Thanks for that, Pama. I had 10 kids so I was doing good to get regular food on the table let alone dessert! My Dh likes to cook, though, especially desserts! I've been reading a lot about whole foods, too.

How Obie is getting her groove back
 

So since july I just haven't been as motivated as I was before. I would be really focused for about a week or 2 and then "fall off again"...I would gain and lose the same 6-10 lbs...So this weekend I decided I am in maintenance..or maybe i should call not thinking so hard what I eat or the scale ..re-learning to enjoy food and not be so pressed about what the scale says. so back to only weighing twice a month. It was a little hard at first, but its back to being an oversized paper weight in my house. I still watch how many calories, but it is more a total at the end of the day then not eating something of how many calories it has. :smug:

Keep at it, Obie. You'll make it.

Hi everyone, i love the boards and meeting everyone. so fun. Carol i reached my goal in 2003 and have not gained any back now for 4 years this december. have loss 12 more lbs now since first of year. i had a goal and then found out i am a diabetic and so she said lower goal. so i am finally losing again. so going for one. have loss 45 lbs in all. so happy with me. need to get with my exercise again. have a good week to all. LaDean

ok, I was lured away and went back to dieting(ww) for a few weeks, cause I found when I ate what I wanted I ate ALOT. So I ran out and got all the "diet foods" and the scale is still going up. I know my problem is stress eating and its very hard for me to control.....Im staring down a divorce possibly next year and eatting everything in sight worried about being able to support myself and my daughter.

At least I know where I an going wrong with this and can work on it. So Im starting with breakfast and going from there. Only to eat when Im hungry :cool:

Glad to see you posting, Nancy. Seems like stress causes weight gain. When I first started taking prednisone 2 yr. ago I gained 30lb quickly. Now I've lost about 20 with 40 more to go. LaDean, Did you just count calories? How old are you? Seems like it gets harder the older we get. I'm 58.

I read through some old posts and i think this is the right way to become healthy and learn new habits. I have tried diets only to fail over and over again. I think it will be hard for me to get rid of the "good" and "bad" food thinking. I always get discouraged because even if i had not eaten much i had eaten "bad" things that i shouldn't have and i would lose all my motivation. Right now i am just writing down when and what i eat and why i am eating it. I know i am emotional eater and so i am trying to spot triggers and work through it without food.

:welcome3: Cherryautumn, I'm off to see my DIL and grandkids but just wanted to say hi.

What a great thread! I just ordered Naturally Thin, but it sounds just like IE.

I am so sick of dieting. I have 15 to 20 extra pounds that I can't seem to lose and now I am going to just plain eat.

Hi all, loss 2.6 lbs this week and a happy girl i am. just watching my eating and trying to eat right. good luck to all. LaDean

I just started reading Mindless Eating, a book about why we eat what we eat. It is interesting. I know there is a review on here somewhere, I think in the maintainers forum. It's by a guy who does research like that for a living. For example, if you buy a large bag of something you'll eat more than if you buy a smaller bag. If I find any thing interesting I"ll pass it on.

I had kind of a fun thing .... I downloaded a product called "Weight Commander" onto my computer a month ago and I really like it .... it's a one-time download and costs $9.95 (forever a one-time fee). It's a graph where you enter your weight every day and it gives you that graph along with a trend line, which is nice. It also monitors your weight loss and for instance, on mine today it said "Be Careful". So I clicked on the link and it took me to a graph that showed each day of the week and showed that Saturday morning my weight has been traditionally up, so that today, Friday, I needed to be particularly careful. It showed a graph of days of the week and how much I lost on each of the days (I've only been tracking for a month so the data is based on four weeks). I just think it's pretty cool.

On a side note -- I've followed MRC (only my first week on the beige program) to the letter and have been at exactly the same weight for four days in a row. I know that it will let go one day, but week one is a little early for a pleateau!!!! LOL

P.S. .... The buffalo man's company is Anderson Buffalo -- I don't know that he's online though. He is from North Dakota.

If you thought there was something different about those last 2 posts it is because the person accidently posted in the wrong thread. That' ok...we forgive you.

Hello everyone,

I've read through many of the postings and articles on this thread and am intrigued that it's possible to lose weight while eating intuitively. It makes sense. Diets don't work in the long term for so many reasons. But I have some questions regarding how one gets on track to eating intuitively in a healthy way.

I've been "eating intuitively" for a little over a year. Really, I was tired of diets and just stopped. I was tired of counting calories. Of measuring portions. Of tracking macronutrients. Of avoiding special-occasion foods because they weren't on my list of approved foods. Of not going out to eat with family and friends for similar reasons.

So I stopped dieting. And of course, the weight I lost came back. I should state that I fractured my foot about that time, so I stopped all exercise too. For me, once the exercise habit is broken, it's hard to get back and I am struggling with that. I am happy to report, however, that the weight gain has stopped and I'm holding steady at 186-188.

My biggest question has to do with the fact that I have a very hard time resisting fat-sweet foods like ice cream, cake, donuts, junk like that. How do I balance "eat what you want, when you want" with eating primarily healthy foods? Is this something that takes time? Do you eat what you want, when you want with the hopes that eventually you'll get over the craving? Or do you deny the craving? I've been overdoing the junk foods (sweets, eating out a lot, prepared foods to save time) and I don't feel so good as when I eat more whole foods and cook mainly from scratch. But I'm still craving those junk foods.

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated!

Hi sf and welcome - welcome to all the new people!
here's a link to an interview that might be useful:
http://www.geneenroth.com/geneen_roth_interview.php

I think i am on Day 3 of Intuitive Eating. I am 24 yrs old and weigh 208 but am only 5' 4". I have two kids a little girl 2 1/2 and a little boy 5 months old.
I am an emotional eater and struggle with depression. I am also a person who freaks out if my schedule or habits are disruppted because of my mental problems. It will be hard to break the eating habits for stress, depression, anxiety and boredom.
I have noticed some good things in my new healthy way of eating. Though i have eaten a couple times due to emotional eating there have been a couple times i only ate half of a meal or like tonight i only ate one slice of pizza. That would have been unheard of 3 days ago.
Any advice for a newbie?

Hi CherryAutumn,
I love your avatar with the mice!
Congratulations on your weight loss! And on the changes you made from 3 days ago! I don't feel qualified to give advice since I don't have as much of a change to show for myself as you do! But I think that link in my last post will give some good advice, as far as being mindful of what is consumed. I think that is really key.
jo

Hi Spinymouse and thanks for the welcome. Thank you also for the link. I agree that mindful eating is really key to making intuitive eating work. Even though I haven't been following any diet or eating plan for the past year, I think I am a little scared to officially give myself permission to eat what I want, when I want.

Earlier today something occurred to me when I thought about giving myself permission to eat what I want. Every time I ever walked through a store or shopping area and did not have enough extra money for clothing, I saw so many things I liked. However, when I gave myself permission to shop for clothes, I had a hard time finding anything. Perhaps the simple step of giving myself permission to eat what I want will make the junk foods less appealing. I guess I'll find out!

How do you break eating a certain food just out of habit. It isn't for emotional reasons or that i am hungry i am just very habit oriented. Like last night i needed chocolate. Obviously i didn't really NEED it. I ate a large bar of chocolate and a couple chocolate covered cherries. I did it cause every couple days or so i think i should eat chocolate cause it is a habit

Hi Cherry, Well I'm glad that they finally came out that chocolate is good for you! Probably the biggest thing to get me off track is to go on another diet even if only for a short time to look good for something. In Jean Antonello's book, Naturally Thin, she says that the body saves up in the form of biochemicals when you diet to force your body to eat later and I believe it. Whenever I diet, I am ravenous for several days after. As for chocolate, I think the idea is to keep the amounts small and see what satisfys.

The habits I've changed that come to mind are:
1. diet soda. went from about 6 cans a day to zero. It was amazingly easy. I don't know why I ever developed that habit. I must not even have liked it.
2. to a much lesser degree: cheese. I still eat cheese; it is my favorite food. But I don't eat as much of it. I don't know if it may work the same way with your chocolate, but, I find that if I eat very strong, very high quality cheese, I am satisfied with a smaller amount. Wimpy cheap bland cheese or "diet" cheese makes me feel like I haven't had any cheese, really, so it is easy to eat a lot of it in hope that at some point a cheese satisfaction level will be reached. Maybe it would be the same with chocolate? A really dark, rich, strong chocolate might satisfy more easily with less quantity? Just a suggestion.
Good luck! Habits are tough.

Jo, That's a good idea. I don't eat dairy, mostly because of high blood calcium problems but I find I don't miss it. I drink soy milk if it's not fortified. It has 4 gm of fiber which is helpful. I try to use whole wheat flour whenever I can sneak it in.....like in gravy. My family doesn't notice. I drink only water and some juice. I've never really been a pop fan but find that even iced tea can affect me adversly.
Here's a question. When you are away from home and the food is unappealing, what do you do? For example, yesterday my DH, FIL and I were traveling and they stopped at Burger KIng...Yuck! But I was really hungry so I ordered a hamburger and onion rings. The salads looked very unappealing and there was no soup or baked potato or anything that I like. I should have just got a kids meal but I don't usually go to BK so I don't know what's good. I did have a great night with some high school girlfriends while we were away. I had a hot beef sandwich, only a half order but I hadn't had that in years. It hit the spot.

If I had to eat at Burger King, I think I would have had a garden burger and just that. No fries or onion rings. If I eat a garden burger I'm stuffed. I think this idea of having something else besides the burger might fall into the habit category. Food service places think they are supposed to give you something like fries with your burger or sandwich and people eat them because they think that's normal, but I think most people would be satisfied with just the sandwich part.
I did have a garden burger yesterday - at a bar/restaurant. I said "no thousand island" but it still came with it on there anyway. I said "no thousand island" not because of calorie counting but because I just don't like it, or mayonnaise or any mayonnaise based dressing. I don't know why the default is to smear it on sandwiches. Why can't places just offer it on the side? They had bottles of catsup and mustard on the side, why not mayonnaise? It's kind of awkward to scrape it off, and you can't really scrape off all of it. Slimy stuff.

I hear ya, Jo. I don't like mayo either. I didn't know BK had garden burgers. Maybe they don't offer them in NE. I'm from WI but grew up in NE. I know what you mean by habit. The thing that bugs me is eating when you are really hungry but not liking what you are eating.

Another interesting thought from Beyond Chocolate.

FOODS THAT MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD

By Surinder Phull, head nutritionist at Eatwell.co.uk



Beyond Chocolate makes a distinction between feeling full and feeling satisfied and, from my point of view, this is very significant.

In broad terms, 'feeling full' is the physical feeling of engorgement after a meal. Theoretically, you could feel full after a super-sized plate piled high with lettuce or a litre of soup - but would you feel satisfied? Probably not.

Feeling satisfied is a totally different experience, which involves hormones and neurotransmitters (brain chemicals). What exactly contributes to feelings of satiety in different individuals is poorly understood. What studies have clearly shown is that certain foods, such as chocolate, induce feelings of pleasure and satisfaction by stimulating reward centres in the brain. Yet it has also been shown that overeating past satisfaction can negate these effects and induce low mood.

While much of the research has been on chocolate, I encourage my clients to examine the foods that leave them feeling satisfied. It might be cheese or nuts or double cream. I have worked with hundreds of women and, in my experience, if my patients learn to stop when they are satisfied, these foods can be successfully incorporated into a healthy diet that makes them feel good, both physically and emotionally.

Hi, just me. was at coast over weekend so of course got off track. but back to it now. and scales are looking good. so got to keep them like that. i am fixing t.g. day dinner so that is nice i fix what i want to eat. Healthy.haha and then the other for others. ha so its all choice and i got to stick to that. good luck to all of you. have a nice week. LaDean

Hello, I've been lurking and subscribing to this thread for a while now and just wanted to poke my head up and say "hi!"
I'm a calorie counter, as well as volumetrics dabbler, but would like to be more sensitive to my body and its needs instead.
I count my calories but often find that when I'm really hungry and eat instead of denying (and possibly gorging later) I actually lose weight easier.
Yesterday I ate out twice and for lunch got the soup and salad. By the time they brought my second bowl of soup I was satisfied and didn't want anymore. Same last night. I only ate half of my plate and then was satisfied, so brought the rest home (can't waste food-- old habits die hard). I was so proud of myself for listening to my body and not just eating because it was in front of me! Thank you all for your wisdom and all the great articles. I'm now subscribed to the beyond chocolate newsletter because of y'all!
So, I've enjoyed all the articles and will continue to enjoy the discussion, and occasionally pop in to say hi! :)

:welcome3: mom2mollie. Share your struggles whenever you can. We can use the help.

Hi LaDean. Who will be coming for Thanksgiving? I think we will have about 15. Some of the kids will be going to their inlaws. We have a nontraditional meal of prime rib and ham. But sometimes it changes. I really like turkey. Actually, this is one time I really like the company more than the food. Maybe that's because I make most of it and it usually tastes better when someone else makes it. Have you ever noticed that?

hi carol. oh i find that out to when i cook it. i never ask them to bring anything but sometimes they do. i am having this year just 9/ usually have lots more. i love it when they bring something else to. we have always had turkey. but everyone likes it. My scales are down some this day and so happy. I am in tops and have meeting tuesdays. so working for a loss. been eating right. and trying to watch portions alot. good luck this week to all. nice to meet everyone and welcome. LaDean

carol, you were on board with aleka and lemor weren't you. may have spelled her name wrong. wonder what happen to them. LaDean

Yes, LaDean, I was there but lots of people leave and never post again. They just get tired of it. Good that your scale is moving down. This is a bad time of year for weight gain. It starts right now for this household as it is deer season and the men are eating nonstop. Of course they're hunting and getting lots of exercise but not me ha! I can't be in the sun for health reasons but we do have an eliptical which is nice.

Wow, Carol - I am slacking in the brain. I just read your post and didn't bat an eye or think anything unusual about it until about 5 entire minutes later. Woah! Are there no female hunters?
(It's not like me to not catch things like that right away!)
:) :dizzy:

No female hunters this yr. I have a 17 yr. old daughter still at home but she is not much for hunting. My 24yr. old daughter used to hunt but she is at her inlaws for the holiday and she has a baby now so don't think she would hunt anyway. But I have 6 sons and my FIL is here. Only 4 of the sons plus DH and FIL are hunting this year. One son brought his 2 yr. old daughter to keep me company. But, let me tell you, these hills are FULL of hunters so you stay indoors. :)

Happy Weekend, Intuitive Eaters! And "Welcome!" to all the new posters.

I just completed the first week of my 3-week vacation. I've re-roofed my chicken coop, and tomorrow I'm going to clean the garage. It's so nice to not be exhausted from work all the time. Eating has suffered a bit from the change in routine, though. Hopefully it will get better.

I hope everyone is doing well :)

Haven't been doing so well but i am not giving up. It has come to the point where failure isn't an option. I am just plain unhealthy and i feel horrible for only being 24 yrs old.

HI , know what you mean carol. i got off for while to. and so glad you send me a message your still here. the boards help me so much. meet so many neat people. nice to meet all here . yes so happy i am still losing. got to stick to it. a life time thing. yes know what you mean guys eating..ha since we retired we eat bout same. i fix my 3 meals and hubby does not eat all of them but some. so when he wants to eat fix for him. with this diabetic i have to eat or should my regular meals. so try to be good with it. have a good week to all of you. LaDean

Hi Fiddler. Is it still pretty warm where you live? Can you garden all year long? My tomatoes aren't as good tasting after it starts to cool down. But I still have a few left that I picked rather green. They are now turning red.

CherryAutumn. I think this time of year it's hard to lose. Maybe it's the happy times in the past that relates eating with pleasant things. It starts here with deer season, like a said before. So much snacking. Good for you for keeping on.

LaDean. Glad you found us and post away. What kind of healthy things have you been fixing lately and what will you fix for Thankgiving? Do you take insulin? I take prednisone all the time and sure get hungry at times. Are you from Portland? My daughter lives there.

I'm especially hungry first thing in the morning. I even get nauseated and can't sleep. Sometimes I eat just a little or drink a little juice and that helps so I can go back to sleep for awhile.

Yes, it is still warm--has been 70's and 80's. We can pretty much garden all year.

Hi, i am 100 miles from portland. well i am just fixing the normal. turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, noodles , vegies , rolls and desserts. ha nothing real fancy. I will have bout 12 here. i was going to go back to atkins eating this next week. no i do not take shots or medication. have my sugar blood test every 3 months and its been good the 2x i have had it done. so keep it up. my brother is bad so i try to do good. have a nice THANKSGIVING TO ALL. LaDean