results. Food addiction theory would predict increased binge eating, triggered by eating “addicting food”. Yet, the opposite happened.

So rather than fear-mongering about food addiction, how about putting your energy into satisfying eating experiences, without distraction or duress; and working on creating a balanced lifestyle, while getting most of your needs met (which includes getting enough sleep).

Selected Citations and Resources

Benton D. The plausibility of sugar addiction and its role in obesity and eating disorders. Clinical Nutrition 29 (2010) 288–303.

Berridge KC & Kringelbach ML. Affective neuroscience of pleasure: reward in humans and animals. Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2008 August ; 199(3): 457–480.

Gearhardt An et al. Preliminary validation of the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Appetite 2009 (52):430-436.

Herrin M & Matsumoto N. The Truth About So Called Sugar Addiction. Eating Disorder News. March 2011.

Kristeller JL, & Wolever RQ (2011). Mindfulness-based eating awareness training for treating binge eating disorder: the conceptual foundation. Jan 2011; Eating disorders, 19 (1), 49-61.

Salimpoor VN. Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature NEUROSCIENCE. Feb 2011;14 (2):257-262.

Smitham.L.Evaluating an Intuitive Eating Program for Binge Eating Disorder: A Benchmarking Study.University of Notre Dame, 26 November 2008.

Reprinted with permission Copyright © 2011 by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD Published at www.IntuitiveEating.org

•Rights to Reproduce: You may reproduce this post, as long as you leave it unchanged, you don’t charge for it, link to it, and you include the entire copyright statement. Please let us know you have used it by sending a website link or an electronic copy to Etribole at gmail dot com.

DISCLAIMER: The information is intended to inform readers and is not intended to replace specific advice from a health care professional.

For any of you that came off a VLCD did you experience any guilt when allowing yourself to eat more?

Today really was a good day for IE, I only ate when I was hungry and I stopped when I was satisfited - but I definitely ate a great deal more than I am used to eating, I didn't count calories or anything but if I was to ballpark I would say maybe around 2100ish. I know that I didn't overeat, but I just feel so darn guilty for letting myself "eat so much" I know that for my height and age and activity I logically probably burn way higher than that..(or at least I think I might?) But I wonder if any of you have tips on how to overcome this feeling?

My tip for overcoming guilt about what you are doing is more self education about how it really works. If you really understood that eating an appropriate amount of calories would not cause you to gain weight then you would not feel guilty. But it seems you still don't really believe that eating more will help you.

You probably need to learn more about nutrition and how the body works. You might find my link on the general chatter forum useful. It talks about a concept called homeostasis and how the body works to stabilise your weight rather than allow you to reduce or gain a lot of weight easily. When you understand the concepts and the processes involved you can probably let go your fear about gaining weight more and start to act in ways that are more useful to permanent weightloss.

I would mention that although she doesn't talk about it directly up to the stage of the book that i'm at, there's a lot in common with with IE. She talks about recognising hunger and satiety a lot and tells how one can start to get a grip on these things if you have a habit of ignoring your body and just don't trust yourself with it.

That said i still don't trust myself with sugar and as my strategy against it isn't going to harm my weightloss efforts i see no reason to change it.

in the title of the thread i posted about this stuff, - a book written by Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis - a molecular biologist who worked in the field, are the words famine reaction to look out for.