Why Dieting Usually Doesn't Work
 

watched this this morning and had to share...

https://www.ted.com/talks/sandra_aam...t_usually_work

Been maintaining within 10lbs for going on 4 years and I'm not sure I will ever be an intuitive eater. .....sigh.....

Have you tried to eat intuitively? Have you read books on the subject? I thought I was the last person who would be able to be an intuitive eater- but here I am eating when I'm hungry and stopping when I'm full.

i have, yes. i have hunger/full signals that i recognize and honour (in line with intuitive eating), however, if given the choice/freedom to eat as much and whatever i wanted i would in a heartbeat regardless of hunger/fullness cues. to me, this means i am naturally a controlled eater as i have to consciously make food choices and will have to do so for the rest of my life.

Over the past four decades, I've read at least a dozen books on intuitive eating, and have tried countless intuitive eating techniques. Some of the strategies were helpful to a point (to a very limited degee), but intuitive eating as a whole doesn't work for me unless I absolutely eliminate certain foods (which is incompatible with most intuitive eating theories).

I probably would have better luck using crystal meth, crack, or heroin intuitively than sugar.

I can eat intuitive eating successfully only when two other conditions are in place: 1. It is not the 7-10 days of pms/tom, and 2. I'm eating an enrirely unprocessed, high-veggie, low-carb diet.

I cannot choose my foods intuitively, I can only (and only to a very limited degree and in limited situations) use some intuitive strategies.

Whenever I try to abandon tight calorie and carb control, in favor of mindful eating, I gain weight unless carbs are drastically limited.

On no-carb or super-low carb, I have virtually no hunger and must eat every few hours even though I'm not hungry at all. Otherwise, I would pass out without ever feeling actual hunger. I know this because I have. Now I luckily recognize sudden light-headedness as hunger, but I never feel that kind of hunger except on strict low-carb.

After reading David Kessler's book, The End of Overeating, I finally came to understand why I cannot eat intuitively. I have an addiction-like response to high glycemic carbs, especially when combined with fat and salt.

I do not believe I have an addictive personality, as I've never been drawn to drugs, alcohol, nicotine, or risk-taking behavior. Even when I've had to be on strong pain killers for long-term injury recovery (such as when I herniated a disc in my back) I've been able to quickly wean off the narcotics with no problem or desire to use the meds when I didn't need them. Even when I was in college, I drank about as much as the average great-grandmother (probably less, as for me a night of heavy drinking was three wine coolets in the span of six hours, with die colas in between so I wouldn't fall asleep from the first wine cooler).

I think intuitive eating strategies are worth a shot, but they're not effective for everyone, or in every situation, and there's no shame in needing an arsenal of food/weight management strategies.

The reason I have trouble with intuitive eating approaches is that for me eating is largely recreational - and largely decoupled from actual hunger signals. I can tell the difference between being hungry and being sated - I just, most of the time, don't care. If the food is present and enjoyable to eat, I'd rather eat it than not, regardless of whether I'm hungry.

So, listening to hunger cues, or counting calories, both require the mental discipline of not eating for pleasure beyond a certain limit. It doesn't matter much whether that limit is "when I'm no longer hungry" or "when I reach my allotted calories for the meal/day." It requires pretty much the same effort from me, regardless of which limit I set. I prefer calories because it is objective. I can rationalize away eating just a little bit more when I'm basing the eating on interpretation of hunger cues. I can't rationalize it away as easily when I'm at my calorie limit.