Fiddler - Thank you so much for your post. Your right i am not a garbage disposal and sometimes i really do treat myself that way. I stuff something in my mouth as fast as i can thinking if no one sees it it didn't happen. LOL yeah i know doesn't make much sense. I obviously see it when it adds inches to my body.

It is nice to see all the new members posting. I guess in a way i am still a new member to. I really don't have faith in this new way of eating yet. I feel ashamed to say that. I am going to keep trying though and the ladies on here will help me do it.

Hi Everybody

This is day 4 for me on IE. I have to admit I have probably over done it the first few day, however, the nice thing is that I a beginning to relax with it. I think it is because I can now eat the way that was normal for me for the first 22 years of my life. Got up this morning and wasn't hungry so I did not eat breakfast. Had my coffee and then had lunch. I have had little mini-snacks this afternoon and I feel great. I did gain a little like someone said we might, but I think that will begin to come back down soon. Just wanted to check in real quick and let you know how I'm doing. I really enjoy reading your posts and how things are going or have gone for y'all. See ya later.

Hi CherryAutumn and Patty. I have a bad cold and it seems to take me about 3 weeks to get over it ever since I've been taking prednisone. I always seem to get sick when I reduce the dosage. It happens every winter. You'd think I'd be getting used to it by now but no. My DH got the vaporizer going for me at 1am last night and I quit coughing. I still manage to have an appetite!

Way to go of your first 4 days, Patty! I'm also learning to skip the "most important meal of the day" if I'm not hungry (or until I get hungry). I must say, I feel so FREE with this way of eating. Mollie's been getting me up in the middle of the night the past few nights-- when she gets hungry, she needs to eat. THere's so much I can learn from my little munchkin about that!
Blessings!

hi carol, so sorry your sick. that predizone made me gain wt. hope it doesn[t you. i read in a home remedy book i have that to rub vicks on bottom of feet and helps coughing quit. so would be worth a try.. hope your well soon. LaDean

Hi LaDean, I think I'm on the mend. How's the weight loss battle going? Sounds like things are coming together for you, Momtomollie. Seems like we're always in a hurry to see the scale move these days. I say to myself,"Patience, patience."

Hi Everybody,

I know about wanting the scale to go down. I was going up the first few days, but actually was back down a little bit this morning. So maybe things are starting to work for me.

I got the book on Intuitive Eating and I am really enjoying it. I am definitely in stage 2 maybe slowly edging into stage 3 I hope. I can really see and understand how and why this works. Just got to get out of diet mentality. I have a tendency to see everything as fattening... or good/bad foods when I eat it. I suspect it will take a while to correct that. After all I've spent 42 years learning all this stuff that I now have to unlearn. Kind of feel like the old saying, "Just when I thought I learned all the answers, they changed the questions". LOL I have been drinking too much coffee and will have to back off on that tomorrow and start drinking more water. Actually the only reason I've been drinking so much coffee is I'm trying to stay warm. We moved to northern part of SC last year from south FL and honest to goodness I just haven't been able to get used to the cold weather yet. I don't know what I would do if I lived in the places some of you live where it is really freezing cold right now. Although, I would love to see snow. I am originally from central TX and we didn't get snow too much where I lived so I do love the snow. DH grew up in IN and it is no big deal to him; he could care less about it.

mom2mollie - glad things are coming together for you. It is nice to be free to eat when and what we want. According to he book, you can learn from your little one about eating intuitively. She is so lucky to have a Mommy who will be able to let her grow up eating this way so she'll never have to go through the diet routine.

carol - hope you get to feeling better really soon.

Hi LaDean, CherryAutumn and everyone else.

Oh, Patty, you wouldn't be doing too well here in WI where it was below zero last night!!!!! The wood fires are blazing, however, and it's pretty toasty here in the house. Which book are you reading? There are lots of IE books and one that I haven't read from England is Beyond Chocolate. I've read so many that I can't think how this one would be much different but I do get their newsletter which is kind of interesting.

Well, I'm going to try this again. Had it half done before and lost it out in space some where.

Carol, No I would not be able to stand your weather in WI. Too cold for me. It got down to 27 here last night and it is 46* right now and I am so cold.

I am reading Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribola & Eysa Resch. I didn't know of other IE books. What have you read? I am on an IE Yahoo Group and they were talking of books by other authors. I thought I might look them. I read a post by one lady who said she had a read some book by someone named Judy Wardell and that she had learned that those days when she doesn't want to eat because she is busy doing other things... that it is okay.

I really needed that right now, because I am going through this thing right now of struggling with "dieter's thinking" stage. I think "I really need to eat something". "I should eat this or that because it is healthy for me". Or when I really want something not a "diet food" (diets would call it junk) I find myself thinking "you can't eat that because it isn't good for you. It is not healthy". Did that this morning with something I really wanted to eat in place of breakfast and I struggled with the "it isn't healthy food/not good for me" thing. (I think they call the Diet Police or Food Police Voice or something like that patrols and watches what we eat and makes us feel guilty when we eat it.) Well, I stood in the kitchen and I argued with that voice and then I heard this other voice say... "Trust what you've been reading. Trust your body that you really want it. I ate one serving and had my cup of hot tea with it. Guess what. I wasn't hungry any more and didn't need the whole bag. Later when my DH was hungry he got himself a bowl of cereal. I've been hungry for butter beans and cornbread. DH doesn't eat either so I fixed me a can of beans and made up the cornbread and cooked just enough of it for me and ate about 3/4 of it and put the rest down the disposal. Satisfied. I think the big deal for me is learning to trust that it is okay to eat something just because I want it and get that "Diet Voice" out of my head.

Can you share with me some of your struggles? I'm sure it would help me. Maybe we can help each other.

Hugs,
Patty

Hi Patty. I think the book that explains what you are asking is The Overfed Head by Rob Stevens. Most IE authors make the point that if you ate nothing buy so called junk food you would get tired of it. Gwen Shamblin in The Weigh Down Diet tells you to try to eat nothing but chocolate for 3 days and after that you won't be able to look at chocolate for awhile. I don't think you need to be that drastic. I think you can have a small portion of dessert every day and still eat lots of other good food. Think of all the things that you really like that are considered "good". For me it might be tuna and celery spread on crackers, tomato soup made with just tomato juice and milk (soy milk for me but regular is fine), vegetable sandwiches (I put vegetablesm such as cauliflower or broccoli, on bread and add barbeque sauce, onions, mustard, pickles or whatever and it's better than a burger), salad made with spinach, strawberries, sweet onions, chicken and almonds, ect. I sure you have your own favorites. But that doesn't mean you can't have small portions of anything. My biggest problem is that I get talked into another diet and then can't stick with it and feel so guilty. Maybe you have that problem, too.

Another thing you might think about is what you ate as a kid. There are lots of good things my mom fixed that I avoided since my 10 kids didn't like them. Recently, I've started making some of them again...... like meatloaf. ha!

Thanks Carol. I appreciate the info. I've been looking at the group on here called Whole Foods Lifestyle. I think it is feasible to eat IE using the Whole Food Lifestyle. I think what you are saying confirms my theory.

I am just being too wild on this and I am eating things not good for me. I think the freedom from guilt is good, but I want to lose weight and be healthy doing it. So been thinking that I need to follow a lot of the IE ideas and some of them are difficult... i.e. giving up the scales for a week. I'm not sure I can give it up longer than that. Besides IE is about learning to do things in a way that works for me that I can live with... no rules to break.

I've been thinking about the way I ate when I was younger, too. My Mom was a sweet eater, but I wasn't. I guess because it was so available to me. Mama could fix healthy breakfast at time, but she would rather have a sweet roll. I didn't care for all the sweets so I chose to eat nothing. I do like sandwiches which I ate at school for lunch, but dinner was just the regular 4food group meal. We didn't snack all that much either I don't guess or I know I didn't. My problem now is that I do like to snack at night. Some how I've got to learn to like healthy snacks to eat or give them up.

Hope you are feeling better. Did you say you have 10 kids? How did you have time to eat or any thing else? I babysat in my home for many, many years, but I got a break at night because they went home and left me with my 3 which I must admit were a handful. See ya later and stay warm and healthy.

Hugs,
Pat

Hello, I just found this group and think it's what I'm looking for. I've been looking for a low-stress approach to weight loss for about a year now, and am currently working with a nutritionist (doctor) and in the end I think it's pretty close to this "intuitive eating" approach.

I'm tired of being at war with my body and with food - there has to be a saner way, and I'm ok if it's slower.

Looking forward to getting to know all of you,
Sarah

Hi Sarah - welcome!

Patty - Yes! The whole foods lifestyle is very compatible with IE. I do judge foods, but it has nothing to do with "guilt" but I just don't want to eat refined junk - I want to eat food.
The whole "guilt" concept makes me sort of mad. I keep seeing recipes and foods that are referred to as "guilt-free." I think that's sad. As though their alternatives are supposed to induce guilt. What is that for? Are we really supposed to be motivated by guilt and fear?! No, thanks - not for me. I am still recovering from a religious indoctrination that used guilt and fear as control factors, and I am certainly not going to extend that into my dietary habits. I just want to eat real food. Not much. Not more than I need. Pretty simple, huh?

Well have a great day everyone - I'll check in later!

jo

Hello Sarah and WELCOME!!! Glad you are here. I too like the low-stress of IE. I think the one thing IE does is help us to come to terms with our eating. I can better understand why diets don't work for very long even when they do work. We all have a tendency to rebell and we don't like (I know I don't) it when someone invades our space where we think they don't belong. I think if IE is going to work me, it makes me design the way "I" want to eat, when I want to eat it and how and what I to eat it. It gives me that freedom.

I never liked eating breakfast... didn't have time for it and grew up with sweets for breakfast which I didn't care for. Now through IE if have learned that I do like breakfast because I like a healthy breakfast. I love oatmeal with berries and yogurt. I am also learning that while I do like a good dessert some times, I really prefer the healthier foods. i.e. When we go out to eat especially to some place like Ryan's or Golden Corral, I love starting with a salad, I eat a lot of veggies with a meat of my choice at the I want and I usually end with a few bites of a dessert only if they have what I really want. What always amazed me in the past was that I usually saw a weight loss, not a gain after eating that way. So why didn't I eat this way? That is what I have to figure out, but the nice thing is that IE says I can eat this way and I am learning with a little bit of tweaking that it will be and is healthy.

Again Welcome. I'm fairly new here myself and this doesn't seem to me to be a group as active as some, but you will get good info to help you if you stick around. I have learned a lot from those who are here and active. Looking forward to getting to know you.

Patty