Hi all!
Carol, I understand about your medical woes. I spent about 8,000 in dental bills last year. Then I got a staph infection in March and that ended up being 1,500. etc. etc. etc. It seems like I am always needing medical care and my dh hasn't been to the dr in the 15 years we've been married. My heart is with you in this painful time. Listen to Mary, take care of the dental issues. Lean on us all you want.
Rhonda, Glad you're here! The more the stronger!
Christy, I so relate to how you got to where you are. I always ate whatever I wanted, worked out whenever I felt like it (which was rare). Then I met my husband who was a work out buff. All of the sudden my weight at 143 pounds (I'm 5'6") wasn't low enough according to my husband's fitness magazines.
So the dieting started, two kids at 15 years later I weigh 200. I keep thinking that if I hadn't given into the dieting mentality, my struggle with food might never have begun. That is why I am on my quest back to my old way of thinking. I don't ever have to weigh 143 again. I just want to feel comfortable.
Be right back to share an IE story from today. My little one needs a snack.

I don't know that my goal is even really weight loss anymore. I just want to be at a stable weight. I'm sick and tired of going up and down the scale with losing and then gaining the weight back. I want to just be a size. Doesn't particularly have to be a certain size, just a size. I'm tired of having several different wardrobes.

Okay here is one sign of progress.
A few weeks ago I went to the movies. I got a large diet soda and a large popcorn. I got the large in my old frame of "the last supper" eating. I didn't end up eating it all, and my kids had some too, but it was the panic in me worrying that anything smaller just wouldn't be enough. The fear of running out!
Today I went to the movies. The old me wanted to get the large since it is only $.50 more. I remembered that the large was too big last time. I bought the medium this time because my brain was just not ready to handle the fact that a small would be plenty. Again I had popcorn left over and I still ate what I wanted. I even stopped eating when I realized I had had enough.
The third time will be a charm. I am ready for a small popcorn or the kids pack the next time I go. (Of course if I don't want popcorn, I won't get any.) To me this is the perfect example of relearning. It is a multi-step process, but it is comfortable. It is going to take some experimentation to get the whole process right. If I were in my old mindset, this is what I would have been saying to myself "Popcorn is bad, I shouldn't eat popcorn, I am going to eat it just this once. I better eat the whole bucket since I am never going to have popcorn again. I hate myself because I ate the whole bucket. I've ruined my diet, I might as well go binge some more because tomorrow I am going to start over and I am going to be perfect." Sound familiar?
Instead of this, I am proud of my break through. I still feel full from the popcorn, so I don't really feel the need for dinner. I am at peace.

Christy,
Although I am working on other stages as well, rejecting the diet mentality is a daily struggle for me. I always think there has to be some magic pill! Believe me though, I've spent some money on all the pills and never lost a pound. I also have trouble looking at other people and not determining my worth based on how I look compared to them. I hate that! I want to look at people and see bodies not reasons to hate myself. One good thing is that the more I reject this way of thinking, the more I notice other peoples body talk, diet talk, food talk, etc. and I can laugh with relief because I know I am moving away from there. I am going to shoot, no slap, the next person I am eating with who say, "I shouldn't eat this" and then stuffs it in their mouth!

Physical hunger vs. mental hunger:

I guess I'm confused about why there are questions re: recognizing physical vs. mental hunger. I just assumed that physical hunger is when your stomach grumbles multiple times and mental hunger is just when you feel like eating/think about eating but your stomach isn't grumbling. I haven't read the above books, so maybe this is too simplistic, but I thought I would ask to see if anyone agrees with this description or if I am off track.
Thanks.

Tara,

I think it is that simple, but for a lot of people that have been dieting for so long you sort of lose that mindset. Diets have told us how much, when and what to eat for so long that you forget that your body is made to do that for you.

That is right, Tara. But do you know how hard it is to get rid of the dieting mindset when you've been at it more than 30 yr,? It's tough. And you have a dear hubby that knows you've read literally hundreds of books to no avail? To him it's just calories in calories out and DON'T EAT THAT CAKE!!!!! Good job on the popcorn, Kay. And then there's those hundreds of people here on 3fc that are doing it a different way. It gets overwhelming sometimes.

Tara,
I think it also comes down the fact that people who have been ignoring physical hunger cues for so long might not recognize them anymore. Also, my stomach doesn't grumble. My first signs of the need for food are more the headache, weakness kind. The other struggle is how to change our mindset. If we have always fed our woes, we have to learn to deal with mental issues with something other than food. That can be a scary and challenging thing to do. I never realized that I self-medicate with food until I learned about IE, now I could describe hundreds of instances of this-in the past year alone!

I just finished reading The Overfed Head..........very interesting. There is the website with it, Thintuition. Might be a good place for ideas. Whenever I read a success story here on 3fc I wonder where they will be a year from now. Some seem to keep at it and stay thin. That is with diets. But I know where they have gotten me..........nowhere.

Carol,
Let's stick with this and support each other. I know it is tempting to try some diet when you read some of the posts. I get tempted to try them, and then I remember... I already have and they weren't for me! As we get more in touch with our bodies, we will gravitate toward healther food choices, we will eat less, etc. We will desire the foods that are the essentials of a good "diet" and we can enjoy the food we love without all of the feelings of restriction, guilt, and deprivation.

This is a great thread but also sad and discouraging for me. I never had a weight problem growing up. I ate when hungry and didn't eat when I wasn't hungry. I was very active and especially in the summer with no air conditioning, I just wasn't hungry and therefore, didn't eat a whole lot. I easily kept my weight around 118. We never owned a scale but I know my weight from the yearly high school physical that we had and I never had to change clothes sizes or anything like that.

At 20, I met my future husband. He was very controlling and made a big deal about heavy people. He always pointed them out and made fun of them. He also wouldn't eat unless I ate too. He would throw big temper tantrums and then go hungry and whine about it for hours. It just got easier to eat when he insisted rather than not and hear about it all day. (if I'd been stronger I would have said to heck with him and left him flat out but I didn't). In less than a years time, I went from 116 to 144. In the years that followed, I ballooned up to 186. I now can not tell when I'm hungry and when I'm full. I eat to numb feelings, to deal with stress. When he travels, I hardly eat and it's easy to lose weight but about a day or so before he is due back, I start bingeing something horrible. I never ate junk growing up and never acquired a taste but it doesn't matter now. I often don't even taste the food I'm gorging myself with.
We've done a lot of dealing with our issues and he doesn't nag me about food anymore but I am so much in the horrible trenches of binge eating and not listening to my body that I can't see my way out. I've tried every diet from atkins to raw, vegan to fat fasts. I last a few days then I binge. I bought Intuitive Eating a year or so ago and it's collecting dust on my bookshelf right next to the raw detox book. I feel like I can't commit to any of them and that drives me crazy, makes me upset, and sends me to next diet. Perhaps what I need is NO diet but to learn what came so naturally to me my first 20 years of life.

Sorry for the novel. I feel like I'm all over the place and I need a place to settle down.
thanks for listening..er..reading

Idrial,
Please stay with us. We know your pain. Let's try to work through this together! We are all here for the same reason.