Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're satisfied.

Good morning everyone,
If monthly doesn't work then next time we can do two months. We shall see.

Well I made it through 10 binge free days! I am so exicted. I am on to my second set of 10 days. Now I can write in my journal.

Good for you, Shay! Ten days is great!

Thanks for starting the new thread.

Thanks, Becky. Happy to see you here.

I got on the scale this morning and I only gained 3lbs. I am really happy about that. Looking back through my blog the last time I had a long binge I gained 16 lbs!!! So I think following the binge with the start of IE made a huge difference. Since the next time I will weigh will be June 1st I'm trying to decide if I want to set a goal. Maybe--maybe not. I'm thinking no. I don't want to set myself up.

Good morning, everyone...I'm VERY frustrated, discouraged, and irritable this morning. Even though I am past menopause, I still have those several days a month of bloating, moodiness, and carb cravings like you wouldn't believe--which is weird, but that's the way it is. It's just like the old pms days.

Even though this past week I had started back to IE again, for about three days, and was doing fine, along came yesterday and I didn't pay any attention at all to hunger/fullness. I just ate "whatever". The carb cravings were unbelievable, and I ended up the day feeling very bloated.

I got up this morning feeling discouraged, depressed, and irritable, which means that yesterday was obviously a "hormonal" day. Things were only made worse when I jumped on the scale and saw a three pound gain since yesterday, which I know is only water weight, but still, it means I'm right back up to within two ounces of my highest weight ever.

I think I would have been better off not getting on the scale at all.

This has thrown me for such a loop that I've been thinking about going back to low carbing again, but I know that's silly, because I can never stick to low carb.

I'm craving carbs so strongly again today that I don't know if I'll be able to find my hunger/fullness or not.

I should probably put my scale away again so that my moods and outlook won't be ruled by it, but I don't trust that I won't keep on gaining and end up even bigger than I am, which I cannot afford to do. I refuse to, and cannot afford to anyway, go up into another size. I'm already wearing size 26, which is about the end of the sizes you can usually find without having to do a lot of special ordering. I just CAN'T go up to a 28.

So, I don't really know what to do today, but I know I can't rope myself into another diet. I end up worse that way because I can't stick with them. I guess all I can do is do my best to not eat the house today, and hope some of this bloat goes away soon.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you all enjoy your Saturday!

You are doing well, and I think you're smart not to set yourself up by making a scale weight goal.

I haven't kicked the daily weighing habit yet myself, but I tend to do better when I'm not weighing. I once went for two or three months without weighing, and ended up being fine. Weight remained pretty stable as I remember. But whenever I'm near my highest weight, I become terrified that the gain will never end, and it becomes hard to stay off the scale.

Becky--It will be hard for me to stay away from the scale for 3 months but I have to. It was always a neverending cycle for me. I was a daily weigher too. If I got on and I had put on weight I would think I worked so hard and I still gained. I might as well go crazy. Or if I lost after not eating too well then I would feel comfortable to eat more. Why after a bad day do we get on the scale? Many of us do it. To me it is a form of self sabotage. We do it to assess the damage. Why? We know we did bad why do we feel the need to dig the hole deeper? I know everyone is different and they must do what is best for them. What's best for me is stay off the scale and keep from giving it so much power.

I have posted on here before but i wanted to re-introduce myself because it has been awhile. My name is Aubrey. I am 24 and have been married 4 yrs. I have 2 children a 2 1/2 yr old little girl and a 9 month old little boy. My weight right now is 217. I am only 5' 4" so i know this is not a healthy weight but i really struggle with emotional eating.

Becky- I am sorry that you are having such a struggle with the hormones. I understand how it is to weigh yourself daily and have it effect you emotionally. I am still working on that.

Shay - I hope that you can make it the 3 months till your next weigh in. I know it can be almost scary not knowing. The 10 binge free days is great.

Hi Cherry--Good to see you again.

Chapter 7--Principle 3: Make Peace with Food
Well I can definitely identify with "the h*** with it" mentality. I just talked about it above. I have allowed some "forbidden" foods into my life. Namely peanut butter and skinny cow ice cream sandwiches at home. I'm doing pretty good with them. Wheat thins was always a big one for me too. In my recent binges I ate a box a wheat thins a night. Now I can go my whole life without ever eating them again. They taste like cardboard to me right now. At work I have boxes and boxes of girl scout cookies. What's interesting is I'm too scared to bring them home so I leave them at work but I've been barely eating them. Now that I say it is okay to eat them and I don't have to measure out a serving I'm like whatever...!

This place is busy today. Thanks, Shay. My family has been busy today doing a wedding dinner for a friend. Actually my son did most of it. Dh and I just helped, along with his wife. It was Mexican food which I"m not crazy about....good thing. Just wanted to share an interesting observation. I tried the Fast-5 diet where you only eat for 5 hr. a day. It felt good but eventually I just couldn't handle the all day hunger and my body rebeled. Interestingly, when I went back to normal eating I just couldn't get satisfied. Now after a couple of days of IE, I'm back to normal. Thank the Lord.

I've had a good day today and corrected yesterday. By that I mean that I realize now I should have just postponed eating until I got home from the wedding. We had sampled some before the actual dinner and not being too hungry, when we finally sat down to eat I know I should have just skipped it but I didn't. Seeing I don't like Mexican food, when I got home I was searching for something that I did like and over did it. Now I know I should have just not eaten at the wedding and I would have been fine and could have eaten at home without regret.

Hi everyone! Shay, congrats on only gaining 3 pounds! If you normally would have gained 16 pounds, that's great!

Becky, ugh, hormones. I'm struggling with PMS right now. Tired, unmotivated, puffy, cranky, headachy. I hate it. Too bad it doesn't really go away past menopause.

OK, so I said in the end of the last thread that I didn't want to buy any books on intuitive eating because of my entire library of diet books, but I did anyway. DH and I had a chance to drop the kids off and spend an afternoon together on a beautiful day, and we ended up browsing in a bookstore and I had him buy me the books for my birthday (next week). I got the Intuitive Eating book and also, Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating. I'm really familiar with Wansink's work from grad school and he's been on every TV show in the past year showing off his little experiments, but I'm still looking forward to reading it.

There is an interesting thread on the 100lb club about how thin people eat.

http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=133802

Amy--I know I am very happy about the 3 lbs!

Very interesting read Carol. Especially since many of them were referring to IE although not specifically using those terms. An excellent example of IE was the one that talked about her 3 kids--her daughter was practicing IE.

I really need to work on Principle 5--Feel your Fullness. I am struggling with this one. The past two nights I have had to force myself to stop eating. I will try to read 2 chapters tonight to try and get me in the right frame of mind again.

Oh guys, I am feeling so optimistic right now! I read the naturally thin thread and yep, that's intuitive eating in a nutshell! I remember the last time I lost weight (2001) and managed to keep it off so long. It started by following a diet plan (the 90/10 Plan by Joy Bauer) but within a month of following it religiously (including the "Fun Food" a day) I didn't need to follow it anymore. It's not that it completely evolved into intuitive eating. I stuck to a basic breakfast and lunch and dinner was frequently a Lean Cuisine and a salad. And I lived for my fun food. So no, not intuitive eating per se, but at least I wasn't writing down every little thing I ate.

Anyway, I saw my mom after I had lost a lot of the weight and she asked about my weight loss and I basically said "I don't feel obsessive about food anymore. It's just food, it's not a big deal."

Now, somewhere along the way I lost that attitude and I want it back. I think I started using food again as a substitute for fun. I got married and yes, I love my husband and we have fun together, but we lived in the middle of nowhere and I just couldn't hang with my single friends anymore. Then I got pregnant (twice!) and my pregnancies are difficult on me. I didn't exercise. I missed my wine. So I felt entitled to eat. Honestly, the first trimester with morning sickness and all I didn't want to eat. But man, once the second trimester hit watch out. I legitimately felt hungry a lot, but I also just ate a lot as a substitute for fun. My appetite or whatever has not gotten the message that I'm not pregnant anymore.

Sorry, those are just some random musings I had in response to the naturally thin thread. I'm slowly working my way through the IE book. I'm clearly in the first stage of IE, where you feel like eating whatever just because you can (and PMS is NOT helping with that!). I do believe I'll get out of this stage rather quickly. I hope so anyway.

But I have a question for you. I take my lunch to work everyday. Does anyone else do this? Maybe this is addressed later in the book, but how does that apply to the IE life? I mean, if you're supposed to just want to eat whatever, how do you deal with the fact that it's noon, you're hungry, and you brought what you're going to eat (like it or not?) Honestly, I don't usually have a problem with what I brought with me that day, but sometimes I really don't want it.

One example: I've been taking a yogurt every day as a snack and yesterday I was grocery shopping and thought for the first time in months, I'm not taking yogurt anymore. I'm sick of yogurt. I've been on yogurt auto-pilot! Actually, I've been eating whatever snack people bring to the office a lot of time, and THEN eating my yogurt just because I brought it. I knew I should have skipped the yogurt since I already had a much more satisfying snack, but I guess I was falling into the waste-not eating style.

So anyway, back to my question: If you're following IE and for whatever reason bring your lunch to work with you, how does this fit into the IE lifestyle?