Hi Amie!!! i know what you are going through. I gained a ton of weight on Depokote a while back. I am now taking Geodon and it is much better. More weight neutral. I also feel better. I was also asked that question, about what is more important and I also hesitated. It is just hard to take something when you feel like it is ruining your progress. But if you need it and it helps it is worth it. My weight loss is slow but at least I'm losing.
I love this way of eating. I am reading the book Thin Within. I ate Pizza last night from Pizza Hut and had a salad. I still lost a pound when I weighed in this morning. I will never diet again. I found out about this way back in 2001 after the birth of my son and I tried the Weigh Down Book and tapes. Lost a good amount of weight and got down to a size 12 before I got pregnant with my daughter in 2003. I gained it all back and much more along with the meds. I am confident that I can lose this weight now. I'm following the principles in the Thin Within Book and it is working. I still refer back to the Weigh Down books also cause they are similar principles involved. Thanks for starting this Thread. I feel like I belong here.
Amie, yes, I agree 100%. They may call it a "lifestyle change" or whatever, but if there are restrictions, it's a diet! I don't need a diet. I need a way to make it through the world we live in today. I need to know how to not put so much emphasis on "good" and "bad," and just think of it as neutral.
Carol! You give be so much hope! I'm striving to be like you.
Natoshial, your weight gain sounds similar to mine. I gained during my first pregnancy. Lost the weight with WW, then put it back on with number 2, and here I am, wanting to lose again. I'm going to do it the "right" way this time, though. With WW, I just felt so washed out. It was easy to put the weight back on. I felt like I desperately needed nourishment. I don't want to feel that way again. What is this Thin Within book? Maybe a trip to the library is warranted.
Oh, I guess you have your own equipment. I have been using a book for some exercises. It's not cardio, though, so I will probably do some walking for that.
Hey, everyone. I'm new to this thread, and pretty new to the forums. I hang out in the "Chicks in Control" section a lot, because I tend to eat when I'm not hungry. Then I heard about Intuitive Eating -- and -- wow! It sounds marvelous! Especially since I've learned from past experience that counting calories a) makes me crazy and b) just makes me binge more.
At any rate, I really want to get to a point where IE is a way of life for me, and I hope that there'll be enough info & support here for me to get there.
Hi, Skyra! Nice to meet you. I am relatively new here myself. I am really glad for my new IE friends. They have helped me a lot. IE is wonderful, but for me it has been hard to get used to. However, I think we all have the ability to become intuitive eaters.
Just checking in to say "Hi." It's been a while! I'm still IEing, just haven't felt much like posting, lots going on here.
I think one of the things I love about IE (and can finally say) is that even when I'm not actively participating in the thread, I'm still eating intuitively. So when I do return to the thread I don't feel like "I've fallen off the wagon" and have been "cheating" or have been a "bad girl." No need for guilt or shame! No new resolve to "do better this time." That feels good!
So -- I'm sure this has been brought up before but there are SO many pages, it's kind of overwhelming to sift through. So I'm going to ask here.
I'm still being pretty good about eating when I'm hungry and stopping when I'm full -- there are just still so many guilt feelings of "you should have eaten that healthier thing instead, the food you ate has more calories". How do you break that mental habit?
Skyra, I think part of it is reading different books about intuitive or mindful or "normal" eating, as different authors explain things differently, some will hit home with you more than others.
Also, I think it just takes time!
I just keep reading and keep practicing. If you really know why you believe your choices are ok, then you mostly just need time and practice. If you sorta know why your choices are ok, but you waffle and have mental arguments with yourself, focus on more reading.
Also, it can be hard to let those feelings go if you're still, for example, reading a lot of posts in some areas of this forum that are built on the feelings you're trying to put to rest. Sometimes you may be able to read and take what works and leave the rest. Other times, you may realize you need stop filling your mind with the very kinds of talk you're trying to let go. It's kind of like one alcoholic who may need to entirely avoid situations in which any one is drinking, while another may enjoy the company of others who may be having a glass of wine with dinner, and yet a frat party or happy hour at the local bar is not likely to "ok" with either of them.
This article is from Maggie Miller at Eat When You're Hungry.
A few weeks ago, a producer at WCBS-TV in New York contacted me to discuss a story she was working on about orthorexia. At the conclusion of what turned out to be a two-hour whirlwind of camera tests, lighting adjustments and a wonderful interview about a subject near and dear to my heart, the producer asked me a telling question.
“I know you probably eat very healthfully most of the time, but do you ever, you know, stop at a fast food restaurant on the turnpike,” she asked? “And if you do, do you feel guilty about it?”
Her question made me smile because it reminded me that despite my standing on a soapbox at every opportunity I find to preach “Stop Dieting!” “Stop Labeling Foods as Good or Bad!” people still assume I eat an “extremely healthy diet,” whatever that means to each person who makes the assumption.
My answer to the producer’s question was a resounding, “YES!”…and “NO!”
“Yes, I eat fast food occasionally, and NO I don’t feel guilty about it,” I told her passionately. “My husband and I – and now our baby – drive up to Lake Tahoe fairly regularly and we always stop at In ‘N Out, Wendy’s or whatever other fast food restaurant is available when hunger strikes.
To be clear, I care about health and wellbeing. I’m a trained wellness coach, after all, and as I’ve written in my book, I have genetically high cholesterol (when I went vegan for six months many years ago in an attempt to bring it down, my cholesterol actually went up), that I must monitor and ultimately treat.
Having a baby has also made me care about my health more than I have at any other time in my life because I want to be there every step of the way for my girl – on the sidelines at soccer games, from the front row of piano recitals and on the sofa at home when tears pour out of a broken heart.
However, I believe very strongly that emotional, spiritual and psychological health are just as important as physical health. You can have the healthiest diet in the world and be quite unhealthy (case in point: orthorexia). To the contrary, we’ve all watched interviews with enthusiastic 103-year-olds who gloat that one of their secrets to living so long was enjoying a bowl of ice cream every day.
Given my focus on eating real food in lieu of “food products” filled with chemicals, I can understand the assumption that I eat quite healthfully much of the time, and yes, I guess that’s actually true. But I also eat foods that have no (or very little) nutritional value whatsoever. I enjoy the tastes that dance around my mouth as I eat these foods (I’m still talking about the peanut-butter cookie dough ice cream I discovered at Ben & Jerry’s over a month ago). Sometimes these foods make my body feel good, and sometimes they don’t.
Saturday, for instance, on vacation in Palm Desert, I started the day with a big bowl of oatmeal and coffee, which I enjoyed thoroughly. At lunch I ordered a chicken sandwich, French fries and a salad from the poolside cafe. The food at lunch was marginal, but I was hungry, so I ate quite a bit of the salad (it was the best part of the meal) and all of the chicken. I skipped the bun because I didn’t like it at all, and that left room for me to eat all of my French fries, which I did. Feeling unsatisfied after this meal, I changed the flavor in my mouth by chewing a sugary piece of watermelon-flavored gum a friend of mine offered me back at the pool.
Did I enjoy my lunch? No, not particularly. Did I enjoy the company of my family as I ate it? Absolutely. Did I feel sad that I didn’t have a sybaritic meal? Yes, a little bit. Did I feel guilty about the French fries? Not in the least. Was I looking forward to preparing homemade lunches when I returned from vacation? Yes, though I knew I’d miss the desert air I enjoyed so much over the weekend.
Life is about choices, and I chose many years ago to let go of the guilt I used to feel about food. I never thought that would be possible so many years ago when I struggled through orthorexic behaviors, and it took many years to fully let it go. But I can honestly tell you now that my guilt about food is gone.
When I eat ice cream I enjoy every bite, without a dollop of guilt on top.
I tell you this both as a way to address the assumption about my “healthy eating” and to celebrate full recovery from disordered eating. I am living, breathing proof that the saying “once an eating disorder always an eating disorder” is not true. You can heal from encaging food thoughts and behaviors.
Welcome Skyra!