Gwen's original book was very good with very little reference to her own religious beliefs.....IE the trinity, etc. She even had a testimony of a diabetic who said that we could never earn our salvation. But future books were not as good and I could see something was wrong. Then it came out that she didn't believe in the trinity and works was a very big part of her belief system.

Hello everyone!

Welcome Kelli.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Haven't had much to say lately as I've been busy with other areas of my life. Not only that but I've been "busy" IEing ... that is, I've been listening, responding and watching what's been going on with my IE. I'm glad to report that I think something finally clicked for me after reading that article I posted on here a little while back. I haven't had to stress or de-stress about my lack of whatever to make IE work for me because it's been working ever since then. I feel kinda silly calling IE an "it" as if it is a diet or special method or anything special at all, when in truth, "it" is nothing at all. LOL!

I have been doing everything IE talks about naturally ... eating whatever I want, stopping when I've had enough (sometimes that is when I'm full and other times it may be before I'm full), if I don't love it, I don't eat it, and all the rest of the things that IE teaches us to do. I can't say for sure what exactly clicked, but something did and I don't feel the urge to eat just because. A beautiful example of that happened this weekend at a picnic. There was a ton of food spread out and I took my time making my decision of what to eat ... grabbed two pieces of fried chicken, some cucumber slices, a little stuffing, some strawberries and some kind of potato casserole. Gobbled down the chicken (I love me some fried chicken) and ate the casserole, tasted the stuffing, didn't like it, left it and gobbled up the strawberries. Still felt like I wanted to eat more after that and went back to see what would catch my eye ... strawberries, lots of em! So I got some strawberries with an outstanding cream cheese dip and enjoyed that until I was satisfied. Hadn't even made it to the dessert table and I was completely satisfied with my meal, didn't want dessert. (Did go back for dessert much later on tho!)

Anyhow, that's about how IE has been going for me this past week or so. I don't know what the scale says today, but Friday morning it was down to 192 without any effort. (That's down from my high weight (204) when I gained all that weight when first starting IE.) Hopefully whatever it is that clicked for me will not unclick! But I will keep in mind the graph in the IE book of what one's weight-loss might look like, with ups and downs, but the overall trend being down.

Oh, let me tell you about this ... that diner I told you all about that I love to go to. Well, we went. I still couldn't get past the dinner menu, so I ordered a panini and ate as much of that as I could (almost all of it) and a cup of soup. But I ordered a piece of carrot cake to go. I wasn't getting out of that place without dessert this time! LOL! Later that evening when my stomach was growling I decided to eat the cake. It was a big piece and it was excellent, so I ate the whole thing. Not too long afterwards I started to feel sick to my stomach. Ugh! I knew immediately it was way too much sugar at one sitting. The frosting was super sweet as was the cake. But I was enjoying every bite, so I ate every bite. Well, needless to say, I think I am cured of the "dessert on a pedestal" syndrome! LOL! I don't have the desire to just go and indulge on dessert there anymore! Hahaha!

Seriously, tho, I think because I've been treating all food as equal that so much has lost it's appeal! And because I've really been listening to what my body wants, I'm getting a good variety of foods, just like the strawberries at the picnic. I don't usually just sit and eat strawberries, but they were tasting soooo good at the time. There was plenty of other foods there that I could have filled up on and in the past would have gravitated towards ... like the pasta salads. But I ate what "spoke" to me and felt totally satisfied with it.

So, that's how my past week has been going. Today I grabbed a moon pie to try and discovered I don't like them. Three-quarters of that is in the trash. But I did enjoy a large Greek salad. Yum! I'm thinkin' about chicken and rice for dinner. Yeah, that sounds good.

Well, y'all have a great IE day!

Hi Everybody,

Blue So glad IE is working for you. I loved your experience at the "special" restaurant and the picnic. A lot of people do not like buffets like Ryans and Golden Corral, but I love them. When I dieted, I would always go in and get a big salad and work my way to the dessert section. Now that I do IE, I don't eat the salad because I eat a lot of salads at home. I love salad and find they don't always have what I like in one. Now I eat whatever looks good to me and I always finish with a piece of carrot cake or a slice of pecan pie depending on what they have and which one jumps out at me. I heard some one say once that after the first 2 or 3 bites the food doesn't taste as good. I've learned that to be true especially when it comes to dessert.

Carolr & Kellie I didn't know that about the Weigh Down program. However, I've only read the first book. Don't have it any more. Kellie, I think she taught people to eat more of the carby foods and work toward protein if I remember it right. I think that is much different from the way you said. I personally like your suggestion of eating my favorite food first and work from there. However, since doing IE, I have gotten to where I only eat my favorite foods.

Bootsie and all other Intuitive Eaters

Have a great day!

Thanks Blue for the Welcome!

Trish! I am so excited, that was actually the part of flowers I felt resembled Weigh Down too much, but only eating the foods you love makes total sense! And since I haven't read IE, It can't be copying, just using the same principles. woo-hoo, you have solved a big problem for me! THANK YOU JESUS!

God really led me here to you ladies, you are all helping me so much!

Love, Kelli

The latest from Maggie Miller.

About a month and a half ago I traded in gelato for apricots on a warm summer evening, when all I wanted was a delicious frozen dessert. “How is that intuitive,” you ask? Read on.

Jeremy and I had just finished one of the most delicious Thai dinners we’d had all year, and though it was satisfying, we wanted to cap it off with an equally tasty dessert. We saved room for it, and eagerly made our way to our neighborhood’s newest dessert shop, which I’ll leave nameless just in case they are having early opening product snafus. (I don’t want to give them a bad name if their product improves)

When we walked into said nameless dessert shop on Ventura Boulevard, we strolled through the entire store just admiring the design, décor and concept. It was part old-fashioned ice-cream parlor and part candy store. I was in heaven – already picturing many evening trips to this place, hubby on one arm, Baby Miller on the other. The store serves gelato (one of my personal favorites), frozen yogurt, candy and an assortment of baked goods – cookies, cakes, cupcakes, you name it.

Wonderful idea. Bad execution.

Jeremy ordered a frozen yogurt, which he got to serve to himself (part of the fun), and I ordered gelato. We sat at a table outside to enjoy our desserts and one of our quickly evaporating nights out as a couple before our little Emily arrived. But then we tasted our treats. After about three or four bites, I put my spoon down and gave it to Jeremy.

“Does this taste funny to you?” I asked, wondering if it was my highly sensitive pregnancy taste buds playing a trick on me or if the gelato was simply not good.

“Yeah, it’s gross,” he said after taking a cautious bite. “And my yogurt is disgusting, too.” We each took a few more small bites, in the hopes of our desserts magically improving, but they didn’t. Being extremely pregnant, and having my heart set on a frozen dessert, I suggested we bail on the $8 worth of bad gelato/yogurt currently melting on the table between us, and go to Baskin Robbins.

Because you can’t turn down a pregnant woman’s request for ice cream, my hubby started driving us to our local shop. Just as we were about to pass the turnoff for home, I said, “You know what? I don’t think I want it anymore. That gelato kind of ruined my craving for ice cream.”

He felt the same way, so we headed home, where I found, to my delight, two delicious looking (and tasting) apricots sitting in our fruit bowl. Needless to say, that was my dessert and it was more satisfying than ice cream ever could have been at that moment, post gross-gelato.

Intuitive Eating Takeaways:

- Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and certainly stop when something doesn’t taste good. It’s all too easy to eat an entire meal (often past fullness) in the hopes that the next bite will be satisfying, when in actuality, it’s not.

- Give yourself permission to eat your favorite foods. Unconditionally. Because I knew I could go to Baskin Robbins anytime I desired, I was able to listen to my body and change course, trading in a chocolate-peanut butter cone for two apricots. (When my taste for ice cream returned a few days later, we did make our way to Baskin Robbins, and I ordered my cone)

Kelli, You might want to check out Gwen's first book from the library and skim through it. She does talk about eating your favorite foods first. I know a lady who wrote about her experience with Weigh Down in her book. Jan Christiansen was her name. It was a good book but she put a disclaimer in the front I think because the Weigh Down organization said to. It was a good book, kind of like a daily devotional but she must not have told them about it before she published it. She was a very nice lady, too.

Do you mean Jan Christiansen wrote a daily devotional book, and she wrote of her experiences with the Weigh Down diet, and Weigh Down made her put a disclaimer???

I goggled Jan Christiansen, and couldn't find anything she had written, maybe I'm not understanding what you mean...

Love, Kelli

You can get her book on Amazon. I actually emailed her a few times and she wouldn't say much but they gave her a hard time about her book. The book is called More of Him, Less of Me. After a long time I just found her again on the net. She makes and sells sock dolls in AZ. She writes children's books, too, I think. Her book was published in 1999.

Thanks for the article, Carol. That's how I felt about that moon pie I attempted to eat. *insert gross-face smiley here*

Hmm. I must have been low on dairy nutrients. Lunch was interesting today ... I started with a small serving of butter pecan ice cream. Next was a crumb donut followed by none other than a glass of milk topped off with a couple chunks of cheddar cheese. I think I'm all filled up on dairy now. lol I love listening to my cravings!

Edit to add ... dieters would think I'm crazy!

It occurred to me that I have been talking a lot about other diets and this is the intuitive eating thread, whoops sorry This intuitive eating sounds like it's right up my alley. Blue I love that you ate ice cream for lunch. Our company caters lunch for us about once a month, and we always have ice cream for dessert. They all laugh at me because I eat my ice cream right along with my meal. My freind who is on weight watchers really thinks I'm crazy, because I eat anything I want as long as I'm hungry, and she has to save her points for dinner, and she is gaining, not losing, and she is trying so hard. I feel bad for her, but I don't want to seem like a know it all, and tell her how to eat. When I do try to tell her how I'm losing it seems to irritate her.

I think I will try to talk her into coming to my home group I plan on having... Will you pray for her.

Do you guys have a problem with friends being mad at you because you are losing weight??? I know I have been mad at people before because I was trying to lose weight and they were losing. I tried not to show it, but I probably treated them different subconsciously...

Well anyway, you ladies have a nice day, and from now on I am only going to talk about how fun it is not to diet!

Love Kelli

Kelli, are you at what you consider your goal weight? I'm so much happier with my weight but I could still stand to lose more.

Hi Kelli, it's ok to talk about diets in this thread, it's just that we don't do diets anymore. I think it's diets that led us all here anyways, so the topic does come up. Most recently I thought I could add carb control to my IE lifestyle, but quickly learned that even that was still a diet. And that caused the diet mentality to kick in and diet backlash to follow. Like many here, I've been a "professional" dieter most of my life and have tried a lot of them. In theory, they all sound good, but none of them have been the golden ticket to weight loss (for me). Instead I blame the diets for the scale creeping up and up over the years. Each failed attempt at losing weight adding a few more pounds when the backlash of unrestrained eating would kick in. That said, most of our "diet" conversation in here tends to revolve around how diets have failed us, so it is unlikely that you'll find anyone in this thread recommend a diet-based program. But please do feel free to share whatever you want in this thread. There's really no rules here.

Anyhow, to answer your question about people getting mad at me for losing weight ... I haven't lost any great amount yet to be noticeable, so, no. But on the other hand, I can't help but wish it were me losing weight like others around me following diets ... only natural to be a little jealous, eh? But that's ok, I'm working on learning how to eat for a lifetime the IE way. I think I'll be better off in the long run. (Not to mention, those same people who are losing weight via the diet route, have all lost the weight in the past only to gain it back again. But, like you, I'm not going to tell them how to eat - unless they ask - we each have to figure that out on our own.)

Blue so good to see you back! Missed you! Kelli I have friends especially one when I lost weight 90 pounds did not want anything to do with me, because she hated skinny people. That hurt. I did not have anything against her because she was well built, so why should she throw our friendship away because I was thinner? This happened before too ladies did not want to be around me because I was young and thin at the time but when I gained weight they all liked me. What is up with this? Anyone got the answer?

Just checking in to say HI I'm on Week 2 Day 1 "Establish Being Occupied With Food and Your Weight Is Idolatry". I copied week 2 from the website. I noticed they numbered differently than on 3fc. I've chosen to do one a day instead of 5 a week. I am going to be going BSF this year starting in September. They are studying the book of John and have daily study and and we have Sunday night Bible Study to prepare for. So it is easier for me to just add it to what I'm doing.

These first few lessons have really left me feeling "quiet". I don't know how else to describe it. I am at just the right place for these lessons spiritually and mentally.

I shared with Kellie a PM that 11 months ago our Pastor left our church and started a new church. Tony and I went with him since we had joined the previous church for one reason. We had heard him on tv and were drawn to him because he taught only what the Word of God said. He had told the church one Sunday morning that he had prayed on January 1, 2008 that God would teach him God's Way of doing things. This spoke to me because my favorite scripture which I had told him when we met him before joining the church that my favorite translation of Matthew 6:33 was from the Amplified translation which say and I paraphrase, "Seek first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness (His Way of doing and being right)."

Eight months later when the church didn't see his vision to reach the people who wouldn't normally go to church, he left and started a new church. We went to the first service and became charter members. It never was a question as to whether we would go with him because we knew God was leading us to be with this man and pray for him. Tony and I knew from his teaching that God was doing something "special" in this young man and we felt that we should pray for God to give him wisdom because we knew that people would either go with him or God would lead him somewhere else. We wee just thankful that he stayed in our town and that God has allowed us to be a part of what God is doing here through this man's ministry.

I said all that to say that the amazing thing is that the lessons I'm studying through Kellie's website goes right along with what our Pastor is teaching us on Sunday morning. What an Awesome God we have. I absolutely love how God puts our lives together with others who walking the same walk as us. Of course, I believe that if we are following God's leading that this is God' way of showing us that we are right where He wants us to be physically and spiritually.

Any way, I'll be here at least reading. Just may be quiet, but everything is fine. I just seem to be in a state of awe or something right now... maybe feeling humble, not sure. Also kind of digesting spiritually all I've learned from these lessons.

Have a good day.