Thought I should post a former message to give an idea of what IE is.
"This study will evaluate the effectiveness of an innovative weight loss program, called thintuition®, that Lakeshore Athletic Club believes is the future of weight loss. The thintuition® weight loss program involves natural eating and weight loss and is built on the foundation of six basic principles:
1. Distinguish appetite from hunger: An appetite is thoughts about food, while hunger is an actual physical sensation in your body telling you to eat.
2. Eat to satisfy physical hunger: The goal of eating is purely to satisfy those physical sensations of hunger and not for any other reason. And other reason for eating is consider overeating, which contributes to weight gain.
3. Eat the foods you desire: Before sitting down to eat, you determine what food(s) will satisfy your hunger, and those are the foods you eat.
4. Savor each and every bite: Take time to enjoy the food you are eating. This means tasting the flavors, smelling the aromas, experiencing the textures, and appreciating how great the food looks.
5. Regard food as fuel: Understanding that food is not comfort or love is an important step toward following your thintuition®. Food is what you put in your body to keep it running.
6. Stop eating when hunger disappears: There is a moment when your hunger disappears. The feeling is like that of no longer being thirsty. It is a place where you feel most comfortable and when you should flip the “off switch” and stop eating.
In addition to the on-line program, daily emails and other materials, there is an optional exercise component that will begin in the second month of this study. At that time, you will receive two free passes each week to use at the Lakeshore Athletic Club you registered for. We will give you more information about the exercise component and when you can begin using your passes a little further into the study."
Carol, I haven't read all the IE books, but for me what it boils down to is learning to be a discriminating eater, recognizing and honoring your body's satiety and hunger signals, and generally not treating your body like a garbage disposal.
1. Distinguish appetite from hunger: An appetite is thoughts about food, while hunger is an actual physical sensation in your body telling you to eat.
Sorry - I don't know how to do the quote box thing, where you put the quote from someone else's post in a little box - but as for the above quote - I guess I take it a step further based on other things I have read that rang true for me. Appetite can feel like something physical. Like your stomach makes noise or you salivate because some kind of food cooking smells good or it's the time of day that you usually have a meal. Appetite makes you feel like eating. Hunger is a real physiological state that happens when your body really needs food. I have to think about it that way. And I've discovered that : just a few bites of whatever I want usually takes away the desire for food.
And, as far as smells go, usually the smell of the food is better than the taste or the experience of eating it. I could be happy to sniff pizza baking all day, but it would only take me a bite or two to make me realize what I really like is the smell! Same with gingerbread, or anything with a vanilla smell. I'd rather smell it than eat it.
So....why am I a fat chick, you may ask? Three main reasons 1. very very low metabolism (I had it measured - way low - my meds slow everything down) 2. i haven't been exercising 3. red wine.
But I'm working on all 3 points, and I'm newly motivated - by no apparent reason! Must be the planets or something.
Jo, I take prednisone so that kind of messes up the hunger thing but I think this can still work. I agree about the smells.........the bacon this morning my dh was cooking got me out of bed. ha! But he was already finished and I didn't want it bad enough to cook it. I think it was just the smell.
The smells thing works for me too. Often when I am hungry I cook in quantity for the week instead of eating right away. By the time I finish cooking, my desire for food is pretty much satiated and I'm happy with eating a very small portion.
I won't say I was horrible this weekend, but it wasn't good. To many jumior hamburgers from Burger King. My boyfriends mom treated us to dinner and we had his unit Christmas party. I have holiday parties Tuesday and Sunday and another event this weekend (celebrating my birthday) I think since i fell off once I'll be more careful next time around. Even with all the posts on the boards warning about it I didn't think about it.
It took me a while to find this thread...I have been posting a lot at the "Chicks in Control" thread since a few months. My main problem is, as you may have already guessed, emotional eating and binging.
It took me a while (actually from my first diet aproach around 20 years ago) to figure out that diets donīt work for me....Ok, I KNEW that diets donīt work and that they arenīt a good thing, but...for some weird reason I thought I had to try it again. And again. But right now I feel the need to break free...
Ok, before I start rambling and rambling: I wanted to ask if I could join that thread- I am trying to follow Geneen Rothīs advice on emotional eating. Itīs quite new for me (I tried it before but I abused the concept a little: intuitiveeating didīt mean to pick up each binge opportunity on the road...) and I really would appreciate advice and support
Hi Kate, This is the 3rd set of posts on IE. The other 2 have between 300 and 400 posts so you can read them if you want. I will try to post the links if I can. We are all still learning and you can too. Obi, I had a good day yesterday until my dh made popcorn at 10pm. Guess I should have gone to bed before that. ha! I really need to ask myself, "Am I hungry?" each time I reach for food. It's a hard habit to break.......reaching for food when you're not hungry.
Intuitive Eating #3
