I've gained weight and I'm not dealing with it very well.

I'm sorry to hear that. I've gained a few pounds myself and I'm also struggling. I wonder if the changing seasons has anything to do with it. I've heard that it's normal to put on a few pounds during the fall and winter.

Me three, but I think I figured out why.

I've realized that during my "legalization process", I didn't really legalize all the fruits and vegetables I need to. I've been focused on previously forbidden foods, hunger signals, and losing the diet mentality.

What I realized is that when I eat fruit and vegetables, even the ones I genuinely love, it triggers the diet mentality in me hard. So, any time I ate lots of fruits and vegetables in a day, I rebelled hard and refused to eat them again anytime soon.

It is a real struggle for me to allow myself to eat ALL foods. So much of my life was spent eating certain foods only when I was dieting, it never occurred to me that it was OK to eat these foods right along side with the foods I used to restrict.

It just goes to show me yet again how pervasive the diet mentality truly is.

Sending best wishes to you all.

Hmm Im pretty sure I gained weight too but I have been doing so much emotional work regarding my mom and my parents and how my worth is not in my appearance. I actually really feel ok with myself. I know that if I just would exercise I could firm up and look more how I want to but I realize in the grand scheme of things, its just not that important to me right now. I still have a block against exercise but I pretty much eat whatever, whenever and I love it.

I find myself going longer blocks without eating, not because Im trying but just because Im not thinking about food. The diet voices are slowly slowly slowly fading. I see that I have gained a little weight and softened up but I have resisted reading diet books, and restricting in ANY way. I also haven' weighed myself. I know that my clothes still fit, if not as loose as they did before and thats fine.

We have tons of halloween candy in the house because believe it or not, Im not always in the mood for halloween candy. I went for a long stretch where every afternoon I would get starving for chocolate and candy and it was hard to just go with it. But, I did and I did not restrict myself. Eventually because I was not judging myself and yelling at myself I realized I was actually THIRSTY not hungry. Chocolate and candy is kind of an easy food to eat when you are not hungry. When I started drinking lots of water in the afternoon that urge pretty much disappeared. We have ice cream that I don't eat either, even though before I felt I could eat the whole gallon.

There are changes happening, slowly but surely. The key for me is to not focus on my weight, but focus on how I feel about food and truly letting myself have the freedom to eat anything I want, whenever I want. Thats it.

I just hope I can overcome the exercise block because I will be 40 next year and I want to be healthy( but not enough to detach it from body shaping and be able to do it. ) well... baby steps and patience. Im keeping on keeping on.

Glad to hear from everybody! I just haven't been involved in IE boards and stuff because overthinking it actually can be kind of counter productive for me. stopping obsessing has been more helpful.

I'm still here. Being a Christian, I decided to look into Weigh Down and while looking for info on it I found a book from Amazon called Thin Within. It is a 30 day program of changing your way of thinking about the way you eat using scripture.

I didn't want to spend the money for workbooks etc and don't want to do classes so I am reading the daily chapters in Thin Within and listening to the YouTube videos on Weigh Down. I am starting to eat only when I'm hungry which is working out to be a lot like I ate growing up... 2 meals sometimes a snack each day. I really think it is going to help me get rid of the "Diet Mentality" so that Intuitive Eating will become a reality for me. I really love the way Weigh Down explains that some people are morning eaters and some or night eaters stressing that we don't have to eat breakfast unless we are hungry for it. I've become a night eater so I don't get hungry until somewhere between 1 - 3 pm and then I have a snack or meal when I get hungry between 7 & 8 pm.

I loved the way she describes what happens when we are in a situation where we can't get food when we experience "True Stomach Hunger"... While she says not to make it a habit of ignoring the "True Stomach Hunger signal", she said not to be afraid of it or worry about it either. When we are truly hungry and we can't get to food or it isn't time to eat for some reason (maybe in a meeting etc), this is when our body will take the fuel it needs from our hips and tummy area. I like knowing that. This morning I had to fast for lab work at the doctor's office and DH had his lab work this afternoon. I knew we were going out to eat after so I got busy and didn't eat until we got to Golden Coral. I loved thinking about my hips giving up fuel for my body because I had not giving my body any food fuel. Such a nice way to look at it.

I am in the stage of eating some of the foods that I like which I haven't been able to eat while "dieting", but I notice that I don't want a lot of things I usually think I want when I cannot have them on a diet. It is my hope that with practice that I can make this way of eating a habit.

Don't beat yourself up girls when it seems things aren't working or there is a weight gain. I think we just have to keep practicing what we are doing until we are free of all the junk especially the guilt we experience because of the way we have been made to believe through dieting for so many years. This is a process of changing our thinking.

I don't have it all together and do it right and I for sure do not have all the answers, but I keep learning and trying while refusing to give up with the hopes that this will become a reality for me. I absolutely believe IE really does work. It has worked for others and there is no reason why it will not work for me too. I just have to learn how to make it work for me.

Good post. I agree with you. I too am working to get my focus off of food and weight. One of the keys I'm learning through Weigh Down and Thin Within that I like is learning to take time to observe how I feel after I eat certain foods and whether the way I feel is a way that I want or don't want. This way I decided if foods I eat are what I want to keep eating or not.

I've learned that while I like nuts once in a while, I don't really like the way they make me feel the next day when I go potty. I don't like certain foods that make me feel bloated.

I too am pulling from some of the groups I've been a part of because I don't want to talk about or focus on food restrictions etc any more. Plus it frees me up to do other things. I might actually get a life and "diet" isn't even in my vocabulary or a part of my life any more.

I know what you mean about noticing how you feel after you eat. I have been a very slow work in progress on that one because sometimes I will recognize that I feel bad but eat it anyway because it tastes good.

I think I have definitely gained weight, but I tried reading a few diet books a couple days ago and I just couldn't. I can't even read them. I don't think I can ever ever ever go back to eating what, when and how someone tells me to. So, that is a new development. I no longer find diet books soothing, I find them irritating and I see them as so much noise that is meaningless to my life.

So Im at an interesting point. I weigh a little more than I would like to, yet I can never diet/restrict again. I am SOOOOOOOOOOO done with that. LIke really for real. I don't know when the shift happened but I am grateful. So, I guess I might stay at this size for the rest of my life. Im working on accepting it. My husband randomly told me I was the perfect size a week or so ago. He thinks Im sexy. I have trouble seeing it.

When Im thin like I want to be I feel very powerful. It's so funny that a difference of 10 pounds is the difference between me feeling powerful and desired. Obviously its not all about my weight, and more of a perception of myself.

I am proud of myself for how far I have come off the dieting madness. I wonder if eventually I will be able to swing back to the middle and follow a diet for health only. Right now my inner self is screaming NOOOO never again! LIke, I think my inner self is really mad at diets and myself for going on them. I just can't imagine eating the way someone else tells me too right now. It seems so insulting to myself and like not trusting or loving my body in any way.

So, the journey continues.

Hi guys!

Can I join? I've been on my journey for awhile. Quick introduction. I'm 22 year old woman and I used to have all kinds of eating disorder tendencies (mainly BED) and **** of a lot of restricting.
Now for the last 3 years I've made some great strides with overcoming binging and when I decided to stop all dieting altogether, my binges stopped. I've read at least 5 books on normal/intuitive eating and for the past 3 years have been following the principles, although I've went back to dieting quite a few times, so I've been back and forth. Now I'm seriously done.

Although most of my disordered behaviours have thankfully gone, there are still some left. For one, I'm obsessed with reading recipes/fitness/diet sites. I used to think I was a foodie, but honestly? I'm not. My head is just so used to food thoughts that now when I have begun to normalize, it gets scared and it tries to keep food in my head all the time. I think I have made some progress with that too and I'm trying to be patient. I promised myself not to google/surf anything food related, unless I have a specific recipe in mind that I'm actually doing that night.

I'm proud of all the progress I've done and although I have still way to go, I'm thankful that there are like-minded people, who get that maybe food shouldn't be that big of a deal.
I've been lurking your threads for a long time, so you don't feel like strangers to me and maybe from now on I won't be a stranger either.

This past week I've been eating french fries and pasta and cookies (and a few carrots) and I'm so craving something fresh now. That initially caused some anxiety, because I'm scared of being "good" and eating "good" foods. I've been here before, because like I said this isn't my first journey with IE.
I started a little diary to gather my thoughts, look at them from a logical perspective, coming up with better ideas and soothing my less nice feeling thoughts. If it's okay I'm gonna share.

These are about 1. freaking out about craving something "good" and 2. anxiety about going grocery shopping tonight and not knowing what I want to buy 3. gaining weight because I've been eating "badly":

"I’ve actually lost some weight. That's cool but maybe that's not even the point.
There is nothing inherently bad about gaining weight.
My body shape is quite nice, so it wouldn’t even look that bad.
I’m starting to wonder, if I might choose to be even 10kg heavier, if that meant I was happy about my relationship with food,
I’m not a bottomless pit, I don’t even want to eat all the time or everything.
I’m getting bored with foods I thought I wouldn’t get bored with.
I don’t even want most heavy foods and I’m starting to want different things, variety, which is super cool.
I don’t need to categorize good or bad foods, just foods I like/don’t and those that make me feel good. Nobody else knows what those are, but me.
There is not one perfect way to eat, nor there is a perfect diet.
Balance is good.
My body can be trusted and this is a process of learning.
I enjoy that I’m starting to want variety and different things, that is progress baby.
Eating can be easy and enjoyable.
Food doesn’t have to be a big part of my life, again this is a journey, so no hurry.
I am an adult and I can take care of myself and not take things too seriously. Yes I can learn to ease up.
Nothing is written in stone! Nothing is that serious. There are no mistakes, just oppoturnities to learn and maybe do something differently in the future.
I deserve to treat myself and my body well.
If I go grocery shopping and have no idea of what I want to cook, it’s not dangerous. So many people (even adults) eat “snack foods” for dinner.
I’m doing my best to make sure that I have delicious food available and that is enough.
I am noticing that I want to eat things that make me feel good and so what if I don’t yet have ideas on what those actually are.
Food has nothing to do with who I am as a person."

So glad to be here! Hope you are all having a good day!

Welcome Beeonne! Glad you decided to come out of lurkdom! Having been on the IE journey for quite a while as well, I can really relate to what you are saying. I get the same anxiety sometimes when I want "good" foods or discover that I have lost weight. That is a great idea to do a thought journal, its a good way to become aware of your thoughts and I can definitely relate to all those thoughts.

I was thinking about it on the drive to drop off my kids at school this morning and although I think I have gained weight, I am actually doing so much better than I was. I don't obsess over food anymore, I don't feel guilty for eating ice cream or chocolate or whatever. I pretty much stabilize my food eating because I don't like eating when Im not hungry. Yesterday I had a huge lunch and then wasn't hungry for dinner. I ate some yogurt and some chocolate kisses after I put the kids to bed ( and some tangelos to help fight off my cold) and that was it. I didn't obsess about my food, think about if it was ok to eat at night, try to figure out if I ate too much that day... or even pat myself on the back for not eating dinner. Honestly, I forgot I didn't eat dinner. My thoughts at night used to be consumed by food and now I forget to think about food because Im not hungry, and Im busy hanging out with my husband, doing our bedtime routine so its not important.

ANyway, I forgot I ate dinner until this morning as I was driving I realized I was hungry and what sounded good was a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. ( what we had for dinner last night) So I came home and had a big bowl of what I made for dinner last night and it was totally delicious. a couple hours later I wanted some cereal, so I had some. No guilt no thoughts of you shouldn't have that because you had a big breakfast. I am so done with that!

The other weird thing is that when I was reading the diet/exercise books. I also felt like screw that! I don't want to change my body, I don't want to try to get a flat tummy or thinner thighs, I am happy with how it is. Which is also weird because I still feel bigger and less attractive. I think Im in transition or maybe rebellion from so many years of trying to shape my body.

My life is just so free from food obsession! I love it so much! I feel like before I was living in a prison of my own making and now I have set myself free.

beeonne and pinkhippie I so relate in so much of what you are sharing.

Some of the things I want to work on at this time is to get to the place where I can stay off the scales. I heard a woman on one of the Weigh Down videos say that she had to stop weighing because if she gained she felt she had to eat less and on days she weighed less that she thought she could celebrate ad eat more. I think I relate to that. Some how I've got to stop letting the scale have so much power over me and not weigh so often. I just can't go cold turkey giving up the scales, but maybe I could cut back to weighing either once a week and progress to once a month. I've got to start somewhere.

Another thing I heard on the second WD video was "well this week you've been thinking about going back to dieting haven't you. The thing is that I'm starting week 2 back to IE and I have to say that I'm constantly fighting the thought that maybe I should eat less carbs or do WW or some other diet. It is like she knew exactly what I was thinking. So I'm thinking that when you diet for so many years that it is sooooo easy to keep feeling (I actually feel) guilty because I'm not on some kind of diet. But I know that diets have never worked for me in 50 yrs of trying them. So why do I keep thinking that I can keep doing the same old thing I've done for all those years and it will be any different this time? I think it is because I've been conditioned to think "maybe this time".

I haven't fallen back into the diet mode yet. It would be easy right now since I ended up with a 2 lb gain this week. However, I keep trying to remember reading in one of the IE books that it is normal to gain when we first start doing IE and if I keep following the principles that it will eventually work.

This is definitely a progress in work.

I know its hard but I finally realized that for me weighing was detrimental. My weight is too issue laden for me. If I connect my eating to my weight, I can't successfully do IE. I know its hard to give up dieting and trying to control your eating. It is scary to release the food brakes. Although I have been working on the principles of IE for a few years now, I haven't actually given up dieting, restricting, type behavior and thoughts until only a few months ago. It has really made a difference for me. I realize now that I kept putting myself back in my progress every time I went on any kind of diet or food restriction, no matter how I justified it, even if I called it "waiting til I was hungry".

You are doing so good! Keep it up! It will be so worth it when you are able to eat without guilt or condemnation and stop thinking about food all the time. It's so wonderful to go to bed at night without having had a 3 hour internal struggle/conversation about whether I should eat something or not.

Pinkhippie I long to be where you are in IE. I've had a setback and I've gained weight and I'm buying into the diet mentality that is so easily spurned on by stress. I'm on the scale too and I know that is not good. I feel like a diet junky right now and buying into thoughts like "I have to lose x amount of weight by thanksgiving" and it's tearing me apart. I'm trying to buckle down to return to mindful eating, I have to focus on this because it's what gets me back on track. I'm also hopelessly late night eating and that is usually a signal of too much stress and not enough self care going on in my day. The holidays are very difficult for me, as much as I look forward to them they cause a lot of angst and anxiety too.

I did pretty good most of last week, but the weekend was a complete flop. I never ate breakfast growing up and don't eat it until I actually get hungry during the week because I am home. For some reason, I notice that on the weekend when I have beauty shop on Saturday and church on Sunday, I seem to have this fear of getting hungry while I'm away from home and not being able to get to food. Once I start eating before I'm hungry, I seem to lose all ability to recognize when I'm hungry for the whole weekend. I never binge but if it wasn't a binge it was definitely 2 nights of grazing.

Even though I bought the book Thin Within and a lot of what it says is good, I decided to take a notebook for notes and watch the Weigh Down videos starting with the 1st one again this morning. I am so glad that I did. Now it is a Christian thing, but even if you are of some other religion, it is so good because she is a dietician who learned how to eat from watching a thin friend eat and then she tells how our bodies work to lose weight. I'm sharing the link to what I heard this morning here as I think it would be helpful with IE whether you watch any of the others or not.

http://www.weighdownathome.com/Video...eighDownBasics

One of the things I heard today hopefully with help me get away from the fear of being hungry and not being able to get to food that I will share with y'all. It is the importance of why IE tells us to learn to wait until we hungry before we eat. I'm sure I've read some of this in other IE books/programs, but it didn't really make sense until now. Also, I remember the time that I would go up to 6 hrs or more without eating and made the mistake of asking an IE group how long you could safely go without eating and she told me not to go more than 5 hrs without food. I'm sure that was before Intermittent Fasting became popular.

Our body will signal us with "stomach" hunger which she calls physiological hunger when it needs fuel. When we are overweight we carry extra fuel (fat) around our waist and on our hips. If we cannot get to food when we first get the stomach hunger signal, she said don't worry. The signal usually only lasts about 10 minutes. Also we should count this as a good thing even if we cannot eat at that time (although she says don't do it all the time). Our body will take the fuel it needs from our old stores in our body until we can get something to eat. Turns out this is the beauty of learning to eat Intuitively as I see that this is what makes it work if we can learn this important key. If we will wait until we actually feel the hunger then our body will take some of its fuel from our stored fat fuel while we are deciding what we want to eat and prepare it. It all makes sense to me now. Since my body is using stored fat while I'm getting ready to eat, when I get my meal and set down to eat slowly like I should eat then I should not feel famished, but able to eat a smaller amount to be satisfied. My body will then switch from the old fuel to the new fuel I'm feeding it but that will be less than it would have been if I had eaten just because it is time to eat.

Instead of using outside controls (such as the clock etc) and man made "diet" rules, we should start using the responses that God created in us so that we can live and feel better. By doing it this way we will be able to lose down to our normal size and we will feel better.

I felt that I had to go back and watch the videos because I felt myself wanting to try one more diet. Our preacher preached on Sampson yesterday. He said if he had a title for his sermon it would be "Can anyone really be that stupid"? I thought of how Sampson never learned until his eyes were gouged out and he was in prison that he couldn't trust Delilah and then I realized diets have been my Delilah. They never work, but I keep going back and I keep getting worse. Then I had to see that yes "we can be that stupid". I have been that stupid in the past.

The result? No more dieting for me. I am so grateful they have Weigh Down online now. In fact, I'm learning much more than I ever did when I went to a meeting years ago and had one of her books. I think because she can say more and use some visuals plus testimonials of people who it has worked for.

Hang in there. We'll do it.

Palestrina, Im glad to hear from you. I have been thinking about you and wondering how you have been doing. I wish I had magic words to help because I have been in the same situation and might possibly be again. I know I have mentioned it before but I really feel like When Women stop Hating Their Bodies was the catalyst for me. It challenges so many things we just take for granted in our society. Sometimes it is hard to read because of it. The other thing I did was... I went back and read every single one of my posts here in the intuitive eating threads. I had started to feel like I was having the same realizations and posting the same stuff over and over again so I wanted to check and see if that was true. And it was! I realized as I read that over and over again what had happened was I had gained some weight and abandoned IE for a few weeks to a month while still trying to convince myself I was just trying to eat "healthy". Restrictions, cutting out certain food groups etc...

I was able to see in black and white how every time I fell back into a diet of any sort that it took me several steps backward in my IE journey and I was just repeating my steps over and over again. That is what gave me the determination to NOT DIET. I saw that it would fail and hurt my IE journey. Instead I expected to gain weight and worked on being ok with that and like I said previously I threw everything out the window and just ate when I wanted to and didn't worry about being mindful or any of that. And I believe that slowly over time it has been helping me because I don't think about food any more. I have a bag of dark chocolate kisses sitting beside me. I wanted some chocolate while Im on my "kid break". I ate however many I wanted and eventually felt like I had enough of them, the taste of chocolate I wanted was fulfilled. I went back to typing, reading online. A little while later I looked over and there was the chocolate bag. I had completely forgotten all about them. There are still many in the bag. We all know this would be IMPOSSIBLE while dieting. The kisses would be calling to me the whole time and there is no way I could forget about them. I would have to get them out of sight, or throw them in the freezer or something. Or eat them all so they couldn't tempt me, feeling guilty, out of control and terrible the whole time. So, it is soooo soo worth it to not diet again.

Try not to look at gaining weight as a setback, but just as part of your learning journey. That is what I am doing. Im thinking of you and hoping you are feeling better soon.

Im glad the weigh down method is helping you. It seems there is some emphasis on weight loss so I don't think it would work for me, but everyone is different and Im glad you have found something to help keep you off the dieting rollercoaster. It's true, diets do not help us. A very vivid example of gouged out eyes and such but I see where they were going. Im glad we are all here to support each other.