Welcome, Gemini! If you're anything like me, you'll find the first few days/weeks of eating according to your hunger to be incredibly eye-opening! It's amazing how much easier life becomes if you just listen to your body and let it do its thing, instead of fighting it and either restricting or indulging - I'm learning to dislike being too full even more than I dislike being too hungry... it's strange given how much of my life I've spent finishing whatever's in front of me and ending up sick. As for getting started, there are several good resources on the subject - best overview seems to be "The Overfed Head" (if you can get that in the UK), but I also really enjoy "The Rules of Normal Eating" and "The Diet Survivor's Handbook" - both do a little deeper work into methods and application of the methods. The UK standard seems to be "Beyond Chocolate" (which I'm curious to get my hands on!), so give that one a look if you like. I find I actually use a hodgepodge of methods and theories from many books, and everyone kind of ends up with their own methods over time. (Another great shift from classic "diet" methods, when you must follow X book to the letter!)
I have kind of a strange question for the group - do you ever get worried if you're losing weight too quickly?? I'm committed to losing weight slowly, safely, and (most importantly) in a healthy way, and the standard dieter's chant is that more than 2 pounds/week is going to lead to a larger percentage of muscle loss. Right now, I'm down about 7 pounds from where I was last week, though I've bounced around quite a bit - I've really only dropped about 3 pounds of "real" weight from a few weeks ago.
Even so, it feels wierd to keep recording numbers like these:
4/17/07 206.7
4/18/07 205.1
4/19/07 205.1
4/20/07 203.1
4/21/07 202.4
4/22/07 201.3
4/23/07 200.3
At this point, I'm not too concerned about it, but if things keep dropping this quickly, should I worry? (I doubt it's likely, since I've only been over 200 for about 3 months - it's been the "easy" weight to lose). Overall, my weight has bounced around a bit over the last month:
But the good part is that it's a general downward trend.
So, how would you handle this? Should I let myself eat a little more generously to slow down the loss a bit (aim for "fully satisfied" instead of "no longer hungry"?) Should I just wait and see? I'm just worried about losing too quickly and rebounding in another few pounds - basically, I've seen myself drop weight this quickly in the past and it always ends badly. Maybe I just need to relax and trust myself, but I'm a little hesitant for fear I'll fall back into obsessive weight-loss-mode.