Wannabe, I hate cooking but do cook. You're right, otherwise, what would we eat?!

I'm lucky (?) that my children have only a limited range of food that they like to eat so I just cook the same things over and over. They're the type who simply refuse to eat if a food is unfamiliar to them (yes, I've tried over the years to expand their range but it never happened) and of course, I want them to have proper meals so cooking familiar food it is.

I'm similar too. I'm not that adventurous with food and enjoy only what I know and am familiar with. Familiar food is pleasure. Other types out there, wouldn't know till I try, I guess!

Yeah the issue is that I think I'm in the camp that has trouble resisting chocolate cake. It's not about willpower, per say, but about learning discipline. It's an every day struggle for me to have a little bit of cake or to not overeat at dinner. Would it be easier to cut whole groups of things out? In the short term, yes. I can't stick with it, though.

I remember when it came out. I don't know why i haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Maybe i picked up enough info on it through other ways. But i have a background with the french and know how they eat. I had a french boyfriend for a few years. He taught me about food. I also ate a number of meals at his parents home in Lyon, the gastronomic centre of the French food.

A meal with them went like this:

Salad - mostly lettuce with a baguette on the side. The french eat salad as a first course or as a whole meal. I can't remember if there was butter there or not. Frequently they do not eat butter on their bread.

Meat and vegetable. It could be a small piece of steak and frites or another vegetable but my favourite main dish was quenelles which is a type of sausage made with chicken or fish usually and served with a napolitan type of sauce. No cheese. I love those things. I regret i did not have them this time in france. Its best done in a home kitchen.

Dessert which could be a small tub of yoghurt or choice from a cheese plate. You just have a small taste size piece of cheese. Or if we'd brought some gateaux we'd share those. Or maybe the mother would make some sort of milk dessert but i think most people don't cook desserts anymore too often.

Obviously a glass of wine was served with it.

The mother was pleasantly plump, only slightly overweight and in her 50s i'd say. The father in his 60s was tall with a belly but not huge by any means.

They led fairly sedentary lifestyle.

First of all I want to go on vacation with Patience doesn't it sound wonderful?

I spent a fair amount of time in Europe when I was working and had people in my group in Brussels. So at least a couple times a year I went for a couple weeks including a weekend where I did some excursions. I simply loved eating there. Lots of courses, small bites, paired wines, beautiful colorful vegetables, tiny bites of chocolate with wonderful rich coffee.

The little cafeteria at the office had a salad bar of sorts but with steamed vegetables so instead of greens you'd have thin green beans or asparagus and carrot threads with vinegars and a splash of olive oil. Delic. They had a chef and he absolutely cooked with pride the daily specials were amazing! One weekend I went to Bruges which is like a fairy tale city winding cobbled streets, canals. It was brisk and sunny like late October I think and I walked and walked and walked up and down the streets exploring soaking it all in and was just starving, wandered into a little hotel and they seated me alone in an alcove overlooking the water, all antique furniture, tapestry drapery. They served me several courses with the wines and ended with that coffee and chocolates. I can absolutely remember how perfectly happy and pampered I felt.

Another time I woke up early and took the train to Paris. They were sold out of the coach seats and I spent $30 or something more for the first class or whatever they called it, what a lovely experience, for breakfast they brought me a chocolate croissant with that coffee that I savored. In Paris I walked all day up and down the streets, bought a few fashion items on Champs élysées down from the Arc de Triomphe. Found a little cafe and savored lunch, had a marvelous dinner on the train on the way back with the essential little bottle of wine. On another day trip there I shopped for a picnic near the Eiffel Tower and bought a raspberry tart, bread, cheese wine. Ah my.

I do have the book about French women and food and read it years ago. I'm going to get it out and read it again. Surely all the walking and being really hungry is the backdrop against which the intense food memories stand out.

And people there are generally very trim.

Yes indeed food meshed with the other memories is definitely pleasure!

Shannonsnail, very well said. I believe you put into words what I was trying to say, but missed. This is exactly my case as well. Thank you.

Locke I truly don't know if this is my unique thing or it would happen with others. Once I got past some point my relationship with previous trigger foods changed, physically and mentally.

Just throwing that out that it can happen, although it be a freaky isolated thing. So once I reached that tipping point, it has gotten easier to avoid not harder. Frustrating thing though everyone is different.

I have not had time yet to read the entire thread but just want to throw this out.

I try to remember that food will be pleasure for a very short time, literally minutes for me. The pleasure that I get from having a mobile healthy body lasts much longer!

Exactly! Plus, at least for me, now when I eat food, it still tastes great and I know it is good for me. And that is a lot more pleasurable and enjoyable then when I knew it was bad for me.

And then my body feels so great after. Plus I was stuffed before but now I am truly no longer hungry. I can tell folk, the no longer hungry is a million times better than the occassional stuffed but mostly always hungry way I used to be.

Ok so now I want to go on vacation. If you haven't read French Women Don't Get Fat then you should. Sure, there are some diet tips in there (spend a whole weekend eating leek soup? no thanks) but I get the point of it and have incorporated a lot from that book into my daily life and have sustained it for several years! For example, I walk to the market every single day. I do not shop only on the weekends. I walk there every day, see what's fresh and buy only the things I need for tonight's dinner. I can't tell you how many miles I've accumulated on my pedometer doing just that for.... gosh I think I read that book over 7yrs ago, before I even got married. It talked a lot about enjoyment.

I don't think there is anything wrong with my brain and some of the habits I've created are not written in stone. I enjoy food of all sorts, I don't disclude anything in my diet unless it's lamb liver or other organ meats, I'm not particularly picky. I've stood out from my family for a long time, I don't come from a long line of obesity, my whole family, parents, siblings, husband, child, extended family are pretty much all naturally intuitive eaters so I am surrounded by very good examples of what I need to be like. They're all thin, healthy, active and live a long time and they don't omit anything from their diet. I need to fit in with these people and I'm just excited that I've found a way to eat that allows me to be part of the human race finally.

I know when I used to go to fast food I would feel disappointed afterward. I am not saying that feeling was right or wrong, it was just there. My wife would not criticize but I saw the disappointment in her eyes when I brought the cup home. And I totally understood it. It was based on love and caring.

So now for instance we go to a place called Elevation Burger. Get a grass fed lettuce burger and share one fries that they cook in olive oil. Happy with the changes. Still love the food and feel better afterward physically and mentally.

Really good food is a pleasure for much longer than a few minutes. So long as you don't have it every day. I mean if i were a rich person and could afford to eat in top restaurants all the time, that could be the case and then it wouldn't be so memorable.

Actually i forgot to include in my France post, the reason i decided to go to France in the first place was because i had done a few trips to India and i was so over chilli. Food in india is tough tough tough if you don't like chilli very much and if, like me you tend to go to out of the way places and not say in the tourist hot spots like Goa or the big cities. So i needed to go somewhere where i knew the food would be good wherever i went.

I always wonder that too!

I love to cook - I had a short lived catering business after college. Unlike you, however, I don't grocery shop often. I wish I could, but it's not feasible because of time and budget constraints. At the very least, I've found that batch cooking gives me the time and budget allowance to eat what I want.

Food IS pleasure :D No food taste better than the food that comes from my kitchen. Healthy food that is good for the body can be prepared in ways that will give me food-gasms. Food can be good for you and pleasurable at the same time. Shoot, I have taste buds for a reason. ;)

My (grown) childrens' favorite expression when they eat something that tastes great. It always amuses me when they do. Thanks for the chuckle!

Try Doughnut Plant and Tiny's Sandwich shop, I used to work close to there.

I would not be happy if my WOE did not allow me to have food experiences once in a while that do not meet my regular food guidelines. I would not have been happy at the Outback if I'd had to cobble together a meal, possibly special-ordered, that would meet my normal eating criteria. More importantly, it would be impossible for me to indulge in my very favorite food experience, which is cart service dim sum, ordinarily associated with some celebration event.

I can integrate experiences like that into my WOE once in a while without gaining weight overall but not too often. I currently seem to be able to get right back on track with my WOE after such an event, which hasn't always been the case.

Other than the social food experiences, I don't seem to run into any cravings, though I do sometimes trigger my hunger by accident by eating more starchy carbs than I can handle. Some things I eat often enough and other things just never come up as something I want.

I've actually become MORE of a foodie since I've cleaned up my act. Partly because I'm traveling a lot more (my bf and I love to try new restaurants when we're in our favorite cities), and partly because my palate has gone beyond "pasta". Seriously, when I ate out, that's all I had.

Even in my cooking I've expanded significantly. I love food, but now, I love the TASTE of it, not just the feeling I get from it.

Haha, I used to ONLY EVER order fettucine Alfredo or whatever was closest to that. Life is better when you are more open to trying new things!

Yes, it's true! I'm starting to believe that there are 2 of Me. The foodie me who likes to cook, grow herbs, make things from scratch, cook high quality ingredients like duck breast, scallops, lamb chops, organic produce and specialty items like real parmigiano instead of the stuff in the green box, I have $40bottle of balsamic vinegar, and keep my freezer full of home made fish, beef and chicken stocks, and have a jar of coveted saffron from morocco. I love high end food. Then there's the Bingy-me, who likes fast food drive thrus and frozen waffles. It makes no sense. But the more I start enjoying my food the less I've craved that junky stuff - not because I've tricked my body or gone through withdrawl. But because I can choose what satisfies me most.... this seems counterintuitive but I find myself craving more and more delicious healthy stuff than I ever did when I was forcing myself to eat salads. Now I want a salad because it hits the spot, before I was eating a salad only so that I could gloat that I ate a salad.

There's a lot of good food out there and now that I'm not limiting myself the choices are becoming a lot easier to make.

Yep. When I first gave myself permission to eat anything I want I went to the grocery store and got all the junky food that I had not allowed myself to have. Frozen chicken nuggets, fries, ice cream, candy, chips, frozen appetizers, anything and everything I had wanted to eat for the past several years but had not allowed myself to because it wasn't healthy.

95% of it has remained untouched. I have a quart of premium rich chocolate ice cream that is becoming freezer burnt. Why would I eat a frozen slice of pizza when I am craving a juicy grilled chicken breast with a little bit of brie and a fresh salad? If I'm craving pizza I'll walk to downtown and get a slice of fresh pizza that was made in a real pizza oven with fresh mozzarella and toppings.

That is so true, we don't have to treat food like it's the bad guy. It didn't just get up and hop into our mouth on it's own! We put it there. But food can still be a pleasurable and enjoyable experience for us all, just as long as we stick with portion sizes and watch what we eat. We can still eat what we want, but just in moderation. And i know that that phrase has been tossed around for so long but it really is true. Eat what you want, but only in small sizes, because then you'll be more grateful for the chance to indulge and you'll enjoy it even more than usual if you eat it only every so often. Food is one of the greatest joys in life, just make sure it doesn't rule over your world.:cool:

Whatever works for you! That is the only way to go.

For me, I WANT TO BE THAT PERSON. When I "fall off the wagon" and eat the lunch that is available at the picnic, eat at a party, join in on the festivities etc, I AM MISERABLE. I feel powerless like that, like I have to forcefully join. I am a huge fan of being powerful over myself, and part of that is making my own rules and marching to my own drum.

That may well be your own experience but if you read through the posts in this thread you'd see that it does not apply well to everyone. I'm not trying to pick on you, but something that sounds as innocuous as "everything in moderation" can seem to dismiss someone's repeated failures to do just that. Similarly, people who embrace restrictions sometimes say things that can be very hurtful to people who are attempting IE (who are probably in the small minority). It's hard to get used to avoiding generalizations, but with such different approaches, it's worthwhile so we can all learn from each other and consider the potential of alternative approaches. I've certainly learned a lot from the threads I've read on 3fc, and a number of the micro-strategies in my WOE come straight from the diverse experience of this site.

This thread has contributions from folks at both ends of the restriction spectrum experience, and I'm delighted that posters have been making a huge effort to put their opinions into the context of their own experience. When people speak in generalizations that seem to target advice at everyone, individuals who have incompatible experience can feel dissed or oppressed. Given the diverse sets of experience, it's amazing to me that the folks on 3fc get along as well as they do.

I have happily joined those lineups on many occasions.:)

F.

whistling past the graveyard
 

Food is many things to many people. If you are allergic to peanuts, peanuts are lethal. If you are diabetic, high amounts of carb rich foods can send you into keto-acidosis. If you have celiac, gluten can make you extremely ill. If you are a recovering alcoholic, vanilla extract can trigger a relapse. The list goes on.

Recent research & traditional wisdom alike acknowledge that mind/body is an arbitrary separation. Addictive behavior, including food addiction, has both biochemical & psychological components. Different foods and WOEs have unique consequences for each one of us. Saying that food is just food sounds more like wishful thinking, imho. As yoyoma pointed out, it's amazing 3FCers get along as well as we do given our diversity of experience.

Yes! I do enjoy reading about how different we all are in how we see food, how we eat and what we like and don't like.

I think that experimenting with different ways of eating to find out what works is the only way to go.

My dad does this and to him, a large part of the enjoyment is the social aspect of getting together, trying out a restaurant or eating place deemed special through word-of-mouth.

Yet he's the most disciplined man I've ever known when it comes to eating in moderation. His weight has remained consistently a good healthy weight throughout the years (now in his early 70's) but he still enjoys eating and sampling new delights.

Hecccck yes, plus some of the cooking techniques require fancy equipment or days of aging etc that I can't do at home. Back in my old hometown when there was nothing but mcds and olive garden, sure homecooking is waaay better. But brooklyn old school brick oven pizza? Gourmet dough starter waffles? Fancy schmancy gelato? peking roast duck? char siu bao? My fam owned a Chinese restaurant and no matter what, there are some secret methods passed down from fam to fam members that are kept dead secret unless you're related to the chef. I like the process of cooking/baking, but I go for whatever I find tastiest - its cool whether its my cooking or eating out.

I enjoy counting cals and eating clean 99.9% the time tho =D (except for vacas, I still like mixing it up just very rarely) Its so fun, I'm a big list-maker type. I can can so into numbers, formulas - with everything, not in an anxious way, its just that I enjoy it so much whether its working with stats, making logic string, html coding and cal counting- that chillaxes me more than other less exacting ways of eating.

I'm trying to stick to a Mediterranean diet because that is my heritage and I believe it's a very healthy way to lose weight.
I don't believe that you have to give up everything you love to lose weight. Our biggest problem is large portions of food and lack of exercise.

If i was following any diet, i'd consider giving the Med Diet a go Susan. I love mediterranean food. Its my favourite.

yo you ma. I see where you are coming from but what rare andunknown says is true and she has a perfect right to say it. If people have a problem with the truth that's their problem.

But when i read her post i thought, ok so we all know this. If there's anyone out there who hasn't heard this truism yet, then where have you been hiding! Its one of those things that's so much easier said than done. So it just doesn't add anything new to the discussion. But that's really all that's wrong with it. I didn't feel dissed that she said and i don't think anyone really should. If we could all be moderate, none of us would be on this forum.

I don't know whether or not i should have posted that. Am i just being argumentative? I don't know.

"Moderation in everything" is not true for everyone. Many people who have struggled with moderation do so in part because of sayings like this. Some people have successful WOEs that exclude things and it's less supportive of them to be in an environment where people are telling them they shouldn't do that. You yourself exclude sweet desserts except under special circumstances. You probably weren't offended by what she said and I wasn't that worked up about it because, of course I've heard it a million times. Of course she has a right to say it, and I'm quite sure the poster did NOT intend to say something hurtful (and people have the right to say hurtful things intentionally or unintentionally, although the mods on this site have the right to edit or remove posts or even ban a poster in extreme cases). I particularly chose that post to comment on not because her comment was inflammatory, but because it *was* an innocuous thing to say, something that everyone says sometimes (including myself) and it still has the power to be hurtful.

So, I picked out that extremely borderline example to encourage everyone to continue to make the effort I have seen people make on this board to avoid making blanket statements. 3fc is a fantastic support group and despite that, sometimes feelings are hurt (almost always unintentionally here).

I really have noticed people making the effort on this board. There are boards where the effort is not necessary. If a board is buried in the carb counters forum or the IE boards, I think posters there should not need to make the big effort to be inclusive of other styles. But on a generic "weight loss support" board, I think the posters should try to avoid even accidentally dissing other styles of WOE.

I understand where you are coming from. I understood that before. I disagree. I think its taking sensitivity far too far.

I was on a forum not long ago and someone said they were offended by the use of the word skinny. Skinny is a perfectly acceptable word. I was pissed off that someone thought they could tell me not to use the word skinny. Its a generally accepted term, unlike certain other terms that i'm not even game to use on this site.

The problem is not those of us who say things like that. Its not like anyone is being abused. Its the over sensitivity of the person who feels offended by the word skinny or by the idea that they can't do moderation.

Yes i can't do moderation. I"m not offended by it. I think people who are offended by the notion have a problem that they should resolve. I do not think everyone should have to kittyfoot around the oversensitive person. I think that's taking things much too far.

The everything in moderation is a generalisation. There are always exceptions to generalisations. That doesn't make them less valid.

No one has been abused. I think a bit of perspective is a good idea.

I don't know what WOE is either.

WOE = Way Of Eating

Nobody means to be hurtful to anyone else. Whatever WOE we follow most of us here know that if we were successful at being moderate we would probably not have a weight problem. The idea of being moderate is much like winning the lottery, you either scoff at wasting money playing the lottery or you buy a ticket every time.

But the bold statement stood out to me, not that I'm trying to preach the benefits of IE it's just that.... well don't you know anyone who eats whatever they want and doesn't have a weight problem? What about children who eat half a cookie and then run off to play? You say that people who practice IE are in a small minority but that's not really true, anyone who is not dieting, eating what they want, and remaining slim is actually eating intuitively.

The mediterranean diet is not a diet. It's my heritage too, I grew up there so I know what they eat. It's definitely possible to gain weight on the mediterranean diet if one is overeating.

OH i thought someone might have turned it into a formula.

Thank you Southern Mavern

We also have a subforum on it:
http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/sono...nean-diet-188/

One important thing to keep in mind is don't bash yourself over the head if moderation doesn't work for you (or conversely elimination). I wasted decades thinking moderation "should work".

It didn't for me. Now I can have whatever appetite wise (but I choose not to because I think some things are very bad for me). But not before I got my body fundamentally changes by eliminating things for a few months.

I know for me my body was in fat storage mode, my appetite was physically out of control and there was no, zero, zilch possibility of ever succeeding without addressing these fundamental physical processes by elimination for a few months. Then I could start reintroducing things if I wanted.

Or visa versa. If you give elimination a real go (I keep coming back to 2 to 3 months because I think anything less than not is not enough time, personally, to fully succeed) don't keep bashing your head over it, move on.

But if you are spending year after year or sometimes decade after decade and keep thinking if I just do this or that but keeping your approach fundamentally the same, well perhaps time to try something else. Even if that something else is "something I could never do".

Not in a million years did I think I could give up bread, and then all grains? No way. But I could and did. So keep an open mind.