My turn for a light bulb moment. I can tell when I'm truly hungry, I can tell when I need something to eat and I can tell when I just need a chew but .... yesterday I actually said to my friend "Now, I'm sorry I ate that much" and it was about an hour after eating.
I've gotta learn those tricks about setting my fork down between bites and leaving food on my plate. I need an off switch.

Glad it's not just me who feels like this. Even when I'm actually eating I'm just thinking about the next mouthful! I'm not full unless I've eaten WAY too much

Dill

SusanB - an "on"-"off" switch would solve it all for me too ! The cue for my "on" switch is the clock, 3 hours I eat whether I'm hungry or not, most times . The "off" switch is, measure and weigh and eat only in my plate, most times ... This can be very very difficult to do in restaurant situations... So when I'm in a restaurant I order the best I can, no dressing, no rice, before it arrives to the table...

Meg -- That article made my jaw drop! I have a niece that is very very close to what they describe: .... and she also cannot stop eating, will eat and eat and eat, till you tell her "Ok, 4 hamburgs are enough, don't you think?" The thing she does not do, that I'm aware of anyways, is sneak foods either by hidding, stealing or ordering behind everyone's back... But she does have a bottomless pit appetite...

Me too! That's my externally imposed cue. I know that if I ate a healthy, balanced meal less than three hours ago, that I should wait to eat again; that my body doesn't need more nutrition yet. A lot of times I'll use the computer to distract myself if it's not time to eat again -- like right now.

But I'll never be able to use 'intuitive eating' as a guide to how much or when to eat. My body - for whatever reason - genuinely wants to eat more calories than it needs. So I acknowledge that and use my head and the clock to regulate my eating.

Ilene, I agree that restaurants can be minefields!

I once saw a program with prader-willie (sp?) patients. It was shocking to see their relationship with food. It is very rare, and highly unlikely that most normal plumps have it. The stomach hormone ghrelin is another thing. We all have that one. It drives us to eat, esp after the body has lost weight. It is one of the biological reasons people who have lost weight have difficulty keeping it off. It is an ancestoral response to famine and 'helps' bring the body back to its former fat-storing size till the next famine hits and we need all that fat to stave off starvation. Its an ancestral survival mechanism.

As to 'intuitive eating', you can learn. Honest. I did. But I am not necessarily recommending it for everyone, not because you couldnt do it, but the time it takes to learn thoroughly enough to be effective. Its difficult and involves several things. Its a two pronged attack. First, learn that hunger comes in two forms - true physical hunger and emotional hunger. YOu come to learn to eat only with true physical hunger signs, and you dont with the more blurry emotional hunger signs, thought the drive to eat seems similar and sometimes stronger. Emotional hunger is what drives binges. With emotional hunger, you learn to deal directly with the emotions and not anesthesize yourself with the food. It would take afew years to do this properly.

Another phase of 'intuitive eating' is to honestly legalize ALL foods. You eat chocolate, peanut butter (the first thing I ever legalized - now it goes stale in my home), and whatever else that suits your fancy, eating only when truly physically hungry, and stopping at satiety (hard to learn). And not eating from emotional drives. You will eventually tire of them and they will become relatively safe (though those old pathways will always be in the brain). They do lose most of their power over you. Its true. Slowly but surely, with vigilence, you begin to only eat when truly hungry, and then you start to like more healthful foods because you feel better, and slowly begin to lose weight. That is how I initially lost about 50 pounds over several years. But it is very slow. For me learning to eat this way was truly worth it. Nothing is still forbidden to me though I choose not to have many things, I can have almost anything in the house and not 'succomb'. And I tend not to think about food or eating most of the time between meals. But with any form of wl, you have to remain constantly vigilent to your actions around food. There is no free ride with intuitive eating either.

I still eat this say to some extent, just much less in amounts now, and some things have been freely eliminated from my diet (most fats and sugar, coupled with carb reduction). I just want weight loss to be abit faster to finish before I am 90, LOL.

Or, you can eat by the clock and weight and measure amounts of legal foods, and not over-eat. Stick to what works for you unless you are being driven crazy. If it aint broke, dont fix it.

Jan

My success stems from planning my meals and eating by the clock (religiously). Since I think about food and eating most of the time, it helps me stay on track if I know that my next meal is coming in 23 minutes. If I give myself any room for interpretation, I tend to blow it.

Jan, I agree...Everyone just has to find their own way and do what works. It's like the scale issue. I have read so often that daily weighing is bad, bad, bad. But, I'm a daily weigher and feel that it's one of my many strategies that works for me. This journey is all about customization (isn't that in Thin for Life?).

Karyn Lee

Karyn Lee writes:<<It's like the scale issue. I have read so often that daily weighing is bad, bad, bad. But, I'm a daily weigher and feel that it's one of my many strategies that works for me. This journey is all about customization (isn't that in Thin for Life?). >>

I have been a multiple times/day weigher, and then didnt weigh for several years at all, and now I weigh almost daily. It depends what works and what doesnt. When I was weighing numerous times/day, I was totally driving myself crazy. Then one day I killed my scale by viciously jumping up and down on the lying B@$T@&D so hard it fused into a solid bi-valve metal mass. That was a clue weighing myself was a problem so I stopped. I guess I had to, LOL. It was like arguing with the thermometer for saying its 80 degrees outside - pretty silly.

I then went for years without weighing at all, and seem to have made peace with the scale and now view it as yet another life tool that gives me a number that indicates if my actions (eating, exercise, etc) are working or not.

Jan

I actually went the opposite way with the scale. It was so frustrating with a weekly weigh in to see the scale not budge after so much hard work, or drop dramatically for no apparent reason. So I started weighing multiple times a day to figure out what was going on. I now know how much I weigh in the evening before bed, in the morning when I get up, before and after using the bathroom, before and after eating, before and after exercising, during TOM, that I'm always 3lbs up if I'm sore from exercise, etc. So after I figured out how much of short term weight loss/gain is actually hydration issues and how much variation to expect under certain circumstances, I could actually calm down about the scale, or alternatively, know when to worry. Especially important to me since all long term fat loss/gain has short term weight variation added right on top of it.

I know that sounds pretty obsessive, but it works for me. The hard cold numbers actually clue me in on what is going on with my body, and help me to understand and look for all those subtle goings on that many people just naturally pick up.

That statement just cracks me up!

The scale's another issue that we all have to find our own way on. I know from reading studies that we maintainers HAVE to monitor ourselves regularly, but how we do that and how often is totally individual. Scales, how clothes fit, body fat %, tape measure etc. - whatever works for you and doesn't drive you nuts in the process.

I think recovering from an eating problem takes many turns along the way. What worked or didnt work several years ago changes with time and circumstances. I had to stop weighing for several years. Now I peacefully weigh daily.

What works changes over time, and to simply return over and over again to what used to work, but no longer does, is folly. We have to keep trying new things, stay with what works as long as it does, then move on. Bending with the wind.

Jan