I love Ted Talks but this one in particular is the worst! Ugh, I heard this one before I did IE and it was a total turn of to IE. I just listened to it again and ugh, I hated it even more.

Dear Debby Downer, what's with the 10lb weight loss miracle? For those of us who are obese and struggling to lose weight it DOES NOT HELP to tell us that our body has adjusted to this weight as a set point. So there's no hope for us ever! I just don't feel she does anything to really promote IE. It's just a bunch of sad facts and "life is unfair" and her voice grates on my nerves and that little tskst sound is godawful and her sour face are despicable. Ok rant over. I don't think this Ted talk is inspirational or informative in any way.

Hey all! So many threads on IE I am not sure where to post I see so many of you got success immediately after quitting dieting. I wish I could say the same. My problem is emotional eating. And I am not sure if it is possible for me to do well with IE until I manage to overcome my emotional eating. I am not hungry, I know I am not hungry, but I want to eat. I know I want to eat not because of hunger, but because I am lonely (sad, anxious, etc.). I know that food will not solve the problem, but I don't know how to solve the problem and just want to numb the pain. I know that changing a few things in my life (moving and job) may make things better, but I have to stay where I am for a while, so I need to find a way to cope with my feelings now. Did you have problems with emotional eating? Any advice? Taking a walk or a bath or writing down my feelings won't help - the urge to eat down my feelings is always stronger than rational ideas. So I need something more, well, more radical maybe. Something I could not read in a magazine for fitness superstars who just have a minor craving for something sweet but still have enough willpower to take the ****ing walk instead. Thanks ladies!

Yes I have problems with emotional eating. I don't usually reach for something when I'm overwhelmed with emotion. Typically if I'm really sad or angry I completely lose my appetite. My problem is more subtle emotions like boredom, or eating to distract myself from work that I should be doing. I have found help in the last few days with zen meditation. I used to do it more often but I sort of forgot about it in the hectic mess of my life in the past few years.

Meditation is relaxing and it makes me realize how much mental chatter I have in my head at all times. When I meditate I concentrate on listening to everything going on around me but not reacting to it emotionally. I hear my thoughts, little noises outside, people moving around my apartment building, the sound of the refrigerator, and the background hum that you hear when there are no other sounds present. After several minutes of doing this and focusing on my breathing I find that my thoughts take on the same emotional impact as the birds singing outside- they are present and I hear them but they don't carry any meaning.

It's ironic that as a religious studies grad student I've lost my connection to my own spirituality through the years of stress and strain. I'm now consciously trying to work on my own spiritual connection to the world. I've found that it helps tremendously.

Hi Cinnamon!

I do indeed understand exactly what you're going through. I suspect most everyone who practices IE has suffered with emotional eating; I know I have. And I also understand how difficult it is to do something other than eat.

We've all read the advice - take a walk, take a bubble bath, read a book, call a friend, yadayadayada. So easy to write, so difficult to do when that food is calling your name.

I can honestly say that now that I am no longer dieting, is is MUCH easier to ignore those food calls. Why? Because I know that I CAN eat the hamburger, chips, peanut butter cups, you name it. There is only one requirement that must be met - I must be hungry.

And if I still want that hamburger, those chips, that peanut butter cup, or anything else you can name, I must sit down, eat it slowly, savor it, and stop when I am no longer hungry.

When you first begin eating "intuitively," chances are your body will "intuitively" tell you to eat all those things that you have been programmed to believe are bad foods. This is where so many people feel IE won't work for them...they are convinced that they will stuff their faces with every conceivable type of "junk food" (the diet industry's words, not mine) and never come up for air. But if they really start focusing on their hunger/fullness cues as well as listening to what their body is telling them to eat, generally they will find themselves moving toward those foods that do provide better nutrition. Wannabeskinny can expand on that further, as she is experiencing that right now.

If you read my post about the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, you will see what I'm talking about. Even when I began IE I don't ever recall eating the same thing 5 days in a row (twice in one day) as I did with the PBJ episode. That was triggered by my co-worker mentioning that she had one for supper. I cannot TELL you how much I enjoyed those PBJ's. I couldn't wait to get home to eat them, I prepared them with care, I savored them. I enjoyed the he** out of them. But I'm finished with that - for now, anyway.

I'm typing this and I'm pretty hungry. Not ravenous, but hungry. And I want a salad - more specifically, a spinach salad. I don't have any spinach in the house so I'll be going to Le Madeleine (a regional chain) to get their salad sampler. I'll have the spinach salad, a scoop of either chicken or tuna salad (whatever strikes my fancy when I get there) and a bowl of their tomato soup. Yum!

This is my body telling me it's time for some leafy greens. It's saying - "Enough with the PBJ's already. You've satisfied that craving, so let's move on." And I'm paying close attention to what it's telling me.

You can do that too. It does, however, take some practice - and yes, a little discipline. I don't think it's anathema to the practice of IE to use the word "discipline." We're just using it in a different context.

Instead of using discipline in the diet context - aka "willpower" - to RESIST a certain food - we discipline ourselves to savor our food and to listen to our bodies & acknowledge their messages. Most of all, we listen to our bodies to determine when we're no longer hungry. Notice I didn't even say "full" - I said "no longer hungry." This is probably the hardest part of IE - has been for me, anyway.

Because for me, full has always meant stuffed. It may not mean that for others, but it did for me. I'm not a big snacker, but I always ate far more at each meal than I needed. In restaurants, I almost always cleaned my plate. At home, I almost always went back for seconds.

Now I actually ask for my "to go" box when I order my meal when dining out, and I rarely have a second helping of anything when eating at home. I try to leave a little of everything on my plate, but I don't always succeed. If I'm still really hungry I'll eat it all.

This is SUCH a personal journey. IE is the anti-diet, so each person has to approach it in his or her own way. And it takes practice. You won't be perfect right out of the gate, and you won't be perfect 10 years from now. Naturally thin people sometimes overeat, and they also sometimes eat when they are not hungry. The difference is - it's rare for them, and when they do, they naturally compensate for it by eating less the next day. They don't even have to think about it.

So Cinnamon, try very very hard to postpone any eating until you're hungry. Then eat what you want - without guilt. Once you get in the habit of this, it gets easier and easier.

Thought I'd check in with you guys today. Weighed myself on Saturday. Weight is up a lot, enough that I know it must be water weight. Yuck. I seriously need to consider monthly weigh-ins rather than weekly. This morning I've felt the urge to restrict calories again. It's probably because we're in the middle of a series of rain storms and my joints are HATING me right now. I also just feel fat. I've been overeating a little bit this weekend- a bit of candy here and there, sugary drinks when I'm not hungry at all. I know I shouldn't but I feel bad about it. I've resisted the urges to throw out the "bad" foods and stock the fridge with chicken breasts, green vegetables, and fat free cottage cheese. I'm just trying to take this one day at a time and focus on how much I've changed for the better. I still haven't binged since I started IE which is amazing. I've had all my old "trigger" foods in the house and I haven't lost control and eaten all of it. I haven't had to really exercise control at all in a sense.

Southern Maven I envy you that you can go so long without eating. My body feels hungry a lot. I'm constantly saying "I can't believe I'm hungry I've eaten like a pig all day..." I have to remind myself that eating until satiety every 4-5 hours isn't being a pig. I keep realizing again and again that this is really a psychological battle. My body's biological signals are all there and good- it's the mental battle that's tough.

Wannabe I hear you on that talk and the gal was pretty nerdy, I kept trying to figure out what the necklace was about looked a bit like it came for a Harry Potter movie where you could see your future in the crystal ball. I mostly found it interesting that TED covered the topic.

My own view on setpoint is that it applies most when you get to the vanity fashion range and it takes tremendous effort to stay 10 pounds thinner and a size or two smaller when the body wants to settle in more comfortably a bit higher. I don't think it applies as much to being considerably over weight. From the looks of that gal and having lost 10 pounds that's about where she settled.

Personally as much as I have yo yo dieted for so long when I get up about 15 pounds a switch just goes off in my brain ENOUGH and I really just can't eat anymore. It is a blessing but I think it a sort of upper setpoint for me but who knows.

Cinnamon the only other thing I can add to all the great advice is that IE is absolutely not eating the same as what you did before or especially in the regain phase after a diet. That always gave me hope that I wouldn't just fall into an old bad pattern and IE was just giving up.

But the bottom line is if you have been regularly overeating past fullness / binging before you will likely lost weight. If you weren't you probably won't lose very much. That's the weight facts but the gift is the joy of lifting the burden and obsessive behavior. And as Maven so eloquently related it creates deep comfort and satisfaction.

I do think it doesn't hurt to make sure you are getting enough exercise and maybe do some strength training. You will inevitably look and feel better no matter what you weigh.

Just had a big ugly binge/purge. I haven't done that in a while. I'm under stress trying to get a chapter revision of my thesis done and I just want to eat *all the things*. It wasn't a huge one like in the past but it was definitely a binge- eating quickly, not listening to satiety, just stuffing lots of stuff down and then making it all come back up because of the shame and the possibility of weight gain from it. /sigh. I'm trying to stay positive about it. These are ingrained habits that are hard to change. I've had a bit of a rough week. I can't wait for the work week to start- weekends stuck inside writing my thesis are definitely a hard time for me.

I'm not going to hate myself over this. I'm not going to starve myself because I was bad. I'm not going to throw out all of my delicious, nutritious food in favor of bland diet food. I'm going to wait until I'm hungry again, eat what I would like to eat, and stop when I'm full. I'm going to love myself and my body no matter what.

Just wanted to post and say through I feel like I've had a breakthrough! Today I was craving oats for breakfast so I made my usual half cup serving. I really ate slowly and focused on my body and waiting for it to signal that I was no longer hungry -not full per se, just no longer needing food. I found out that I was done after half of the bowl! I felt satisfied but not full, and my hunger was gone.

I think paying attention to my bodies subtle cues is really the key!

I think that's the right spirit to have! Starting this whole IE thing is really hard, but it's OK to make mistakes! It sounds like you learned from yours and that's the important part anyway. As long as you move forward and don't beat yourself up about it, that's what counts!

Hey gang, I have been doing some browsing reading on this big forum and read quite a bit on the Maintainers forum. Sometimes I think that is where we all ought to start in the first place.

But anyway there is a thread in the sticky section at the top called Some Answers About Genes, Environment, Obesity and Maintenance that Meg started I think in 2008. The basics there are that once you are obese, you are forever changed in your metabolism. But if you read toward the end, there are a number of people who disagree.

I don't know that my experience is the same as those that have been heavier at one point, but they also used to so yo-yo dieting destroyed your metabolism but lately I heard that isn't true either. I don't think it is for myself. For short periods I seem all out of whack but over some weeks and letting things settle in and accounting for normal slowdowns as we age, I feel like I'm the same even after all the bouts with yo-yo's, they have made me emotionally miserable but not impacted my base metabolism or at least I don't think so.

Any thoughts on this from the intuitive sense?

@Cindy

I honestly don't think we (human beings) know enough about how metabolism actually works to come to these conclusions yet. These are all speculative answers to the question "why can't most obese people lose weight and keep it off?"

I personally feel like my metabolism is fine but I haven't spent years yo-yo dieting like some. The longest I've stayed on a diet was maybe a month or two before giving up. Right now I'm eating a TON of food. More food than a thin person would eat but my body is truly hungry for (most of) it. If I compare it to what I was eating mindlessly when not on a diet it's a drastically smaller amount. I'm still quite skeptical that I will drop weight on IE or get anywhere near what I feel is a healthy body weight.

The only thing keeping me on IE right now is the dread I feel when I think about counting calories. My doctor wants me to eat 1200 calories per day. I feel like s**t if I eat that little fuel. At least with IE I'm not feeling sick from eating too few or too many calories. I hate feeling stuffed and lethargic and I hate feeling fatigued and lightheaded. IE seems like the middle way of sanity compared to those extremes.

Being obese for a very long time has consequences. I know and understand some of the physical consequences. For example, the skeleton of someone morbidly obese changes as there is so much pressure put on the joints. Some of that damage can't be undone. Metabolism however, I don't know and have not researched it. I don't think I understand metabolism well enough to speculate. But I like to think that it is possible to repair the damage done as long as we stay true to our hunger/fullness issues.

I too don't feel like my metabolism is messed up. I have never yo-yo dieted. I'm a big time failure when it comes to diets, I really can't stick to them. I've tried them all but only for very very very short bursts of time. I have not lost large quantities of weight and regained them. I've basically gained steadily over the course of my adult life, never really losing much. My body responds well to caloric restriction and exercise so I don't feel scared that I won't lose weight. What has plagued me for years though is the diet mentality, my eating disorder, and the constant state of guilt for not being able to stick to a diet. It's all mental mental mental.

I'm sad to hear this but I also sympathize. I have good days and bad days with IE. I still beat myself up over carbs but I'm dead scared to restrict them for fear that I will binge, I'm not doing any binging now which is great, I feel really great about that. I keep reminding myself that this is just one step at a time, one day at a time. I was reading in OO that everytime I honor my hunger/fullness I'm making a deposit into a savings account and my savings account is accumulating! There have been times where I over eat or eat for reasons other than hunger, but doing so does not make withdraws from my savings account, understand?

What's most important to me at the moment is building a trusting relationship with myself around food. Sure I'd like to get in a bikini by June, who doesn't??!!! But whether I do or not cannot alter how I conduct my day, and I approach every bite knowing that I am nurturing myself and cannot punish myself for it. The world will have to wait. The big reveal is happening on my inside, not my outside... Confession: I've probably lost a couple of pounds since starting IE in early February. But I feel so much calmer, so much guilt-free and happy to be addressing issues that will make me a better me to myself.

I craved a tomato!!!

Something is dawning on me about the food I eat. I have developed a list of safe foods, or foods that make me safe that I continuously go back to to aleviate my emotional eating. Precisely fast food drive thrus, potato chips, cheetos, cookies/cake, potatoes, bread, pasta, butter/oils. Any combination of these. I hardly ever eat cheese, I hate ice cream, I hardly ever eat pizza. What I mean to say here is that I have my go-to foods and I don't mess with them. They're safe foods and I cannot deter from their preparation. I feel that now I am starting to figure out that they're not that powerful. And this is giving me a bit of freedom. When I ask myself "what do I want to eat right now" I have gone to these go-to foods. But slowly and SURELY I am deviating from them too. I'm testing the waters to see if I can enjoy other foods without feeling like i've gone into "good food" territory.

It's not always clear what I want to eat when I ask myself "what do I feel like eating." Today it was very clear though, I wanted a tuna sandwich. My tuna is basic. Canned tuna, mayo, salt, whole wheat bread. It's a go-to feel good safe food. For some inexplicable reason though I imaged that a few slices of ripe red tomato would go well on this....but I hate tomato!!! I was like "nah, I don't like tomato." But then I shrugged and went with it, I could always pull it off if I didn't enjoy it. So I made it, it looked really pretty too, a nice change from the boring brown/beige colors. I took a bite and was like woohooo!!

This is not quite the same thing as SouthernMaven's PB&J kick but it was certainly an aha moment. I'm so thankful for eating something that I like, and feeling good about eating it and it was nice to have some healthy fresh veg on it too. I'm so thankful for being one step closer to meeting my own needs and trusting myself to take care of myself.

@Wannabe

It's hard for me to have patience. That's probably why I've never been able to stick to a diet plan for very long in the first place. Like you I drop weight quickly when I restrict my eating but I can't stick with it for very long.

That's awesome about the tomato. I had a few weird cravings over the weekend. Sunday morning I wanted lamb so I got a lamb sandwich at a local deli. I'm still eating a lot of bread and cheese but I find it satisfying. Last night for dinner I had a thick slice of sourdough bread, some runny french cheese, pepper jelly, a small slice of salami, and a mandarin orange. I left about half the bread on my plate. It was what I wanted, it filled me just right, and it made me feel good.

I've been craving poached chicken lately and I'm going to indulge in that tonight. Not baked, grilled, or fried- poached with a nice warm kale salad. That's fine with me!