@Pinkhippie you need to write about these things as often as you need to
as a way to process. You're not boring us and it's not something others are not interested in. It helps illustrate the frustrating truth that just because you understand something logically doesn't mean it doesn't affect you. That's been my problem with therapy in the past. I get it, I understand why I developed my eating disorder and have even learned to appreciate my body's genius way of taking care of myself when I needed to be taken care of. But now what? How to fix that? I was listening to an I.E.- friendly podcast recently that gave statistics that were difficult to swallow. Something about how it takes an average of 7-8 years to overcome anorexia and bulemia but it takes 14+yrs to overcome binge eating disorder. Does that mean I'll be 50 and in irreparable health before I can feel freedom from this disease?

For the first time in my life I made a New Years resolution that has nothing to do with my weight. Instead I am seeking to let go of facebook and focus on finding happiness. I want to focus on my health but not my physical health by means of dieting. I need my mental and emotional health back, I need to do better at processing stress, and taking care of my emotional needs. And I have a bone to pick with my husband. I know men don't like emotions or talking about things but I really need to be able to communicate my feelings. Instead I hold everything in and deal with it in the only way I know how, by eating. I am starting to be done with keeping the peace. I long to be carefree.

Lost my holiday weight.

Thank you Palestrina. I am glad you understand. I do appreciate the reassurance as well. It does feel vulnerable to spill out your innermost thoughts on a forum for all to read. I don't even talk to my husband about this stuff that much. He just doesn't get it, so eventually I will share things with him but only after i Have processed it for a long time and can really articulate it. It IS frustrating to intellectually get things but not be able to make the necessary changes in thinking or feeling. I have also experienced that with other issues but usually there is a clicking/turning point where I feel it in my bones AND know it intellectually and from there change is made. That STILL Hasn't happened with my eating and its frustrating.


Good for you on your resolutions! I gave up facebook after the election and I feel SO MUCH happier for it. I don't even miss it. I just got on today to check my school districts page because of the snow and I read their post, and then shut it down. No desire to check anything else because I feel like once I separated myself sufficiently from facebook, it no longer has a hold on me.

I understand eating feelings to keep the peace. I feel like I used to do that a lot more with my husband a year or so ago and only recently have I started speaking up when things are not ok or I am upset about something. I explained to him that I had been raised to not express my needs or feelings but I was working on it and I was going to start telling how I felt about things more. It is a little scary and definitely led to some conflict but in the long run, it has made things much better. It feels really good because its definitely a way of taking care of your emotional needs and it shows you ( and others) that your feelings matter. I think that is so important, and obviously something I am still working on.

Congratulations!

I am still a little more aware of my brain wanting food rather than my body but its weird how strong it still is and how much I will rationalize it only to realize later after I have satisfied my emotional eating urge that I wasn't physically hungry. I guess all I can do is just keep trying to be aware. I just can't believe how hard this is. Well, here is to another year of progress for all of us!

Well,
I have been trying something new which I guess is not IE like. I read some book about eating disorders and how we can't really rely on our hunger signals and its better to just eat on a schedule. AND to only go about 3 hours between eating. Crazy talk! But I decided to try it. My experience has been that even though I don't think I am hungry, when I start eating it turns out I actually was and I enjoy my food. Because I know I will have food in the next few hours, I don't eat more than my body needs, I have less of that frantic feeling like " I don't know when I will be hungry again so must eat LOTS". Which is funny because why would you need food before you are hungry? But, I guess maybe I always wait until I am REALLY REALLY hungry but don't realize it?

I know I have talked about this before but realizations ebb and flow like waves I guess. I feel like as time goes on and I continue to eat every 3 hours that I am actually eating much more nutritiously and I feel good about it. When I get SUPER Hungry is when I crave the sugary stuff. Eating like this, I am happily eating pretty well and feeling much better. I also realize how hungry I have been while waiting to be hungry. Today I noticed that I was lightheaded right around my new lunch time. NOrmally I would still wait hours before eating because my stomach wasn't growling and I didn't feel desperate for food. ( my definition of hunger)

I guess when I tried to eat intuitively I was not doing it in the best way for me because I waited far too long to eat. WHen I tried to not let that happen I felt adrift and ate constantly getting into the cycle of eating when not hungry. The other unexpected thing that I am discovering is knowing that I will eat in a few hours whether or not I am hungry is making it where I don't freak out about how much or how little to have at each meal, trying to eat little enough to be hungry or a lot so I won't be hungry, I feel like it takes the pressure off. Having a structure like eating every 3 hours has been really helpful for me. Im hoping eventually I will relearn what moderate hunger feels like and can start doing more body listening.

Anyway, that is me for now, Im feeling pretty good about how things are going, we will see if that changes.

Bumping this up for anyone interested.

Hi Carol! Nice to see you.

How are things with you?

Everything here is just about the same as usual. I am still trying to make sure to snack. I have noticed over time that my snacks have downgraded to a piece of fruit and not another small meal. Hunger feels like less of an emergency than it used to. Giving myself permission to eat or even giving myself a structured framework to eat seems to have helped that. I have also fallen into a dessert once a week pattern. I notice the day after I eat dessert that I want another one the next day and it takes concious effort and awareness to not automatically eat something sugary. I also notice after I eat sugar I feel hungrier for about an hour but if I don't eat something, my natural feeling of fullness comes in about an hour later and I am glad I didn't eat anything. I feel like for me, sugar really messes with my natural signals and being in tune with my body.

My 13 year old daughter is naturally very thin and pretty much all of her friends have some kind of eating disorder and call themselves fat and are jealous of her. It really upsets her and she tries to talk to them about society, body image and body acceptance. Of course, they don't listen to her because she is thin but I am SO proud. I feel like all my hard work on myself and overcoming many of my eating issues has paid off not just for me but for my children. She really believes in accepting her body just the way it is ( even though kids tease her about being skinny) and knows that her body size does not determine her worth and value as a person. By the time I was 13 I was like her friends, feeling fat and like my worth was dependent on my weight. And my parents encouraged that belief even though looking back I was thin like her. It makes it even more important to me to accept my body and recognize that my value as a person is not dependent on my body size, because my kids are learning from me even when I am not consciously teaching them.

I never thought much about my weight in hs. I was 115. My first trouble came when I went on birth control before my wedding...........and then pregnancy and all that goes with that. Funny, I always wanted a baby but back then you went to the dr. before the wedding and you just did what they said. ha.

Yeah pregnancy and post pregnancy caused me trouble as well. Unfortunately hs is when I developed my eating disorder and it carried on into my twenties and then got retriggered by pregnancy weight gain.

Birth control always seemed to keep about an extra 5 pounds on me.

Hello everyone. It has been a really long time since I've been here. I've been dieting for quite some time and it hasn't worked. It works for a while, but it has only caused me to lose the ability to recognize when I am hungry and when I'm satisfied. Today I was talking to my sister about us going on a diet together for support and she was telling me how she eats. She isn't losing any weight, but the way she eats sounded so much like IE and I realized that I didn't want to discourage her. It made me think of how I used to eat when I was doing IE. So I've decided to come back to IE.

I've been reading some of the posts on here and realized from some of the things Pinkhippie shared that dieting has taught me to eat by the clock and caused me to lose the ability to know if I am really hungry or not. It has also taught me to eat only what I think I should eat rather than eat what I really want to eat. Example, for 2 or 3 days I have really wanted to eat PB toast for breakfast, but instead I ate what I felt I needed to eat. There isn't anything wrong with eating a bowl of oatmeal when I want it and there are days that I do want it, but it wasn't what I wanted the last 2 or 3 times I did eat it.

I will be getting my IE books back out and re-read them. Palestrina I really enjoyed the Ice cream article. Thanks for sharing it. I will spend time catching up on reading and catch y'all again soon.

Carolr

I found this quite helpful as to how IE works to help with healthier eating etc. and decided to share it.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/weig...ght/ar-AAmjG6g

Welcome back, Trish.

A good book to read is the Eden Diet.

Carolr Thanks for the welcome back.

Habit of Dieting... my first thought was what should I eat for breakfast this morning? Then I remembered "I'm not dieting any more. I am free from those thoughts". Then I begin to think "Starting today, I can eat breakfast if I am hungry and want it, but I don't have to eat anything if I don't want it."

My DH eats fruit when he gets up to take his pills with. He eats cauliflower before he goes to bed. This is a routine that he has everyday without fail unless we are traveling. So the first thing I do everyday after I dress is go into the kitchen and fix both so I can be done with it. So I went into the kitchen and prepared those and put them in the fridge. Then I decided that I was not hungry. I just wanted a cappuccino. I made the cappuccino and a pot of tea to drink throughout the day.

The last few months have been really interesting and stressful, but a learning experience for me. My 93 yr old Daddy spent Christmas throughout the first few weeks of January in and out of the hospital. He was diagnosed with CHF and long story short ended up with a pacemaker inserted. My sister and I and our DH have spent a lot of time taking care of him as he has been walking through this experience. He goes to a Cardiac Clinic where they check him and teach him how to eat and live with CHF. They don't tell him anything about how much to eat except to not eat over 2000mg of sodium.

I find it interesting that they didn't put him on a diet. The dietician in the hospital told him that he can have a burger from Whataburger (his favorite) as long as he leaves off the pickle and cheese. He now gets it that way and with mustard no mayo and brought the sodium down to half of the regular. It is just amazing to me that they didn't take anything food away from him really. He can still have some of the foods he likes, but in smaller sizes.

I also went to a diabetic dietician last month for myself and they don't really tell you not to eat certain foods at all, although she did tell me to limit my calories. All that did was to make me want to eat more calories. I just cannot live on a diet, count calories, points or carbs any more. This is why I am back to IE. One thing the dietician told me was, to quit worrying about what the scale says and just work on the blood sugar readings. The Diabetic educator that I talked to told me that when I eat to lower the blood sugar readings and keep them normal that the scale will follow, but they both said not to make the scale the goal. It won't be easy but I am going to try to not get on the scale everyday. That has been a habit I got into when I started keeping up with the glucose and blood pressure readings about 6 or 7 yrs ago. I'm going to shoot for once a week scale check to start with and make Sunday's my WI day since I'm starting back on IE today. I'm just taking baby steps here.

I have been keeping up with calories etc on MFP and my first thought today was to log my foods on there, but I think I will probably take it off of my favorites for now.

So far, I am at peace with me decision and I look forward to being with y'all again as we support each other and share with each other. Another good thing is that I just talked to my sister I hang out with helping each other take care of our Daddy and we are doing IE together. That will be helpful too. I'm also going to the store this afternoon to get me a few things I have really been hungry for lately and the surprise is that it is healthy food and not "play foods". Greens and cornbread. Crazy I know. LOL

Have a great day!!!

Thanks Carolr. I think I still have that book and I will get it out and read it. I hope I didn't give it to a friend back in SC. I wonder if the author still has a website.

I'm in Boston for the week.