I think it's important that you never get too hungry. That speaks "famine" and that's exactly what we're trying to overcome. When you only eat between hunger and satisfaction your body gets the message that it doesn't have to survive a famine anymore.

Am using Overcome Overeating book, its like my bible and did not have anything in my food bag. We all have anxiety issues and according from this book, not looking at the clocks on eating times, which I need to stop doing.

I deal with bloat issues, way to much sodium and drank a gallon of water today, under medications and get dry mouth. So I stayed the same at 330..

Hi Ladies,

carolr and Liliann I am trying to learn the difference "true" hunger and eating just because it is time or I think I'm hungry. I know there is a difference if I can learn it. I do seem to get hungry more often and seem to need to eat something every 2 to 3 hrs. I hope by eating what I want every few hours will help my body realize it is not going to have to worry about famine any more. I also agree that we should not get too hungry and I hate feeling full. I still have a tendency to eat to full sometimes, but it is getting less and less.

carolr I really enjoyed the article.

Liliann I too have to watch the salt in take. Not real close, but I also drink a lot of water and green and herb teas. Trying to get away from sweetners, but still hang on to Splenda. I should use Stevia, but like the taste of Splenda. My new doctor I will be seeing in July doesn't like her patients to use any sweetners of any kind and recommends raw sugar if you have to use it, but it has more cals than I want. Like you, I also need to not eat by the clock.

Everybody else and everyone have a good week end.

I just read a post on the John Gabriel method and it sounds similar to IE except there is a lot of self examination work with it. I need to look around here because there must be others doing IE but not calling it that.

Hi All,

Im struggling with eating well this week.I have been eating to soothe my stress lately and not to mention that family members have brought home alot of sweets this week,and I have been indulging in to many.Long story short I gained 2 pounds.Aarghhh.

So for right now,I still need to still count calories as it helps me be accountable for what kinds of foods Im eating.I need to discipline my mind for healthy food and right amounts.Besides using this as support here on 3FC's,I'm in a recovery group at my church for co-dependancy and negative Food behaviors.Only a few women there struggle with the food issues besides me.I eat to comfort and soothe especially when angry,stressed or depressed.

For me high sugar and high salt puts weight on me real fast.So I usually stay away from them.Even at small amounts.I have really slowed down my metabolism through the years of dieting also.I think some exercise will help this.If Im going to change me I need to change negative health behaviors,so I need to start walking on my treadmill at least 3 days a week,and pay attention to what kinds of foods I'm eating to much of.I also learned years ago that when I drink more water I eat less as it fills me up,not to mention it gets rid of my excess water retention,and I lose weight faster.

Trish,Thanks for the input.Hey I would like to use stevia,I have heard good about using it in place of sugar.I don't know where to shop for it though.A natural food store I'm presuming?

Carol, What is IE? I notice that you all talk about a book.It sounds like the fullness principle somewhat am I right?Do you count calories?How about the cooking?My family eats foods that I gain to easily on.Ice cream,soda,cookies,high fat,high calorie stuff like pizza,ect.Its hard to prepare for them and for me two seperate meals so I eat alot of frozen healthy choice type meals.I don't like to cook much anymore from too many years in a large family and cooking for large crowds.But I did buy a cookbook for healthy eating and am going to prepare some of those meals and freeze them each week.Any suggestions?I have Ziploc Freezer bags and I saved some of the plastic food trays washed and plan to reuse.

Eating when hungry about every 2-3 hours and not feeling deprived or famished.

Have a good day,Judi

Stern discipline awaits him who leaves the path. Proverbs 15:10

Judi I have gone through a lot of what you are going through now. I counted calories for a while to get an idea of how much I was eating. I'm not doing that any more as I've settled into a routine that I really like that fits my lifestyle. It is good to learn what works for you. IE book we use is Intuitive Eating by Ecelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.

I understand how you feel about cooking. For years when my previous husband was living, I regularly cooked for 7 people because our daughter and her children lived with us. He wanted 3 meals a day and full meals. It was how he was raised. On special occasions or someone came to town, it was nothing for me to cook for as many as 30 people because everyone would come to my house.. Now that I am married to Tony and it is just the two of us since we don't live around family, I am spoiled. It is so easy to go in and cook for just the 2 of us. Tony only eats one meal a day so I cook one meal and we kind of snack the rest of the day. I have stocked up on fruit for snacks.

It is important for you to learn what you like to eat and eat because you enjoy the food. Do not beat yourself up when you eat something you did not plan. If you can get the book it will help because you will learn that there are no good foods, bad foods. However, I do have foods that I don't bring into the house, because I cannot leave them alone. They are trigger foods for me. They are not bad foods, they are just foods I cannot handle. I don't know the ages of your children, but I read of a woman who lost her weight and kept it off. She did not stop her family from having their foods. She asked them to keep them in their room. Another person I read about divided the refrigerator and had all her husband's foods on one side and her's on another.

I also read the book The Complete Beck Diet. I don't follow the diet, but I do use the cognitive therapy skills. I took them and personalized them to fit me and my lifestyle. I made the Response cards on colorful 3x5 cards and my husband made me some small cards for the Advantages Deck. I use them with my Intuitive Eating. I read these everyday. They are helping me a lot. I don't know what you can afford to purchase, but I would recommend the IE book, the Beck book and also either one of the books by Anne M Fletcher. I have both of them one is Thin for Life and Eating Thin for Life. I got both of her books but you don't need both. I probably would have bought Eating Thin for Life, if I had it to do over. She writes about people who she calls Master Dieters and Maintainers because they have lost their weight and kept it off. She shares some of the things they do to keep their weight off as well as how they did it. These books have helped me learn to love myself and to realize that I need to be good to myself. I need to take care of me. So many times we who are overweight are good at taking care of others but not ourselves. Don't beat yourself up. And remember you are not alone. There are a lot of us going through what you are and we are all working at finding a way to deal with it.

Sorry this is so long, but I can feel your pain and hope some of what I have shared has helped. Remember we are here for you.

Very well said, Trish. I do eat all foods but try to remember to wait for hunger. One thing that helps me is that God did not design our bodies for weight loss but for famine survival. It takes a long time to convince our bodies that we are not in a famine if we have spent years dieting. But neither does it want or need to be overweight and will naturally lower the appetite when we eat consistently. If you would have told me that 30 years ago, I would have laughed.

carolr Me too. I had a friend about 30+ years ago who was a nutritionist and I asked her to make me a food plan. We lived in different cities so she mailded it to me. I laughed when I got it because I thought she was nuts. I remember telling someone "I can't eat all that food, I'll gain weight". Who knew? We were conditioned to believe we were supposed to starve to lose weight. Our Mother's generations thought this and taught it to us.

Trish, Are you a part of that thick or thin group? How do you like it?

Carolr, yes I joined that group but haven't been there in a while. They have some good stuff there.

More from Beyond Chocolate

Principle no. 3:

Eat whatever you want
Last night when I was hungry, all I could think about was a fairy cake. A thickly frosted cupcake wouldn't do and a fruity muffin wasn't even close. No, it had to be a plain, white-iced, vanilla sponge bun. With a Smartie on top. Confused to find me baking as dusk drew near, my friends puzzled over whether my body craved a sugar hit. No such confusion for me. This was pure nostalgia. A not-so-great day had left me needing the foods of my childhood...I was hungry for a slice of home.

A quick chat with other Beyond Chocolaters suggests this tale rings true for many women. Al, Manchester has strong childhood memories of 'eating the icing off birthday cakes my Mum had made' while Chocolate Fairy-in-training Emma knows that banana ice-cream takes her straight back to a childhood in Australia.

At Beyond Chocolate we know that when we learn to tune in to our hunger, our bodies demand different foods for different reasons. Food to satisfy a nutritional balance, food to heal and repair, food to prevent illness and food to nurture and enjoy.

But with their rules, regimes and meal plans, diets take no account of which foods our bodies actually want to eat. Flick through the pages of any slimming magazine and you'll see the 'substitute sections' suggesting diet vs. real-life food swaps.

Fancy a wedge of flaky pastry apple pie?

Choose a steamed apple.

Have a hankering for custard-drenched trifle?

Opt instead for a smear of cottage cheese on a digestive.

Apples, digestives and cottage cheese are all well and good but we know from experience that if we're hungry for a Kit Kat, carrot sticks won't cut it.

At our Experiences, BiteSize sessions and on our online course, women are given the tools to let these foods back into their lives. For some, childhood treats may well be as amazing as the memory...but be prepared for a surprise. In her book Breaking free from Emotional Eating, Geneen Roth tells the story of a friend who yearned for the sugar cookies of her younger years. 'Every time she shopped she'd glance at the row of sweets, find the sugar cookies, decide no, she couldn't, wouldn't, and she'd move on. On my suggestion she went to the store and bought three packages of sugar cookies. She called me half an hour later. "You're not going to believe this," she said. "I don't even like them. For thirty years I've been dying for this moment and now they're not even good. I make better cookies." We laughed, and she fed the cookies to the dog.'

Very true. When we spend years avoiding our forbidden foods, or telling ourselves they shouldn't be eaten, we imbue them with almost magical powers. By eating whatever we want, we free ourselves from the hold that these foods have over us - we take back the power to make a real choice about whether we want to eat them or not.

So back to those fairy cakes. Fresh sponge straight from the oven gave me the nostalgic warmth I was hungry for that night. How different from my 'diet days' when the craving would have been ignored for weeks on end until my one bun hunger became a ten bun binge, leaving me unsatisfied in every way.

carolr - I enjoyed this article and I have actually found it to be true in my life. There were foods I felt I was deprived of by diet and once I started IE and ate those foods they lost their power over me. While it is true that I still enjoy some of those foods, it is also true that I have learned that there are a lot I have no desire any more and some I don't even like. There are so many foods that I ate for years because they were healthy and I thought I should eat them. I used to think I could not live without having fried chicken was always my cheat food/reward food. I loved chips. No more. When I moved from TX, I didn't find anyone who made fried chicken like I had then. Never cared much for KFC but was better than nothing especially crispy. We went to KFC yesterday and I ordered their roasted chicken. Had chips with a burger today and they just don't taste the same. So for me this article is very true.

Everybody. Y'all have a great IE week end.

Just saying hi!

Hi Everybody

Everything is going good. Hope you all have a great Memorial Day.

Hi Patty and all. Today I forgot to eat. Can you believe it? I have only eaten once. Better get a little something now.