OMG yes. That quote from Palestrina from a book by Josie Spinardi called "How to have your cake and your skinny jeans too" really resonated with me. I've been thinking a lot about intuitive eating, but I don't really trust that my true self is the one speaking to me about food yet. Your last sentence really helped too --
Not only does this help me understand why I'm prone to turn to food for coping but it helps me understand what I need to do to stop that.
Hi everyone! Well good news, after some time, I'm finally finding myself being able to stop at eating something delicious. Actually listening to my stomach, I keep rereading Josie Spinardi's book and I absolutely love it.
One thing I always worry about, is damn calories! It will take forever to get them out of my head. Not even necessarily overeating at this point, but under-eating. As it seems with a lot of us, calorie counts have taken over our lives. At least mine. Now I end the day thinking, OMG WHAT IF I ONLY ATE 1400? So strange. But being able to stop eating the 'danger food' has been helping me immensely and I'm very proud of listening to my body! Hope everyone is doing great.
Trish, the reason I don't post much here is because I gained weight this winter and feel bad about it. I still don't weigh much but you have to at the doctor. I had shingles this spring and once I go they want me to keep coming back.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by carolr3639
Trish, the reason I don't post much here is because I gained weight this winter and feel bad about it. I still don't weigh much but you have to at the doctor. I had shingles this spring and once I go they want me to keep coming back.
Well, Carolr, doctors have to eat, too! LOL My doctor wants me to get bloodwork done every 4 months and then come in for a visit to"discuss" the results. That just puts more money in his pocket. He can just as easily give me a copy of the results, or call me with them.
Hi everyone! Well good news, after some time, I'm finally finding myself being able to stop at eating something delicious. Actually listening to my stomach, I keep rereading Josie Spinardi's book and I absolutely love it.
One thing I always worry about, is damn calories! It will take forever to get them out of my head. Not even necessarily overeating at this point, but under-eating. As it seems with a lot of us, calorie counts have taken over our lives. At least mine. Now I end the day thinking, OMG WHAT IF I ONLY ATE 1400? So strange. But being able to stop eating the 'danger food' has been helping me immensely and I'm very proud of listening to my body! Hope everyone is doing great.
Some people might disagree with me but I say, don't worry about eating to little. In fact, ignore it completely.
I posted in a different thread a few minutes ago that today while studying my physiology textbook, I came across an extremely enlightening tidbit of information. Apparently mammals, when force fed an excessive amount of food to the point of weight gain, have a physiological self-regulatory mechanism that causes their bodies to literally desire less food until they have returned to their natural, healthy level of body fat again.
This means that in theory, an overweight binge eater or chronic overeater who reconnects with her physical hunger cues should actually be EXPECTED to require less calories.
After thinking about it long and hard as well as discussing it with my therapist I'm going to count calories and see how that goes. Yes, dieting sucks, but unlike many of the people here I'm >300 lbs. I need to lose weight for my health. I'm still going to be working on my relationship with food and using therapy to find ways of dealing with my life beyond eating/dieting BUT I'm afraid that IE isn't going to provide me with the weight loss that my body *needs* to be healthy. So I'll be around the forums I just won't be actively working on IE and non-dieting.
IE has taught me SO MUCH about myself and my relationship with food. Unfortunately it's my experience that IE is great for stabilizing but not losing weight. I need to lose weight for my health. I understand that it's less than ideal, but this is what I need to do (in loving kindness) for myself at this moment.
Locke, how are you doing? How is calorie counting going? I hope you have been able to continue to treat yourself with loving kindness.
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Originally Posted by pattygirl63
Well, I have surely struggled this past week with the "diet mentality". And I'm gaining weight and blood sugar going up. I am so brainwashed that I need to diet and it never works. So why do I keep trying to do the same old thing thinking it is going to work this time. I am so tired of thinking about all this. Some how I've got to relax and just enjoy my life without thinking about food.
I think I just cannot read any more eat this don't eat that of any type of diet/nutrition books etc any more. As my doctor tells me, "You should know by now what you can and can't eat". And he is right.
Hope we all have a better IE day today than we did yesterday.
That anxiety is so hard. I find I have days with less anxiety and days with more. LIke I said earlier, decoupling my eating from trying to change my body has been key for me.
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Originally Posted by mkat12
I find that I LOVE the "feeling full" feeling. Now I just stuff my face with huge salads (greens, cabbages and veggies, very light home made dressing) all the time to prevent myself from gaining weight. I get super hungry because I exercise so much more and of course when I get bored. So my rule is you can eat as much salad as possible-they are huge, LOL
This doesn't sound quite like IE??? Maybe volumetrics? Did you mean to post here?
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Originally Posted by owlsteazombies
After I left the thread for awhile (I'm glad it's back to normal), I had a major setback.
I went straight back into excessive restriction and overexercise. If I would eat -anything-, I would immediately go run that off. One day, I was living off a few strawberries and half an apple that I ran off.
I quickly lost some weight and was satisfied that I could see all my ribs and hipbones to the degree I once had when my ED first took hold, that's when something clicked that I was really hurting myself.
I'm still working on this and it's like walking on eggshells for the moment, but I'm sure I can find my way out again with re-reading some IE books and going back to Isabel Foxen's website and re-reading (since that's what helped the most to begin with).
Owlsteazombie! Im happy to see you back! I know what you mean about setbacks. I had a similar one except without major weight loss. I love Isabel Foxens website. How are you doing?
Quote:
Originally Posted by onelittlecreation
Hi everyone! Well good news, after some time, I'm finally finding myself being able to stop at eating something delicious. Actually listening to my stomach, I keep rereading Josie Spinardi's book and I absolutely love it.
One thing I always worry about, is damn calories! It will take forever to get them out of my head. Not even necessarily overeating at this point, but under-eating. As it seems with a lot of us, calorie counts have taken over our lives. At least mine. Now I end the day thinking, OMG WHAT IF I ONLY ATE 1400? So strange. But being able to stop eating the 'danger food' has been helping me immensely and I'm very proud of listening to my body! Hope everyone is doing great.
That sounds like you are doing awesome! It is hard to get rid of calorie counts when we have done it for so long. Im glad you are listening to your body. I actually have this exact problem of undereating. It's why I had to go out of my way to eat more than I think I needed. It totally sounds counter intuitive with IE but I discovered that my mind likes to play tricks on me and make me think I need less food than I really do when listening to my body. So if I eat more than I think I need, Im usually getting enough and it doesn't trigger my subconscious restriction issues which eventually lead to major overeating to make up for the restriction. If that makes sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by yumsoup
Some people might disagree with me but I say, don't worry about eating to little. In fact, ignore it completely.
I posted in a different thread a few minutes ago that today while studying my physiology textbook, I came across an extremely enlightening tidbit of information. Apparently mammals, when force fed an excessive amount of food to the point of weight gain, have a physiological self-regulatory mechanism that causes their bodies to literally desire less food until they have returned to their natural, healthy level of body fat again.
This means that in theory, an overweight binge eater or chronic overeater who reconnects with her physical hunger cues should actually be EXPECTED to require less calories.
I can see what you are saying here but I think emotionally, mentally, and psychologically that doesn't necessarily work. I guess it depends on the person and what kind of issues you have. For me, if I tell myself that I ate a lot the day before or the week before or whatever and therefore I need less food, even if my body doesn't feel hungry, it will actually make me unconsciously restrict my food which eventually leads to the backlash of overeating. This actually happened to me yesterday. I had eaten a lot on Saturday and I found I wasn't super hungry on Sunday. I still ate my meals though even though I wasn't AS hungry because I know from experience that not eating much will come back to "bite" me later on in the form of compensatory overeating. If my relationship with food was not somewhat dysfunctional, of course that would be normal and natural but its not, so that doesn't work for me. Just my experience.
I have been feeling a little depressed the past week or so and I find the temptation is STRONG to read one of my diet books. It's ironic because I feel like I am moving forward in my IE journey of not thinking about food as much, losing some of the eating anxiety, and eating when Im hungry, not because Im trying to lose/maintain weight. So, it would be almost self sabotage to read a diet book. I recognize that Im feeling a little sad and depressed and it would make me feel better to distract myself by focusing on my eating and maybe also it is something I CAN control in my life. Having control of something would definitely make me feel better. Anyway, its an interesting observation. I have been reading nothing but fiction books for the past month or so for the first time in a LONG time. No IE books or nutrition books, diet books, lifestyle books etc... I think its been important for my healing.
It's going okay. It's difficult but I feel this is the right decision. It's hard to go from IE to calorie restriction. I was up much of last night with nightmares, perhaps from low blood sugar. So I'm going to make tweaks and see how it goes.
Thanks for checking in Locke! Im glad to hear its going ok. I hope your tweaks help with your blood sugar. I often have trouble with blood sugar too and have had to make tweaks even with IE to deal with it.
Last edited by Pinkhippie; 04-27-2015 at 11:42 AM.
Hello everyone! May I join this thread? I am currently deliberately losing weight through calorie counting, for the second time in my life. It went fine the first time a few years ago, all very peaceful and successful, and it's going fine now. However, I would rather not be calorie counting once I get to maintenance, so I've started reading IE and am finding a lot of it is really helpful to me. I promise not to talk about the dieting part of things, if it's OK to be on this thread. I want to see what I can improve while I'm doing that, and then use IE for maintenance. I think it'll be useful to me in some ways, and less relevant in others.
I wouldn't classify myself as a binger, or someone who has problems as a result of dieting. According to the IE personalities, I'm an Unconscious Eater. I do a certain amount of stress-eating and boredom-eating, with zoning out, but I think the main problem this time has been social eating, if that's the term. I got together with my lovely partner in July 2013, and he is very much a chaotic eater. It suits him reasonably well, and it's his choice to live like that, but he has different eating patterns to me and this led to my eating more than usual without really registering how much more it was. For instance, I am a definite breakfaster, whereas he skips breakfast and snacks a lot. Eating with him meant that I was breakfasting and snacking! Also I am small and due to disability, am bedbound most of the day, whereas he's bigger and a lot more active than I am, so he needs far more food than I do. So I've put on, hmm, about 15lb I think. Also if you take me out to the pub I get starving hungry, I've been this way ever since I was a student, and have problems with working with satiation.
The reason I put on weight a few years ago, in my early thirties, also wasn't dieting-related. It was because I had developed Non-24 Sleep-Wake Cycle. I was on a 25 hour day, and I didn't have any kind of a routine, let alone a structured eating routine. I also have memory loss due to having ME/CFS. I had no idea how much I was eating. My then-partner would come home at 6 and ask if I had eaten that day, and I would say, "I don't know." Once I found treatment for the sleep disorder, I could get into a routine of eating regularly, and life became a lot easier.
So I definitely need a structured approach to eating. For starters, my medication means that I have to eat regularly. For seconds, if I don't start to cook until I get hungry, then by the time I actually get the meal it's much later than it should be, I'm likely to be too hungry and overeat, plus various symptoms such as dizziness will be worse. And for thirds, I have to work around when my support workers are in, when my partner is eating supper (we no longer breakfast or lunch together, it works out better) and so forth. Oh yes, and regular mealtimes are one of the things that help keep my sleep pattern regular, along with darkness therapy.
My hunger signals still aren't great. Some of this won't be fixable by IE, for instance if I'm on tramadol (an opioid painkiller), which makes me lose my appetite, sometimes causes nausea or rarely vomiting, and also means that if I leave it too long between meals, I can get SOD (Sphincter of Oddi Dysfunction, terribly painful).
But that still leaves a few issues I'm hoping IE will help with. For instance, sometimes I wake up starving after an afternoon nap. One problem is that the cardinal symptom of ME/CFS is profound fatigue, and since food is fuel for energy, sometimes you can find yourself craving food when you're exhausted in the hope that it will give you energy. Only the lack of energy isn't caused by the lack of food! So that's one I need to work with. I'm still not sure whether I do actually need a small snack when I wake up hungry from a nap, and am currently working on hydrating initially and then seeing how I feel.
Satiety, I could do with more work on that, and again the meds affect that. Especially if I'm eating with other people and it feels like there's social pressure to keep up with them (not deliberate on anyone else's part, this comes from me). I will probably have to continue to measure food in some ways, because the memory loss means I can't get the quantities right otherwise. But that just means that I have a standard amount of pasta or rice that's one portion for me, and that's pretty much it.
My mother had no end of eating problems, a cross between a Careful Eater and a Professional Dieter, and she was always doing her best to project them onto me, telling me I was obese when I was slim and so forth. I didn't start to lose weight the first time until I broke off contact with her, which was the best decision of my life. That was several years ago, but unfortunately I still get nightmares about her regularly. I'm finding that the IE book is making me think about a few things related to her, and hopefully it will be at a level where I can work through those things, rather than at an overwhelming level. Frankly, considering her behaviour, I'm really surprised that I didn't end up with an eating disorder. Although at least she turned me off dieting in the bad sense, since she was illustrating how harmful it is. I still remember my horror as a teenager when she was on a diet plan that used a points system instead of calories, only it called them "sins".
I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, not as bad as it used to be, but still around, and that's definitely a factor with stress eating. I read somewhere on this thread that stress eaters tend to be trying to avoid dealing with the cause of the stress, they're just trying to treat the symptom instead. That does seem to be me.
In terms of what I actually eat, I've been vegan for half my life, and I've always eaten a wholefoods diet very happily, so that's fine. I don't get on well with sugar, it makes my pain flare up. I think I'm OK with a small amount, but I am still working out what the limit is with that, especially since it's a hormonally-linked type of pain so it varies. I do get sugar cravings sometimes. Electrolyte drinks are often a good option when I fancy something sweet, as I need a lot of electrolytes anyway (the rest of the time I drink salty water) and they're made with sweetener rather than sugar. Also I'll have the odd small piece of dark chocolate. The cardiologist wants me drinking 3 litres at day, which is quite a lot for my size, so I use an app to track how much I drink, and I'll have to continue that as a long-term thing. But I don't connect it with monitoring my food intake, so it doesn't feel emotionally like calorie counting (not that calorie counting bothers me emotionally, it's just a chore it'd be nice to skip).
I haven't got past a few chapters yet, but how does the IE book deal with cooking time if it tells you to eat when you're hungry? Sometimes cooking will take an hour! Sometimes you want to get something started much earlier the day, like putting beans on to soak. Sometimes you need to plan a meal at a certain time, for instance around when you or your partner are going out. How does that fit in, and how do people here work with that?
Another question: how does eating fit in with anxiety attacks? I have a tendency to eat when I'm anxious, which I'd rather not be doing. However, if I'm really anxious, with tachycardia and dizziness and so forth, I'm not sure whether I need a bit of extra food to get me through that physically. Today I had to deal with something really stressful, and my partner offered me a bourbon biscuit when I'd done it. I said No, as that would be stress eating (and I find it hard to stop at one biscuit), so I waited a while to see how I felt. A bit later I was feeling calmer, and decided that a biscuit with a cup of tea would indeed be nice, and felt better for the snack.
Now, what does work out for me well with biscuits is to make a small batch when I have friends round for board games. That way it's only about once a fortnight and it's a small portion, so it's not going to affect my weight. But it's fun and sociable and a good way to enjoy that type of food for me. I'm just not sure about where my limit is for sugar when I do that.
Goodness, that was long. Sorry about that! By the way, it is so nice to get away from all the carb-hatred that is common in this forum!
Hey, everyone .. thank you for the support. I'm trying not to think of how much I'm eating. As expected, it IS difficult. But it is worth it in the end. I'm still glad I found this thread.
@yumsoup, I never looked at it that way, but reading this did make me decide anyway that I really shouldn't worry about how much I'm eating. Just listen to my hunger cues, which is what IE is about anyway. Coming from the calorie counting, weigh everything, lick-the-plate-clean mentality or starvation mode, it is hard! But I'm working on not thinking about the specific numbers. Good input.
@Pinkhippie, thank you! I love the encouragement. It does make sense. Actually, a lot of the times when I counted my calories, I did find myself having to force-feed count sometimes. Well, because of a 1-2 hour dance class, I would wear a heart rate monitor every time (for the calorie count) and would force myself to eat every calorie 'earned.' Even if my body was not hungry... Slowly getting better at balancing myself out.
& I know what you mean! There are times I think to myself, "gee, I haven't checked to see if there is a new diet yet." Sometimes I feel like caving in, especially with calorie counting though. It's really not worth it! We all have setbacks, so it's important to forgive yourself and keep looking forward. Everything will get better. When you have a decrease in mood it is definitely more tempting to resort back to what you feel is "suppose to work." Hang in there!!
@Locke good luck! <3
@Esofia, welcome Glad you're here. You've been through a lot, and it's very good to vent. I personally love venting. This is a good place to, especially if you don't really have anyone to relate to or vent with in your personal life. Boredom eating and eating without thinking is actually something I use to do myself. It was before my calorie counting and stuff, which made things much worse, but I did do it. For me, like you are with your partner, it was with my friends. We all would just mindlessly eat, so my hunger cues have kind of been out of whack for a while... Unfortunately for your two questions I can't answer with confidence, because I didn't get the IE book yet but I've read Josie Spinardi's book (which is another book on hunger cues & non dieting.)
However, I'll try with my own experience. For me, if I'm hungry but I need to cook something that takes a while, I'll eat something that I know won't fill me up, so to say. I'm a fan of fruits, carrots & hummus, nuts, seeds, crackers ...basically anything that you can snack on really quick while your meal is cooking. Not sure if that's how the book IE puts it, but I much rather eat at least something instead of letting my stomach growl intensely while my meal takes 40 minutes!
And eating when anxious, well, I do that too... so I can relate! I would actually like to see this answered myself. Don't feel bad about long posts... Like I said, this is the place to do it. And I agree, carb-hatred doesn't make me very happy either.
This week am struggling..overeating when full and need to self control my eating when am bored..and now ate breakfast...will not have lunch or snack...am doing IE and Fasting approach. Healing my tummy and getting back my hunger cues..its difficult..but shall not give up...Giving up is not an option!!
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Seeking Intuitive Eating Resources & support
Hello,
I love the idea of intuitive eating, but are there any good books or websites that can help me learn more about this?
I am on a journey of self discovery and self love and I believe intuitive eating is the way for me. It is about loving myself body, mind, and soul. Several months ago I started kunalini yoga & meditation and I immediately felt really connected to myself and to a loving energy. Even though I went off track for a few months, I have been eating very healthy for a couple of weeks now and I am feeling great again! I really want to explore this self love concept through what I put in my body and my mind, ie, food, nature, loving people, etc.
I love what I'm eating now and I feel so "clean" on the inside. Foods include: oats, eggs, green tea, fruit, nuts, olive oil, lemon, only free range chicken & wild caught fish, lots of veggies & salads (no dressing, just lemon & olive oil), avocados, whole grains. Basically mostly natural foods. No processed foods, no white refined flour or sugars, no alcohol, no dairy.
This works for me because I'm lactose intolerant so in the past when I would take a "lactaid" tablet to help digest dairy, my body would struggle & have a difficult time processing it. As for the processed foods, sugar, flour, alcohol, I just know how they affect me. Too many chemicals & additives cause itching, headaches, fatigue.
Well I made it a week at a 1000 calorie deficit. Then today I allowed myself to have a donut with my lunch (someone had brought them into the office). I ate it slowly and savored it at my desk with the rest of my lunch (and added it to my calorie tracker). Then I hid in the library and stuffed down three more as quick as I could. My body is *screaming* for calories. I've been feeling really depressed, low energy, cold, etc. for the past few days. Then I purged- lunch and donuts all. I haven't done anything like this for a long, long time.
Dieting doesn't F*KING work people. Maybe for some people but not for me. I'm going back to eating a combination of my eating disorder meal plan and IE. I feel like absolute poop.
Unfortunately for your two questions I can't answer with confidence, because I didn't get the IE book yet but I've read Josie Spinardi's book (which is another book on hunger cues & non dieting.)
