I've noticed lately that a lot of the time, I'm absolutely starving but then I find that I actually don't need to eat much to satisfy my hunger. However, I often find myself still eating beyond satiety, because I think 'Well, if I was that hungry, surely I need a lot of food to quieten my hunger'. After many meals when that happened recently, I realised it wasn't true.
So while that kind of hunger used to scare me a little, feeling like I could eat the whole world, now if I feel very hungry before eating, I always remind myself 'Remember, it's not because you're very hungry that you need lots of food. It just means that you're hungry.'
It reassures me a lot and then I end up eating less.
Monday 8 October 2007
Monday 17 September 2007
W for ‘waste’
I still have trouble with waste and what it all means and entails. However, I’m doing better, and I want to tell you a little story about waste.
Last year, my husband and I stayed in a very nice hotel in an Asian country that served a four-course meal every single night. We were there for four nights, so that was a lot of food I was going to be presented with! I was already doing quite well IE-wise, and in the past 2 weeks or so had got used to eating just what I needed and wanted, telling myself every morning that ‘Today, I will not overeat’. Of course, it was going to be a bit more difficult in that hotel, because the food looked delicious, on the menu and on people’s plates. Still, that first evening, I tried very hard to listen to my body and to eat little. But it meant leaving a lot of food on my plate for each course. Because we knew that quite a lot of food would be served but we wanted to sample it all, my husband and I had indeed decided to each eat just half of whatever would be on our plates (or less if we were not that hungry).
I told my husband how guilty I felt leaving half of my food, for it to just be thrown away in the bin, when we were in such a poor country and thousands of people were starving just a few miles away. Every course was in fact light and quite small, but it soon filled me up, so I stuck to ‘our rule’. Still, I felt very guilty.
Until my husband said: ‘Just by being here, you’re helping so many people – those who picked the fruit and veg, those who farmed the animals, those who cut the meat, those who fished, those who cook everything here, those who serve, those who manage the hotel. You’ve done your bit just by being here. The food is not wasted – you’ve helped so many people!’
That’s when I realised that, once again, just being was enough... It was a true revelation to me. I had NEVER thought of it this way before.
This was a turning point. The evenings after that, I felt less guilty, and by the last day, I thought to myself, when I left half of my dessert, ‘I don’t owe them anything’, ‘them’ being the hotel, the staff, the restaurant. It sounds harsh and rude, but it helped me overcome my sadness at leaving so much food on my plate.
As for the food itself, remember that even when you eat it it’s wasted – it’s turned into waste and it goes down the toilet, for the most part. Whatever you do, it’s wasted. Or ‘waisted’ (to pinch Evelyn Tribole’s pun) if you eat it all when you’re not hungry...
Last year, my husband and I stayed in a very nice hotel in an Asian country that served a four-course meal every single night. We were there for four nights, so that was a lot of food I was going to be presented with! I was already doing quite well IE-wise, and in the past 2 weeks or so had got used to eating just what I needed and wanted, telling myself every morning that ‘Today, I will not overeat’. Of course, it was going to be a bit more difficult in that hotel, because the food looked delicious, on the menu and on people’s plates. Still, that first evening, I tried very hard to listen to my body and to eat little. But it meant leaving a lot of food on my plate for each course. Because we knew that quite a lot of food would be served but we wanted to sample it all, my husband and I had indeed decided to each eat just half of whatever would be on our plates (or less if we were not that hungry).
I told my husband how guilty I felt leaving half of my food, for it to just be thrown away in the bin, when we were in such a poor country and thousands of people were starving just a few miles away. Every course was in fact light and quite small, but it soon filled me up, so I stuck to ‘our rule’. Still, I felt very guilty.
Until my husband said: ‘Just by being here, you’re helping so many people – those who picked the fruit and veg, those who farmed the animals, those who cut the meat, those who fished, those who cook everything here, those who serve, those who manage the hotel. You’ve done your bit just by being here. The food is not wasted – you’ve helped so many people!’
That’s when I realised that, once again, just being was enough... It was a true revelation to me. I had NEVER thought of it this way before.
This was a turning point. The evenings after that, I felt less guilty, and by the last day, I thought to myself, when I left half of my dessert, ‘I don’t owe them anything’, ‘them’ being the hotel, the staff, the restaurant. It sounds harsh and rude, but it helped me overcome my sadness at leaving so much food on my plate.
As for the food itself, remember that even when you eat it it’s wasted – it’s turned into waste and it goes down the toilet, for the most part. Whatever you do, it’s wasted. Or ‘waisted’ (to pinch Evelyn Tribole’s pun) if you eat it all when you’re not hungry...
S for 'symptoms of hunger'
Just a short entry today. I wrote about this a few weeks ago on a post-it note and I think it might be useful for those who are starting out on the IE path.
When I first learned about IE, I didn't know I could have this huge range of hunger sensations in me. Simply because I had never let myself be truly hungry. Now that I do, here are a few types of hunger that might assail me when I need to refuel my body:
- a big hole in my stomach
- distinct stomach growling
- trembling/shaking hands and arms, wobbly legs
- feeling faint
- headache
- irritability
The interesting thing I've noticed is that it varies from day to day, and even from hunger experience to hunger experience. It is practically never the same hunger that I feel on a daily basis! This is completely new for me, and it does feel good to know that my body lets me know in no uncertain terms that it needs food! The types of hunger that I've listed are rarely combined together. It's usually just one of these symptoms at a time.
My favourite hunger sensation? Feeling great (no headache, no irritability, no shaking) but with a GROWLING stomach! The one I hate the most: shaking hands and arms/wobbly legs, because in those cases I really have to eat asap. With a growling stomach, there is no sense of urgency, I just know I'm hungry, and as long as I get food within the hour, I'm fine. But with shaking or feeling faint, then food is needed urgently, otherwise I can't carry on functioning!
What are your favourite symptoms of hunger? Learn to love and cherish your hunger signals. Learn to not be scared of them any more.
PS: Here’s a little story of what happened to me last week (making this entry just as long as any other, in the end! Sorry!). I had a sort of mini bingeing episode in the afternoon, so I wasn’t very hungry in the evening. My husband cooked goat’s cheese-filled pasta parcels and when he served me, I said ‘Just a few, thanks’. I had never had so little pasta on my plate before! After an initial tiny feeling of fear and discomfort at the prospect of having so little food, I relaxed and told myself: ‘If I’m going to have so little, I’m going to relish every single mouthful, every bite, every juicy bit’. Yep, it make me slow right down! And you know what? There was still too much food on my plate!! I had had enough by bite #4, I think! When I went to bed two and a half hours later, I was hungry again, but I was in bed, teeth brushed and all, so I just read and went to sleep (I don’t like eating after I’ve brushed my teeth, and I think there’s no point in eating just before going to bed, and I find that usually the hunger feeling goes within a few minutes anyway). The next morning, my stomach was GROWLING! Now if that wasn’t hunger! This proves that even after a binge, you should just ‘coast’, go with the flow, and soon enough your body will let you know that it’s hungry again. I also realised one more time that going with the flow is the best policy: go with the binge – it could turn out to be a small one; go with your tiny hunger – it could turn out that you’re even less hungry than you thought you were; go with your MASSIVE hunger the next morning – your body is ready for more food! And listen to it of course: do you want pancakes, cereal, a slice of bread, some fruit? The point is: you never know what your body is going to want after any kind of eating episode. So don’t worry about it, just listen and comply!
When I first learned about IE, I didn't know I could have this huge range of hunger sensations in me. Simply because I had never let myself be truly hungry. Now that I do, here are a few types of hunger that might assail me when I need to refuel my body:
- a big hole in my stomach
- distinct stomach growling
- trembling/shaking hands and arms, wobbly legs
- feeling faint
- headache
- irritability
The interesting thing I've noticed is that it varies from day to day, and even from hunger experience to hunger experience. It is practically never the same hunger that I feel on a daily basis! This is completely new for me, and it does feel good to know that my body lets me know in no uncertain terms that it needs food! The types of hunger that I've listed are rarely combined together. It's usually just one of these symptoms at a time.
My favourite hunger sensation? Feeling great (no headache, no irritability, no shaking) but with a GROWLING stomach! The one I hate the most: shaking hands and arms/wobbly legs, because in those cases I really have to eat asap. With a growling stomach, there is no sense of urgency, I just know I'm hungry, and as long as I get food within the hour, I'm fine. But with shaking or feeling faint, then food is needed urgently, otherwise I can't carry on functioning!
What are your favourite symptoms of hunger? Learn to love and cherish your hunger signals. Learn to not be scared of them any more.
PS: Here’s a little story of what happened to me last week (making this entry just as long as any other, in the end! Sorry!). I had a sort of mini bingeing episode in the afternoon, so I wasn’t very hungry in the evening. My husband cooked goat’s cheese-filled pasta parcels and when he served me, I said ‘Just a few, thanks’. I had never had so little pasta on my plate before! After an initial tiny feeling of fear and discomfort at the prospect of having so little food, I relaxed and told myself: ‘If I’m going to have so little, I’m going to relish every single mouthful, every bite, every juicy bit’. Yep, it make me slow right down! And you know what? There was still too much food on my plate!! I had had enough by bite #4, I think! When I went to bed two and a half hours later, I was hungry again, but I was in bed, teeth brushed and all, so I just read and went to sleep (I don’t like eating after I’ve brushed my teeth, and I think there’s no point in eating just before going to bed, and I find that usually the hunger feeling goes within a few minutes anyway). The next morning, my stomach was GROWLING! Now if that wasn’t hunger! This proves that even after a binge, you should just ‘coast’, go with the flow, and soon enough your body will let you know that it’s hungry again. I also realised one more time that going with the flow is the best policy: go with the binge – it could turn out to be a small one; go with your tiny hunger – it could turn out that you’re even less hungry than you thought you were; go with your MASSIVE hunger the next morning – your body is ready for more food! And listen to it of course: do you want pancakes, cereal, a slice of bread, some fruit? The point is: you never know what your body is going to want after any kind of eating episode. So don’t worry about it, just listen and comply!
Tuesday 11 September 2007
An interesting experiment – and T for ‘Trust your body’
Now then, who did I fool with my last entry? I hope nobody! If you have been fooled however, then perhaps it means that you are/were not convinced that IE is the ONLY way, just like I was not.
However, now, believe you me, I am ABSOLUTELY convinced that it is! It takes experiments like these to get to this point, but I’m all for them if they help us realise such important things in life.
First of all, I was intrigued that I had actually managed to lose a bit more weight, just before starting my ‘WW points-cum-IE experiment’. I thought about it quite often during my ‘little experiment’ and of course, it made me realise that of course, IE does work, since even before counting my points I had lost a bit of weight, something that hadn’t happened for literally months.
Second, after a few days of doing ‘WW points-cum-IE’, I realised that actually, when I manage not to think about points (but still count them) and do IE properly and normally, and I’m fine physically and mentally, oh surprise: I eat about 20-25 points, or sometimes less. And when I feel a bit down, or just ‘what is this feeling?-I don’t know but I feel like eating’, whether I’m ‘counting my points’ (aka ‘I’m on a diet’) or whether I’m doing IE, I still eat however much I need (which can be up to 50 points, I guess!).
Major conclusion: There is no point in doing WW or counting points or doing ‘WW points-cum-IE’; it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever. (Of course, the difference with ‘the old days’ is that ‘in the old WW days’ I would prevent myself from eating even if I felt like it or even if I was hungry, whereas this time around, I’m completely unable to do that, so I would just eat as if I was just doing IE, going with the flow and just trying to be a bit objective and detached about what was happening [as an observer would be].)
Interesting, don’t you think? This means I’ve gone a loooonnnnng way and I’m an IE person, for better or for worse. Personally, I think it’s totally ‘for better’!
I have now stopped counting my points and am back to ‘the IE way’, with renewed confidence and happiness.
The best thing is: I completely trust my body. I can feel that we’re ONE now. It’s a weird feeling, but it’s a wonderful feeling too. I can trust it, I can say ‘Up to you, buddy, you’re in charge, I’ll just follow your orders, because I now know for sure that you know best’, and so I don’t have to think about food or my intake or exercise or anything. I can just get on with my life. I know that, just like my body lets me know when it’s thirsty or needs a wee, it will let me know when it needs refuelling, and it will tell me exactly what it needs, based on what it needs physiologically but also based on what will most probably satisfy my taste buds and my mind, i.e. what it needs psychologically. (Geneen Roth explains so well that satisfaction is both physical and mental. It’s so true! It’s thanks to her that I managed to completely ignore the points system and go back to IE so easily.)
The low point (ah! point! what a pun!) of my experiment was when I went to a very good friend’s wedding on Saturday 1 September. She was stunning, her dress was just gorgeous and fitted and suited her sooooo well. The point (again?!) is, as far as this blog entry is concerned, that she has lost 8 kg for her wedding, doing WW. So of course, I was even more tempted to carry on counting my points and do what she’d done. I regretted bitterly not having made that choice for my own wedding and resented myself for it all day on the Sunday. ‘I’m so stupid, what didn’t I lose weight like her? Worse: why did I put on 5 kg 2 months before my wedding?!’
But then on Monday, I had realised, for the second time this year (the first time being in January) how futile this all was, and especially how counter-productive. So I admitted that I was feeling a bit jealous, but mostly that I was attributing great things to ‘being thin’ which were not necessarily true. I reminded myself that being slim is not the be all and end all, and that I really must forget about it completely and get on with my life, trust my body and see where we would end up, the two of us, without deciding in advance. I decided that just being satisfied would do me – and being satisfied on all levels. It would be such an achievement, after so many years of being unsatisfied...
However, now, believe you me, I am ABSOLUTELY convinced that it is! It takes experiments like these to get to this point, but I’m all for them if they help us realise such important things in life.
First of all, I was intrigued that I had actually managed to lose a bit more weight, just before starting my ‘WW points-cum-IE experiment’. I thought about it quite often during my ‘little experiment’ and of course, it made me realise that of course, IE does work, since even before counting my points I had lost a bit of weight, something that hadn’t happened for literally months.
Second, after a few days of doing ‘WW points-cum-IE’, I realised that actually, when I manage not to think about points (but still count them) and do IE properly and normally, and I’m fine physically and mentally, oh surprise: I eat about 20-25 points, or sometimes less. And when I feel a bit down, or just ‘what is this feeling?-I don’t know but I feel like eating’, whether I’m ‘counting my points’ (aka ‘I’m on a diet’) or whether I’m doing IE, I still eat however much I need (which can be up to 50 points, I guess!).
Major conclusion: There is no point in doing WW or counting points or doing ‘WW points-cum-IE’; it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever. (Of course, the difference with ‘the old days’ is that ‘in the old WW days’ I would prevent myself from eating even if I felt like it or even if I was hungry, whereas this time around, I’m completely unable to do that, so I would just eat as if I was just doing IE, going with the flow and just trying to be a bit objective and detached about what was happening [as an observer would be].)
Interesting, don’t you think? This means I’ve gone a loooonnnnng way and I’m an IE person, for better or for worse. Personally, I think it’s totally ‘for better’!
I have now stopped counting my points and am back to ‘the IE way’, with renewed confidence and happiness.
The best thing is: I completely trust my body. I can feel that we’re ONE now. It’s a weird feeling, but it’s a wonderful feeling too. I can trust it, I can say ‘Up to you, buddy, you’re in charge, I’ll just follow your orders, because I now know for sure that you know best’, and so I don’t have to think about food or my intake or exercise or anything. I can just get on with my life. I know that, just like my body lets me know when it’s thirsty or needs a wee, it will let me know when it needs refuelling, and it will tell me exactly what it needs, based on what it needs physiologically but also based on what will most probably satisfy my taste buds and my mind, i.e. what it needs psychologically. (Geneen Roth explains so well that satisfaction is both physical and mental. It’s so true! It’s thanks to her that I managed to completely ignore the points system and go back to IE so easily.)
The low point (ah! point! what a pun!) of my experiment was when I went to a very good friend’s wedding on Saturday 1 September. She was stunning, her dress was just gorgeous and fitted and suited her sooooo well. The point (again?!) is, as far as this blog entry is concerned, that she has lost 8 kg for her wedding, doing WW. So of course, I was even more tempted to carry on counting my points and do what she’d done. I regretted bitterly not having made that choice for my own wedding and resented myself for it all day on the Sunday. ‘I’m so stupid, what didn’t I lose weight like her? Worse: why did I put on 5 kg 2 months before my wedding?!’
But then on Monday, I had realised, for the second time this year (the first time being in January) how futile this all was, and especially how counter-productive. So I admitted that I was feeling a bit jealous, but mostly that I was attributing great things to ‘being thin’ which were not necessarily true. I reminded myself that being slim is not the be all and end all, and that I really must forget about it completely and get on with my life, trust my body and see where we would end up, the two of us, without deciding in advance. I decided that just being satisfied would do me – and being satisfied on all levels. It would be such an achievement, after so many years of being unsatisfied...
Monday 20 August 2007
R for 'responsibility' – and womanhood
I was wondering when the Big Day would be – the one that I would realise I was now a Woman. I think it happened on Saturday. I went to a shopping centre to buy some clothes for the weddings I’ve been invited to next month and, it’s a first, I found nearly straight away things that I liked and that fitted me! And when I looked in the mirror, I told myself: ‘My God, I look like a woman!’
Thirty seconds later, my husband came in the changing rooms and said ‘Wow! You look like a woman! It’s really nice!’
I was shocked.
If we had both come to the same conclusion, then surely, it meant that it really was true: I had ‘suddenly’ become a woman! Scary thought, but at the same time, a welcome realisation.
On a slightly different subject, these clothes I tried on, they were all the same size: 14! I hadn’t tried on a size 14 item of clothing that fitted me for a looonnnnng time! It sure felt good, and I decided there and then that the little experiment I had started on Tuesday 14 August, just a few days before, was definitely worth pursuing, because this is how I wanted to be and this is how I wanted to feel – every day.
Yes, last Tuesday, I had a ‘a-ah moment’, as Oprah would say. I woke up and it was really like something had changed within me and so things would change on the outside as well. I just had had enough of not taking care of me, of not looking after me in the right way. I had had enough of not leading the life that I want to lead: one where I am not stressed, one where there is no tension in my back or shoulders, one where pretty much every day is easy, where I’m relaxed and happy with everything that I do, even if it’s the washing-up or the shopping. But most of all, the life that I want is a life where I am a responsible woman, one who is an adult and who looks after herself accordingly, as any normal responsible adult does. This is something I haven’t done properly, ever. Now, I think I’ve reached that point of no return: I’m an adult, I’m a woman, and therefore I will look after myself properly.
This implies looking after myself food-wise as well, of course. Well, mainly, that’s what this a-ah moment was all about: ‘I’m going to be responsible and therefore eat just what I need, no more, no less.’
And so ladies, that’s when I started counting points, the good old Weight Watchers way! Gasp! This was not a diet, no no. I must say, the next day, I wasn’t entirely convinced, and I just wanted to stop thinking about points and what I would eat next, and so I thought ‘Sod that, of course this isn’t going to work, you know you can’t do diets!’ But the day after that, I was all relaxed again, like I normally am when I do IE (I don’t think about food, I just wait for hunger to call and tell me ‘Time to eat!’) And somehow, it was all natural to count my points and to stop when I had reached what I believed to be a comfortable number of points. Roughly 6-7 in the morning, about 8 for lunch and 6-7 for dinner, with snacks no more than 2.
It’s just that this way, you see, I can’t fool myself any more. With IE, it’s so easy to eat more (in terms of calories as well as in terms of quantity) than you think you are or than you is actually respectable/reasonable, because you’re not supposed to have any restrictions whatsoever, you’re supposed to ‘go for it’ until you’re full. But so often, you go beyond your fullness. And I realised that if after all this time I still don’t know what an appropriate portion is for me, then I can try to see what WW recommend (I vaguely remembered, for having followed the WW programme in 1999, and then again, but on my own, in 2003) and base my meals on this. And so far, it’s working!
Of course, I still apply all the IE principles – eat what I want, when I want it, eat consciously and slowly, stop when I’m full (surprisingly, sometimes I get full even before I finish my plate, despite not having eaten all ‘my points’!). It’s just that when I’m tempted to eat more, just for the sake of it, I am strongly reminded that, well, ‘it all counts’ (whereas when I do just IE, it’s so easy to think ‘One more won’t hurt’, and therefore ‘Three more won’t hurt’ and so on!). And so if I really want to feel better and look after myself properly and not have knees that hurt and not have big arms that hurt when I sleep on my side at night and fit into nice clothes (among many other reasons), then it’s better if I stop being tempted and get on with my life. Because I know, for sure now, that this temptation is nothing more than habit – the-size-of-my-stomach habit, and also the finger-to-mouth habit (and of course, the old ‘I’ll show you’ habit, as a rebellion against my parents or society).
However, the day I’ll need to binge, I will not hold back. As with IE, I’ll try to find out why; and if, as with IE, I can’t find the answer or I can’t be bothered to look for it long enough, well, I’ll have my binge and, just like with IE, I will not feel guilty. And the next day, I’ll just start afresh.
Ladies, I have, somehow, found a way of combining IE with WW!!! All I had to do was, the first two days, tell myself that I was doing this for me and that it was just a way of helping me think a bit more about the quantities that I eat. Just a way of being more focused, of paying even more attention, and for longer. Just a way of preparing smaller portions. Indeed, I know that the quantities I normally put on my plate are too big, and that then I find it hard to stop. I also find it hard, during ‘IE only’ times, to prepare little and to put little on my plate, because I feel like I am only ‘pretending’ and know full well that there is a high chance I will go back for more anyway, so what’s the point, I might as well put the full portion on the plate, even if that means I stop before I finish it all. And of course, more often than not, I eat it all.
Now the difference is this: I prepare what I know is enough – intellectually, but also thanks to more than 10 years of learning how to eat (I am now absolutely convinced that we don’t need a lot of food to survive, indeed to live well, and I am utterly convinced that I am the same as everyone else, therefore I don’t need much food!) – and by the end of it, I normally feel that I’m comfortably full and I know that I don’t need any more: I feel fine, I’ve eaten plenty (of course, I wouldn’t lower my ‘points allowance’ to less than 25 – that would really be a diet, and I really believe that 20 points, for example, are just not enough, and if it’s not enough, you rebel even before you get hungry and eat all the ice cream in the freezer and the chocolate bars in the cupboard) and I’ve still eaten what I felt like eating.
Ladies, I am my own guru, I’m doing a little experiment, and so far, so very good! I’m amazed, myself!
I know this may sound like anti-IE, but I thought I would write about it anyway. Who knows, it might inspire someone out there.
Thirty seconds later, my husband came in the changing rooms and said ‘Wow! You look like a woman! It’s really nice!’
I was shocked.
If we had both come to the same conclusion, then surely, it meant that it really was true: I had ‘suddenly’ become a woman! Scary thought, but at the same time, a welcome realisation.
On a slightly different subject, these clothes I tried on, they were all the same size: 14! I hadn’t tried on a size 14 item of clothing that fitted me for a looonnnnng time! It sure felt good, and I decided there and then that the little experiment I had started on Tuesday 14 August, just a few days before, was definitely worth pursuing, because this is how I wanted to be and this is how I wanted to feel – every day.
Yes, last Tuesday, I had a ‘a-ah moment’, as Oprah would say. I woke up and it was really like something had changed within me and so things would change on the outside as well. I just had had enough of not taking care of me, of not looking after me in the right way. I had had enough of not leading the life that I want to lead: one where I am not stressed, one where there is no tension in my back or shoulders, one where pretty much every day is easy, where I’m relaxed and happy with everything that I do, even if it’s the washing-up or the shopping. But most of all, the life that I want is a life where I am a responsible woman, one who is an adult and who looks after herself accordingly, as any normal responsible adult does. This is something I haven’t done properly, ever. Now, I think I’ve reached that point of no return: I’m an adult, I’m a woman, and therefore I will look after myself properly.
This implies looking after myself food-wise as well, of course. Well, mainly, that’s what this a-ah moment was all about: ‘I’m going to be responsible and therefore eat just what I need, no more, no less.’
And so ladies, that’s when I started counting points, the good old Weight Watchers way! Gasp! This was not a diet, no no. I must say, the next day, I wasn’t entirely convinced, and I just wanted to stop thinking about points and what I would eat next, and so I thought ‘Sod that, of course this isn’t going to work, you know you can’t do diets!’ But the day after that, I was all relaxed again, like I normally am when I do IE (I don’t think about food, I just wait for hunger to call and tell me ‘Time to eat!’) And somehow, it was all natural to count my points and to stop when I had reached what I believed to be a comfortable number of points. Roughly 6-7 in the morning, about 8 for lunch and 6-7 for dinner, with snacks no more than 2.
It’s just that this way, you see, I can’t fool myself any more. With IE, it’s so easy to eat more (in terms of calories as well as in terms of quantity) than you think you are or than you is actually respectable/reasonable, because you’re not supposed to have any restrictions whatsoever, you’re supposed to ‘go for it’ until you’re full. But so often, you go beyond your fullness. And I realised that if after all this time I still don’t know what an appropriate portion is for me, then I can try to see what WW recommend (I vaguely remembered, for having followed the WW programme in 1999, and then again, but on my own, in 2003) and base my meals on this. And so far, it’s working!
Of course, I still apply all the IE principles – eat what I want, when I want it, eat consciously and slowly, stop when I’m full (surprisingly, sometimes I get full even before I finish my plate, despite not having eaten all ‘my points’!). It’s just that when I’m tempted to eat more, just for the sake of it, I am strongly reminded that, well, ‘it all counts’ (whereas when I do just IE, it’s so easy to think ‘One more won’t hurt’, and therefore ‘Three more won’t hurt’ and so on!). And so if I really want to feel better and look after myself properly and not have knees that hurt and not have big arms that hurt when I sleep on my side at night and fit into nice clothes (among many other reasons), then it’s better if I stop being tempted and get on with my life. Because I know, for sure now, that this temptation is nothing more than habit – the-size-of-my-stomach habit, and also the finger-to-mouth habit (and of course, the old ‘I’ll show you’ habit, as a rebellion against my parents or society).
However, the day I’ll need to binge, I will not hold back. As with IE, I’ll try to find out why; and if, as with IE, I can’t find the answer or I can’t be bothered to look for it long enough, well, I’ll have my binge and, just like with IE, I will not feel guilty. And the next day, I’ll just start afresh.
Ladies, I have, somehow, found a way of combining IE with WW!!! All I had to do was, the first two days, tell myself that I was doing this for me and that it was just a way of helping me think a bit more about the quantities that I eat. Just a way of being more focused, of paying even more attention, and for longer. Just a way of preparing smaller portions. Indeed, I know that the quantities I normally put on my plate are too big, and that then I find it hard to stop. I also find it hard, during ‘IE only’ times, to prepare little and to put little on my plate, because I feel like I am only ‘pretending’ and know full well that there is a high chance I will go back for more anyway, so what’s the point, I might as well put the full portion on the plate, even if that means I stop before I finish it all. And of course, more often than not, I eat it all.
Now the difference is this: I prepare what I know is enough – intellectually, but also thanks to more than 10 years of learning how to eat (I am now absolutely convinced that we don’t need a lot of food to survive, indeed to live well, and I am utterly convinced that I am the same as everyone else, therefore I don’t need much food!) – and by the end of it, I normally feel that I’m comfortably full and I know that I don’t need any more: I feel fine, I’ve eaten plenty (of course, I wouldn’t lower my ‘points allowance’ to less than 25 – that would really be a diet, and I really believe that 20 points, for example, are just not enough, and if it’s not enough, you rebel even before you get hungry and eat all the ice cream in the freezer and the chocolate bars in the cupboard) and I’ve still eaten what I felt like eating.
Ladies, I am my own guru, I’m doing a little experiment, and so far, so very good! I’m amazed, myself!
I know this may sound like anti-IE, but I thought I would write about it anyway. Who knows, it might inspire someone out there.
Wednesday 1 August 2007
Losing faith
I’m not sure why there are so many ups and downs at the moment, but hey ho, I have to ride along and see where it takes me. For the past few days, I have been losing faith in IE and have been wanting to lose weight more than anything.
Why? Because until the age of 18, I was slim – 56kg for 5 ft 4/1m64. Not thin; just normal, nice, slim. Then it all went wrong and I haven't stopped putting on weight since.
Why? Because I hurt my knee a few weeks ago and I’m sure it would heal a lot more quickly if I weighed less.
Why? Because soon my husband and I would quite like to have a baby and if I put even more weight on, it will not be good, either for me or for the baby.
Why? Because I want to be pretty, slim and energetic for my husband, but of course also and primarily for myself.
Why? Because I’ve had enough of not treating myself well enough.
I’ve been doing a lot better in the past couple of years, I have moved on in many areas of my life and I understand things much better. Yet, still, my weight is there, witness to all my other, deeper problems, testimony to the silt that has been moved about and scrutinised, at the expense of weight loss.
The other day, I was going through my photo albums and saw myself at 18, 19, even 25 – I was slimmer. At the time, I thought I was big and ugly and my sole preoccupation was my weight and losing the fat. Yet, I was already quite slim! Even when I put on 6kg, I was still slim!
Now here’s the problem. Time. Things are better, but they take sooooo long!!! What do I need to do to make things go faster? I’m losing patience, which makes me lose faith in the whole system. I know that I'm meant to be slim, that I can go back to being slim. The question is: how exactly? I just want to diet to get that body back. But deep down, I know that this will only lead to more weight gain – won't it?
So I'm sticking to IE, no matter how slow the weight loss, no matter how slow the progress. At least it's (more or less?) certain, more or less for ever – isn't it?
Why? Because until the age of 18, I was slim – 56kg for 5 ft 4/1m64. Not thin; just normal, nice, slim. Then it all went wrong and I haven't stopped putting on weight since.
Why? Because I hurt my knee a few weeks ago and I’m sure it would heal a lot more quickly if I weighed less.
Why? Because soon my husband and I would quite like to have a baby and if I put even more weight on, it will not be good, either for me or for the baby.
Why? Because I want to be pretty, slim and energetic for my husband, but of course also and primarily for myself.
Why? Because I’ve had enough of not treating myself well enough.
I’ve been doing a lot better in the past couple of years, I have moved on in many areas of my life and I understand things much better. Yet, still, my weight is there, witness to all my other, deeper problems, testimony to the silt that has been moved about and scrutinised, at the expense of weight loss.
The other day, I was going through my photo albums and saw myself at 18, 19, even 25 – I was slimmer. At the time, I thought I was big and ugly and my sole preoccupation was my weight and losing the fat. Yet, I was already quite slim! Even when I put on 6kg, I was still slim!
Now here’s the problem. Time. Things are better, but they take sooooo long!!! What do I need to do to make things go faster? I’m losing patience, which makes me lose faith in the whole system. I know that I'm meant to be slim, that I can go back to being slim. The question is: how exactly? I just want to diet to get that body back. But deep down, I know that this will only lead to more weight gain – won't it?
So I'm sticking to IE, no matter how slow the weight loss, no matter how slow the progress. At least it's (more or less?) certain, more or less for ever – isn't it?
Tuesday 24 July 2007
P for ‘(slow) progress’ – and no more chocolate?
I have realised lately that I don’t like my dark, 70% Lindt chocolate any more. I’ve tried a couple of other brands, but again noticed that, decidedly, it’s just not nice. Either it’s not sweet enough, or it’s just the chocolate – I’m not sure. In any case, I thought I would eat my last few squares (couldn’t quite deal with the ‘waste’ issue in that instance, I’m sorry to say...) and not replenish my supplies and see what would happen. Luckily, it coincided with my time away. When I’m away, I never even think of chocolate, let alone eat it. Whereas when I’m at home, I always eat a square with my breakfast (because 1) It’s good for you and 2) I enjoy it).
So anyway, I finished my last square, I went away, I didn’t miss it, and yesterday morning I tried my first breakfast at home without chocolate. In fact, I didn’t even think about it until later – ‘Hey! By the way! I’ve eaten my cereals... without chocolate!’ I didn’t feel deprived (as I thought/dreaded I might be – perhaps it would send me straight to the corner shop for a few bars!), I didn’t miss it, and I promptly forgot about it all.
Ditto this morning.
You know what? I’m on to something here! Yes, because the same happened with biscuits. Slowly slowly, I reduced my intake: just two at a time, several times a day; just two at a time, only with my yoghurt at lunch time and after dinner; just two a time any time I wanted them; just one at a time with my yoghurt etc., down to mostly no biscuits – EVER! I haven’t had a biscuit for ages! Unbelievable! This time last year (well, in fact, in April 2006), I was wolfing them down, 10 at a time!
So if this happened to me, surely it can happen to anybody. My closest friends can testify.
What progress have you made?
So anyway, I finished my last square, I went away, I didn’t miss it, and yesterday morning I tried my first breakfast at home without chocolate. In fact, I didn’t even think about it until later – ‘Hey! By the way! I’ve eaten my cereals... without chocolate!’ I didn’t feel deprived (as I thought/dreaded I might be – perhaps it would send me straight to the corner shop for a few bars!), I didn’t miss it, and I promptly forgot about it all.
Ditto this morning.
You know what? I’m on to something here! Yes, because the same happened with biscuits. Slowly slowly, I reduced my intake: just two at a time, several times a day; just two at a time, only with my yoghurt at lunch time and after dinner; just two a time any time I wanted them; just one at a time with my yoghurt etc., down to mostly no biscuits – EVER! I haven’t had a biscuit for ages! Unbelievable! This time last year (well, in fact, in April 2006), I was wolfing them down, 10 at a time!
So if this happened to me, surely it can happen to anybody. My closest friends can testify.
What progress have you made?
T for ‘trying’ – and my greatest achievement
I apologise for the silence on this blog. I’m not too sure what happened. I guess it’s a combination of ‘everything’s going well, not much to write about’, ‘no time to write’ and also going away for a few days.
The good news is: I’m definitely back on track and things are easy at the moment. I just hope it will last. Last time things were going so well, it lasted three months (from January to March), my record! Maybe this time it will last four months? Who knows...
I’ve even lost a few more hundred grammes – 700. I’ve checked and that’s the weight I was in March, so it’s not a major achievement in itself. Between March and now, I’ve been oscillating between 76.3kg and 77.3kg. But I know that if I carry on eating like I’ve been eating, the weight will come off, slowly slowly.
But for me, it’s not such a worry any more, it’s not the main issue. I think the fact that I’m staying more or less at the same weight while eating anything I want whenever I want and however much of it I want is an accomplishment in itself. I know that I have to sort out my anxiety eating first, before the weight comes off for good. At the end of March/beginning of April, it all went wrong because I became anxious about a visit from a distant family member and I felt the pressure of having to be perfect at everything: the cooking (especially!) , the ‘taking them out’, the ‘entertaining them’, the way I dressed, the way I talked. It was just awful.
However, amazingly, after that person left, I managed to relax again, and when the next visitor came (at the end of April) I stayed relaxed, very aware of my feelings and my (potentially erratic) eating. This led to my greatest achievement so far: I joined my husband and the visitor (his great-aunt) at the pub but didn’t eat anything.
Nothing at all!
I had eaten breakfast quite late because I had gone for a bike ride first thing that morning, so when we got the pub at quarter past 12, I wasn’t hungry in the slightest. I had been soooo annoyed with myself for letting the previous visitor ruin my eating patterns that I was adamant I wouldn’t let this one do it to me as well. I said I really wasn’t hungry and apologised for not eating with them, but ‘really, I can’t, I’m really not hungry’. And then, when we went for a stroll in a National Trust park and at quarter past 3 I was getting quite hungry, I had a scone when they had a cup of tea at the park’s tea room.
I felt sooo strong after that! It was exhilarating, to be able to do the thing I most dreaded: not eat while others are eating, and vice versa.
I have noticed on this journey that if you’re willing to try something just once, this thing (whatever it may be – for example, stopping as soon as you’ve had enough, or listening to your stomach to find out exactly what you want to eat) becomes easier the next time you do it, and you wonder why you haven’t tried it before.
Try it!
The good news is: I’m definitely back on track and things are easy at the moment. I just hope it will last. Last time things were going so well, it lasted three months (from January to March), my record! Maybe this time it will last four months? Who knows...
I’ve even lost a few more hundred grammes – 700. I’ve checked and that’s the weight I was in March, so it’s not a major achievement in itself. Between March and now, I’ve been oscillating between 76.3kg and 77.3kg. But I know that if I carry on eating like I’ve been eating, the weight will come off, slowly slowly.
But for me, it’s not such a worry any more, it’s not the main issue. I think the fact that I’m staying more or less at the same weight while eating anything I want whenever I want and however much of it I want is an accomplishment in itself. I know that I have to sort out my anxiety eating first, before the weight comes off for good. At the end of March/beginning of April, it all went wrong because I became anxious about a visit from a distant family member and I felt the pressure of having to be perfect at everything: the cooking (especially!) , the ‘taking them out’, the ‘entertaining them’, the way I dressed, the way I talked. It was just awful.
However, amazingly, after that person left, I managed to relax again, and when the next visitor came (at the end of April) I stayed relaxed, very aware of my feelings and my (potentially erratic) eating. This led to my greatest achievement so far: I joined my husband and the visitor (his great-aunt) at the pub but didn’t eat anything.
Nothing at all!
I had eaten breakfast quite late because I had gone for a bike ride first thing that morning, so when we got the pub at quarter past 12, I wasn’t hungry in the slightest. I had been soooo annoyed with myself for letting the previous visitor ruin my eating patterns that I was adamant I wouldn’t let this one do it to me as well. I said I really wasn’t hungry and apologised for not eating with them, but ‘really, I can’t, I’m really not hungry’. And then, when we went for a stroll in a National Trust park and at quarter past 3 I was getting quite hungry, I had a scone when they had a cup of tea at the park’s tea room.
I felt sooo strong after that! It was exhilarating, to be able to do the thing I most dreaded: not eat while others are eating, and vice versa.
I have noticed on this journey that if you’re willing to try something just once, this thing (whatever it may be – for example, stopping as soon as you’ve had enough, or listening to your stomach to find out exactly what you want to eat) becomes easier the next time you do it, and you wonder why you haven’t tried it before.
Try it!
Friday 6 July 2007
Candle
...And so today, I ate mindfully, and it was a real delight! I even lit up a candle, as advised by Audrey and Sophie in Beyond Chocolate, and I decided that I would light it up for every meal eaten at home, as a reminder to think about what I eat and to pause halfway through the meal to ask myself ‘Am I satisfied yet?’ and to stop eating if I am.It’s a bit painful, after all this time, to have to start from scratch again, but I know, from experience, that it’s only temporary (the pain, that is!). I’m back on track and it will be second nature again before I know it.
Every time, it’s easier to get back on track, and the ‘slipping’ doesn’t last half as long.
IE is the only solution
I don’t know if Alicetini was (in part) referring to me in her second comment on Sweet Chocolate Kisses' blog when she wrote:
I was even tempted to delete my previous post, the one about Gillian Riley’s Eating Less, so furious I was with myself for having been led astray once more.
What an idiot I’ve been! Why do we keep looking for solutions elsewhere? As soon as the going gets tough, we try dieting again, we try exercising more, we try seeing our food problem as an addiction and so as something that needs controlling.
Indeed, it occurred to me on Wednesday afternoon that if I was following Gillian Riley’s advice again, it was because my control freakiness was taking over once more, because I couldn’t can’t quite let go of my food problem and trust my body. I think it was reassuring rereading her book last week because it was all about controlling things, and I needed that. I felt out of control. But then on Wednesday, I realised I was making a step backwards rather than forwards.
Last night, I started rereading Beyond Chocolate, and oh it made so much more sense than Eating Less! Why on earth did I stop believing in IE for even one second?
However, Alicetini is right: it helps sometimes to try something else – just to realise that IE truly is the only solution. It helps us to get back on track.
So here’s to IE!
I've noticed a few of us are looking around for alternatives to BC/IE recently (case in point, me and the extremely brief diet) so maybe shaking things up a bit and experimenting with having some rules might help?but it sure rang true for me. I recognised myself as one of these people...
I was even tempted to delete my previous post, the one about Gillian Riley’s Eating Less, so furious I was with myself for having been led astray once more.
What an idiot I’ve been! Why do we keep looking for solutions elsewhere? As soon as the going gets tough, we try dieting again, we try exercising more, we try seeing our food problem as an addiction and so as something that needs controlling.
Indeed, it occurred to me on Wednesday afternoon that if I was following Gillian Riley’s advice again, it was because my control freakiness was taking over once more, because I couldn’t can’t quite let go of my food problem and trust my body. I think it was reassuring rereading her book last week because it was all about controlling things, and I needed that. I felt out of control. But then on Wednesday, I realised I was making a step backwards rather than forwards.
Last night, I started rereading Beyond Chocolate, and oh it made so much more sense than Eating Less! Why on earth did I stop believing in IE for even one second?
However, Alicetini is right: it helps sometimes to try something else – just to realise that IE truly is the only solution. It helps us to get back on track.
So here’s to IE!
Saturday 30 June 2007
A for ‘addiction’
On 18 April last year, I wrote in my diary (and in my IE book) about food addiction. Last night, I watched an episode of Desperate Housewives 2, the bit where Bree realises that she does indeed have a problem with alcohol and she can’t live without it.
I was reminded once more that I do have an addiction myself – a food addiction.
If you have just started on this IE journey, this might not be obvious to you at all. Also, maybe it’s different for everyone else, I don’t know. However, I would like to write about this, because I believe that it was fundamental to my recovery, and it obviously still is something I need to think about and work on because for the past 3 months, I have been slightly off-course. I reckon that by thinking about my food problems as an addiction problem once again, I will be able to ‘rectify the trajectory’.
First, here is what I wrote in April last year:
So today, you’ve guessed it, I’m going to read Eating Less for the third time, and hopefully this time I will take all it says on board and make it my way of life.
Watching Desperate Housewives last night, I was also reminded that if you suffer from an addiction, you need to take it one day at a time. I have been very good at that in the past year or so, and I believe that it is the only way to be on the IE path – be in the present, take things as they come, one day at a time. The same is true for addictions. Each morning, I have to decide that I will tackle this part of my life as an addiction and that I will not succumb to food that is not good for me.
Right now, I bet you’re thinking ‘This is not intuitive eating, is it?’ That’s exactly what I thought when I first read Gillian’s book. I rejected it straight away and thought ‘It’s complete rubbish, it’s just another diet book’ and put it away (I kept it for future reference, because I had mainly bought it as part of my research for my own book). I thought that if I have to think about food so hard every time it enters my mind, surely it’s counter-intuitive, so I don’t want it and I don’t even want to try.
However, I’m not sure when, say four or five months later, I found myself thinking about it all again, about chemical addiction, about sugar and salt, and realised that perhaps there was at least some truth in it. So I read the book again. That time, it made a lot more sense and I started to believe in some of the principles outlined in it, simply because I had come to the same conclusion.
By the way, this is a big thing (I have found) when you are on the IE path. No matter how many times you read a book or a blog or you hear something: it is only when you come to that conclusion (whatever it is) by yourself that it truly becomes your principle too, that it becomes true for you too and that you can incorporate it into your life naturally.
Today I’m writing about all this mainly because in the past two weeks I have had insurmountable cravings for white chocolate Magnums. I indulged every time I wanted one. I was very glad the days that I didn’t fancy one (to me, it meant that IE was ‘working’), but I was very glad to indulge the days that I badly wanted one (it also meant that IE was ‘working’ – I was listening to my body and doing as it dictated). However, slowly slowly, I came to realise that it was the intrinsic ‘qualities’ of the Magnum that made me want to eat Magnums. And then I remembered: the more you eat of that crap, the more you want to eat it. I remembered: A-D-D-I-C-T-I-O-N.
You feel like you’re doing it right, like you’re doing it the IE way, because you listen to your body and feelings and cravings and ‘do as you’re told’ (in the sense of ‘do what your body tells you to do’). But after a while, you realise that it’s only because you’ve been eating that thing that you keep wanting it, and that you’ve entered the vicious circle, once more.
OK, so what is the solution? Well, here is what I found: all you have to do once you’ve realised and understood this (and accepted it, as well, which is another matter...) is to force yourself a tiny little bit for a couple of days to say ‘no’ to your cravings, to reason yourself, to remember that it’s only the sugar and the chemicals that make you want to eat more of that thing. I promise you, if you do that for a day or so, the cravings will go and you’ll be fine again. When I had done that a few times, I realised that it was then a lot easier to go back to IE. It was the sugar and the chemicals that had confused my body. After that, my body wasn’t chemically craving the particular food any more, so it was free to tell me what it truly wanted and needed, and it usually was healthy food, with a few unhealthy foods, such as a few crisps or two squares of chocolate or a biscuit.
But let’s go back to my recent Magnum cravings. I remembered Andrea Wren’s post on A perspective on eating what you want and what I wrote in her comment box. Well, it’s helped me remember that indeed, we are on this journey to treat ourselves and our bodies better, and this includes eating less junk food and more good, healthy, wholesome foods, in order to feel good, in mind and body. From then on, it made it easy for me to stop wanting white chocolate Magnums and stop eating them, cold turkey. The ultimate goal was to feel better and to help my body stop craving things that, really, it didn’t crave at all.
Here’s the deal: IE is a very delicate thing. Attaining balance is very hard (I’m sure you’ve noticed!). After a while, you’ll realise that, really, it’s just like dieting: you need to eat healthily (because you want to feel good about yourself) and you need to move (because you want to feel good about yourself). You need to do both these things to be the best person you can be. However, the process is completely different (as I’m sure you know by now). When you diet, you just follow some rules dictated by somebody else and you end up rebelling. When you are on the IE path, you come to the same conclusions but all by yourself (and so you don’t need to rebel), and you don’t need to count points/fat grams/calories/carbohydrates, that is (and it’s the best thing): you don’t need to think about it, you don’t need to obsess about it. Little by little, step by step, you just find your own balance, by trial and error, and it’s your balance. Needless to say, it takes a long time... but you will feel really good because you will have done it all by yourself and because you will have freed yourself. The taste of freedom is better than anything else, in this process. Losing weight sure feels good, but oh, the freedom...!
I’m aware that this is a very long post, but I had to write it, first for myself, as a HUGE reminder of how my life truly is (addiction is a big part of it, I must stop fooling myself once and for all: my brain keeps thinking that food is the ultimate solution to a good life, even though my life is already wonderful, so I need to look into this more deeply), and second in the hope that it might help somebody out there. Even if only one person finds out that the same is true for her/him, then I’ll be happy and this blog will have served its purpose.
I was reminded once more that I do have an addiction myself – a food addiction.
If you have just started on this IE journey, this might not be obvious to you at all. Also, maybe it’s different for everyone else, I don’t know. However, I would like to write about this, because I believe that it was fundamental to my recovery, and it obviously still is something I need to think about and work on because for the past 3 months, I have been slightly off-course. I reckon that by thinking about my food problems as an addiction problem once again, I will be able to ‘rectify the trajectory’.
First, here is what I wrote in April last year:
Today, I reread what I’ve written for my book and feel like a fraud. I don’t believe a word I’ve written and the obsession has well and truly returned – again... What’s happened? I just want to diet and lose the weight. I don’t want to go through this process, I can’t bear it any more!I don’t want to scare you or disappoint you, but on the IE path, I have found that there are issues that keep showing their faces. It’s not pleasant, but it happens, and you need to know that it will probably happen to you too, and over several months or years. Even after six years of knowing that diets don’t work, last year I still wanted to diet, I still had moments when I thought that dieting, depriving myself were the only solution. Right now, even after two years of knowing that I have an addiction and need to treat it as such, and after two readings of Eating Less by Gillian Riley in less than a year, I need to be reminded, again, that I do have an addiction and that it won’t go away if I keep forgetting or ignoring it and if I keep running away from it.
Oh I know what’s happened! I’ve read a diet book! I’ve finally bought and read Dr Phil’s latest book, The Ultimate Weight Solution. I’ve got the feeling he might be right. I’ve got the feeling I might have been fooling myself, for the past six years.
Let’s face it, nothing has changed: I still overeat, I’m still obsessed with my weight and food, I still watch what I eat most of the time, I still criticise myself for it a lot of the time, I still worry about my body shape and what will happen to it if I really do what the authors of Overcoming Overeating say (‘Surround myself with my favourite sweeties, cakes and chocolates?! You ought to be joking!’), and I’m still... fatter than I used to be. In the past six years, nothing has changed, except for my weight, which has gone up and up and up.
So who’s right in this story? Who to trust? Who to believe? How can I develop my own voice in this mess and trust it 100%, all the time, for ever?
Today, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible.
Today, I’ve come back to the conclusion that I am addicted to food and that I seem unable to get rid of my addiction.
Today, I’ve remembered the bit in James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces where he finally recognises that he is addicted and what it all means. And I’ve remembered how I completely related to that when I read those words, realising that I was addicted too: addicted to anxiety, to stress and ultimately (or is it primarily?) to food. How I couldn’t live a normal life because of this addiction.
Today, I feel again how I felt in that moment – what he said is true of all addictions. If it’s true for him, it’s true for me. I must stop fooling myself.
I need to sort this out. I need to stop using food as my best friend, as my worst enemy, as the kind of parents I wanted but never had. I need to realise that food will never be my life, never be me, will never help me, will never help me live my life in a more productive way, in a more serene way, in a more natural and healthy way. I need to stop using food as my crutch. Food is just food.
So today, you’ve guessed it, I’m going to read Eating Less for the third time, and hopefully this time I will take all it says on board and make it my way of life.
Watching Desperate Housewives last night, I was also reminded that if you suffer from an addiction, you need to take it one day at a time. I have been very good at that in the past year or so, and I believe that it is the only way to be on the IE path – be in the present, take things as they come, one day at a time. The same is true for addictions. Each morning, I have to decide that I will tackle this part of my life as an addiction and that I will not succumb to food that is not good for me.
Right now, I bet you’re thinking ‘This is not intuitive eating, is it?’ That’s exactly what I thought when I first read Gillian’s book. I rejected it straight away and thought ‘It’s complete rubbish, it’s just another diet book’ and put it away (I kept it for future reference, because I had mainly bought it as part of my research for my own book). I thought that if I have to think about food so hard every time it enters my mind, surely it’s counter-intuitive, so I don’t want it and I don’t even want to try.
However, I’m not sure when, say four or five months later, I found myself thinking about it all again, about chemical addiction, about sugar and salt, and realised that perhaps there was at least some truth in it. So I read the book again. That time, it made a lot more sense and I started to believe in some of the principles outlined in it, simply because I had come to the same conclusion.
By the way, this is a big thing (I have found) when you are on the IE path. No matter how many times you read a book or a blog or you hear something: it is only when you come to that conclusion (whatever it is) by yourself that it truly becomes your principle too, that it becomes true for you too and that you can incorporate it into your life naturally.
Today I’m writing about all this mainly because in the past two weeks I have had insurmountable cravings for white chocolate Magnums. I indulged every time I wanted one. I was very glad the days that I didn’t fancy one (to me, it meant that IE was ‘working’), but I was very glad to indulge the days that I badly wanted one (it also meant that IE was ‘working’ – I was listening to my body and doing as it dictated). However, slowly slowly, I came to realise that it was the intrinsic ‘qualities’ of the Magnum that made me want to eat Magnums. And then I remembered: the more you eat of that crap, the more you want to eat it. I remembered: A-D-D-I-C-T-I-O-N.
You feel like you’re doing it right, like you’re doing it the IE way, because you listen to your body and feelings and cravings and ‘do as you’re told’ (in the sense of ‘do what your body tells you to do’). But after a while, you realise that it’s only because you’ve been eating that thing that you keep wanting it, and that you’ve entered the vicious circle, once more.
OK, so what is the solution? Well, here is what I found: all you have to do once you’ve realised and understood this (and accepted it, as well, which is another matter...) is to force yourself a tiny little bit for a couple of days to say ‘no’ to your cravings, to reason yourself, to remember that it’s only the sugar and the chemicals that make you want to eat more of that thing. I promise you, if you do that for a day or so, the cravings will go and you’ll be fine again. When I had done that a few times, I realised that it was then a lot easier to go back to IE. It was the sugar and the chemicals that had confused my body. After that, my body wasn’t chemically craving the particular food any more, so it was free to tell me what it truly wanted and needed, and it usually was healthy food, with a few unhealthy foods, such as a few crisps or two squares of chocolate or a biscuit.
But let’s go back to my recent Magnum cravings. I remembered Andrea Wren’s post on A perspective on eating what you want and what I wrote in her comment box. Well, it’s helped me remember that indeed, we are on this journey to treat ourselves and our bodies better, and this includes eating less junk food and more good, healthy, wholesome foods, in order to feel good, in mind and body. From then on, it made it easy for me to stop wanting white chocolate Magnums and stop eating them, cold turkey. The ultimate goal was to feel better and to help my body stop craving things that, really, it didn’t crave at all.
Here’s the deal: IE is a very delicate thing. Attaining balance is very hard (I’m sure you’ve noticed!). After a while, you’ll realise that, really, it’s just like dieting: you need to eat healthily (because you want to feel good about yourself) and you need to move (because you want to feel good about yourself). You need to do both these things to be the best person you can be. However, the process is completely different (as I’m sure you know by now). When you diet, you just follow some rules dictated by somebody else and you end up rebelling. When you are on the IE path, you come to the same conclusions but all by yourself (and so you don’t need to rebel), and you don’t need to count points/fat grams/calories/carbohydrates, that is (and it’s the best thing): you don’t need to think about it, you don’t need to obsess about it. Little by little, step by step, you just find your own balance, by trial and error, and it’s your balance. Needless to say, it takes a long time... but you will feel really good because you will have done it all by yourself and because you will have freed yourself. The taste of freedom is better than anything else, in this process. Losing weight sure feels good, but oh, the freedom...!
I’m aware that this is a very long post, but I had to write it, first for myself, as a HUGE reminder of how my life truly is (addiction is a big part of it, I must stop fooling myself once and for all: my brain keeps thinking that food is the ultimate solution to a good life, even though my life is already wonderful, so I need to look into this more deeply), and second in the hope that it might help somebody out there. Even if only one person finds out that the same is true for her/him, then I’ll be happy and this blog will have served its purpose.
Tuesday 26 June 2007
H for ‘holding on’
Today I have realised once again that the reason I am not losing weight any more is because I am still holding on to the extra weight, to the extra fat. Somewhere in my brain, some cells work very hard at making other cells believe that somehow, the extra fat protects me from something. Intellectually, I know that it’s nonsense, I know that fat doesn’t protect me from anything, but my unconscious has other views on the matter. My ex-unconscious, actually – the one that I used to have when I was younger, the one that genuinely thought that by eating and putting on weight, my life would miraculously be better and I would be protected from evil.
I am now 30. It is time to get rid of this ‘ex-unconscious’. It shouldn’t still be alive in a part of my brain. It should be dead and gone. At 30, one should not believe that fat has a role any more, other than filling up the space between one’s bones and one’s clothes (with a bit of skin in between, of course).
Come on, get rid of it! Throw it away! Part with it. Put it on a boat and let the boat drift away on the Thames. Say goodbye to it. It doesn’t serve any/its purpose any more. You are a grown-up woman. Don’t be scared.
These are all things I used to tell myself but somehow, along the way, forgot to repeat to myself and so slowly slowly, my old demons have come back and it feels like my fat belongs to me again and I cannot part with it. I would feel bare, naked without it. I would feel transparent. I would feel vulnerable. I wouldn’t feel like myself any more. Again, intellectually, I know it’s all nonsense – fat doesn’t do any of that, it can’t do any of that. But the symbolism was so strong when I was younger, that it can still be strong even though I am now an adult and know better.
‘Holding on’ should be banned from our vocabulary now. We don’t want to hold on. We don’t want to hold on to our fat. It is the thing we most despise in us, it is the thing we so desperately want to get rid of. But if we are to manage without it, we need to recognise its power over us, to acknowledge that it has been useful in the past. We need to love it, in a way, before we can say goodbye. Love it to leave it. That’s my new mantra.
Today, I’m saying goodbye. I don’t need it any more. ‘Fat, you can go now. You don’t help me any more. Without you, I will feel naked, vulnerable, different, but you still need to go, to leave me alone, to leave me to my own devices. I’ll find a way to cope without you and without food.’
I have often found it very useful and enlightening to talk to my body or my fat in this way. In Beyond Chocolate the authors (Sophie and Audrey Boss) recommend writing a letter to your body with your dominant hand and then write another letter, this time from your body to you, with your non-dominant hand. I have done it, and I have been amazed at all the stuff my body had to tell me.
Why don’t you try, and then tell me in my comment box what you found out?
I am now 30. It is time to get rid of this ‘ex-unconscious’. It shouldn’t still be alive in a part of my brain. It should be dead and gone. At 30, one should not believe that fat has a role any more, other than filling up the space between one’s bones and one’s clothes (with a bit of skin in between, of course).
Come on, get rid of it! Throw it away! Part with it. Put it on a boat and let the boat drift away on the Thames. Say goodbye to it. It doesn’t serve any/its purpose any more. You are a grown-up woman. Don’t be scared.
These are all things I used to tell myself but somehow, along the way, forgot to repeat to myself and so slowly slowly, my old demons have come back and it feels like my fat belongs to me again and I cannot part with it. I would feel bare, naked without it. I would feel transparent. I would feel vulnerable. I wouldn’t feel like myself any more. Again, intellectually, I know it’s all nonsense – fat doesn’t do any of that, it can’t do any of that. But the symbolism was so strong when I was younger, that it can still be strong even though I am now an adult and know better.
‘Holding on’ should be banned from our vocabulary now. We don’t want to hold on. We don’t want to hold on to our fat. It is the thing we most despise in us, it is the thing we so desperately want to get rid of. But if we are to manage without it, we need to recognise its power over us, to acknowledge that it has been useful in the past. We need to love it, in a way, before we can say goodbye. Love it to leave it. That’s my new mantra.
Today, I’m saying goodbye. I don’t need it any more. ‘Fat, you can go now. You don’t help me any more. Without you, I will feel naked, vulnerable, different, but you still need to go, to leave me alone, to leave me to my own devices. I’ll find a way to cope without you and without food.’
I have often found it very useful and enlightening to talk to my body or my fat in this way. In Beyond Chocolate the authors (Sophie and Audrey Boss) recommend writing a letter to your body with your dominant hand and then write another letter, this time from your body to you, with your non-dominant hand. I have done it, and I have been amazed at all the stuff my body had to tell me.
Why don’t you try, and then tell me in my comment box what you found out?
Monday 25 June 2007
S for ‘scary’
Starting on the intuitive eating path was the scariest thing I have ever done. Every day, for a few months, I had to make the conscious decision not to diet. Practically every moment, and certainly every time I ate, I had to decide to give up dieting and to start a new way of life, no matter what the consequences would be. Every day, I had to choose between weighing the cereals in my breakfast bowl and trusting my judgement; between counting my points (the Weight Watchers system, as I’m sure you all know) and eating to my heart’s content; between eating only three times a day and eating as often as was needed; between eating my sensible salad and devouring what I really felt like eating – whether it be a bowl of chips or a banoffee pie.
Every day, I had this intense fear of weight gain. It was unbearable sometimes. I had to stop and think and remind myself what would happen if I did diet – ultimately, I would be even fatter and my problem would be even worse. I had to believe that. After a few weeks, I just knew that and didn’t have to force myself into believing it – it had become second nature. My brain just knew. My brain had stopped ignoring the past. The lessons of the past were obvious – diets don’t work, diets make people fat, diets make things worse and all the harder the next time around. Diets are not the answer. But the fear of putting on more and more weight and not knowing when it would stop was there, every day, minute after minute.
I bought myself a pair of jeans that was so big I knew they would not feel tight for a while, and that helped. It reassured me and it freed me from thinking about my body so much and worrying about weight gain. Feeling tight clothes on you is the worst thing for a dieter, but also for an ex-dieter. It makes you want to go on a diet right now and for ever, to keep the weight off. Yet the new, more sensible self reminds the old self that the ultimate result is only more weight gain, so there is no point. Indeed, you MUST NOT go on a diet.
Of course, the inevitable happened: the pounds piled on, until I reached 75 kilos. It was about 6-7 kilos more than my weight just before the decision. I quickly realised and accepted that it was a small sacrifice if the feeling of freedom was guaranteed. And freedom definitely was my priority. I had just had enough of being obsessed with food and my body shape and hunger.
But of course, this feeling of freedom is not a given – it is something we attain on our own accord. If we don’t allow it in, it just won’t happen. Sometimes you have to force yourself to stop thinking about food and body shape, and that’s when freedom comes in. Yet it is also a natural consequence of not dieting – the freedom of choice, of being different and accepting it, of weighing a little bit more than before and a bit more than we would want to, while knowing at the same time that at least it won’t ever go up like that again, or at least that it won’t go up for ever.
At that point it felt like I had ‘got it out of my system’. I had eaten everything I fancied every time I fancied it. However, another year passed and it felt like I had been at a standstill for 12 months. Nothing much was happening to my weight, but nothing much was happening inside myself. No breakthrough, no BIG REALISATION, no progress in the IE department, despite having first encountered and started applying the principles in December 1999 when reading Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
I realised that I hadn’t got it out of my system at all, and probably because I hadn’t ‘done it properly’. I was still putting the brakes on when it came to eating, I was never letting myself go completely, I was still scared of that ‘Evil Weight Gain’ and what people (especially my parents, my family) would say. I’ll admit it: I still didn’t trust the system completely.
Yet the more I thought about it, the more I understood and accepted that there really was no other way. I just had to be patient, and take it one day at a time. I decided I also absolutely needed to ‘do it right’ from A to Z. I realised I had never done it properly in the sense that I had never surrounded myself with forbidden food for any length of time: I did it for a week, but then I always got scared and finished my supplies and never replenished them. Out of all the principles, it was the only one I hadn’t followed, and yet it was pivotal to the success of the method, if I were to believe the authors of Intuitive Eating and those of Overcoming Overeating, Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter.
And so I filled my cupboards and freezer with my favourite foods, freely and unashamedly, telling myself this was going to be for good, ‘I’m going to do it properly this time, there’s no going back, I’m doing it no matter what, it is the ONLY WAY’: white chocolate, milk and hazelnut chocolate, Digestive biscuits and Ben & Jerry Cookie Dough ice cream. And I ate. Loads. As often as I (thought I) was hungry. And even when I wasn’t (that was the bad part, but I still went along with it, because I knew I had to).
Then one day I weighed myself and was shocked at seeing more than 80 kilos on the scales. I hadn’t seen it coming. Well I had, my jeans were getting tighter, but I had ignored that bit.
It stopped me right in my tracks, as it were. I became very scared. I was getting married two months later, and I had never weighed so much in my entire life. It was time to stop. It was time to reason myself. And that’s when I reread Geneen Roth’s Breaking Free from Emotional Eating and came across a paragraph that reminded me that no matter how many biscuits or how much ice cream I ate, I would never make up for all the years of deprivation, of not allowing myself these particular foods.
These lines really meant something to me that day, and from then on, I stopped eating for England and for the past. I started focusing on the present, asking myself how many biscuits I truly needed right now. It turned out it was never a lot. It certainly was never five or ten! It was just one or two. I also became ‘reasonable’: I told myself ‘Come on, that’s enough now, you’ve already had two, you don’t need any more, and you know it’. It worked for me because I wasn’t rebellious any more – I knew there was no need to be, since I could still eat anything I wanted.
Yes, despite the weight gain and the fear of putting even more on, I still didn’t go on a diet (I simply couldn’t; I tried for two days and failed miserably), I still told myself that I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. But I also reminded myself that just a little was enough. I didn’t need to eat that much. And of course, I had to fit in that dress... It was a good incentive, yes...
Since the wedding, my weight has been going down slowly. Some days I’ll eat what I consider ‘crap food’, some days I’ll eat really good, healthy food. Most days now, I eat well and respect my body. It doesn’t want to eat loads, it doesn’t want to eat bad foods, it doesn’t want to eat things it can’t cope with. We’re partners now. And I try not to think about the weight loss too much. It only stops me from focusing on the real, better goal: the one of having a healthy relationship with food and with my body.
Every day, I had this intense fear of weight gain. It was unbearable sometimes. I had to stop and think and remind myself what would happen if I did diet – ultimately, I would be even fatter and my problem would be even worse. I had to believe that. After a few weeks, I just knew that and didn’t have to force myself into believing it – it had become second nature. My brain just knew. My brain had stopped ignoring the past. The lessons of the past were obvious – diets don’t work, diets make people fat, diets make things worse and all the harder the next time around. Diets are not the answer. But the fear of putting on more and more weight and not knowing when it would stop was there, every day, minute after minute.
I bought myself a pair of jeans that was so big I knew they would not feel tight for a while, and that helped. It reassured me and it freed me from thinking about my body so much and worrying about weight gain. Feeling tight clothes on you is the worst thing for a dieter, but also for an ex-dieter. It makes you want to go on a diet right now and for ever, to keep the weight off. Yet the new, more sensible self reminds the old self that the ultimate result is only more weight gain, so there is no point. Indeed, you MUST NOT go on a diet.
Of course, the inevitable happened: the pounds piled on, until I reached 75 kilos. It was about 6-7 kilos more than my weight just before the decision. I quickly realised and accepted that it was a small sacrifice if the feeling of freedom was guaranteed. And freedom definitely was my priority. I had just had enough of being obsessed with food and my body shape and hunger.
But of course, this feeling of freedom is not a given – it is something we attain on our own accord. If we don’t allow it in, it just won’t happen. Sometimes you have to force yourself to stop thinking about food and body shape, and that’s when freedom comes in. Yet it is also a natural consequence of not dieting – the freedom of choice, of being different and accepting it, of weighing a little bit more than before and a bit more than we would want to, while knowing at the same time that at least it won’t ever go up like that again, or at least that it won’t go up for ever.
At that point it felt like I had ‘got it out of my system’. I had eaten everything I fancied every time I fancied it. However, another year passed and it felt like I had been at a standstill for 12 months. Nothing much was happening to my weight, but nothing much was happening inside myself. No breakthrough, no BIG REALISATION, no progress in the IE department, despite having first encountered and started applying the principles in December 1999 when reading Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
I realised that I hadn’t got it out of my system at all, and probably because I hadn’t ‘done it properly’. I was still putting the brakes on when it came to eating, I was never letting myself go completely, I was still scared of that ‘Evil Weight Gain’ and what people (especially my parents, my family) would say. I’ll admit it: I still didn’t trust the system completely.
Yet the more I thought about it, the more I understood and accepted that there really was no other way. I just had to be patient, and take it one day at a time. I decided I also absolutely needed to ‘do it right’ from A to Z. I realised I had never done it properly in the sense that I had never surrounded myself with forbidden food for any length of time: I did it for a week, but then I always got scared and finished my supplies and never replenished them. Out of all the principles, it was the only one I hadn’t followed, and yet it was pivotal to the success of the method, if I were to believe the authors of Intuitive Eating and those of Overcoming Overeating, Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter.
And so I filled my cupboards and freezer with my favourite foods, freely and unashamedly, telling myself this was going to be for good, ‘I’m going to do it properly this time, there’s no going back, I’m doing it no matter what, it is the ONLY WAY’: white chocolate, milk and hazelnut chocolate, Digestive biscuits and Ben & Jerry Cookie Dough ice cream. And I ate. Loads. As often as I (thought I) was hungry. And even when I wasn’t (that was the bad part, but I still went along with it, because I knew I had to).
Then one day I weighed myself and was shocked at seeing more than 80 kilos on the scales. I hadn’t seen it coming. Well I had, my jeans were getting tighter, but I had ignored that bit.
It stopped me right in my tracks, as it were. I became very scared. I was getting married two months later, and I had never weighed so much in my entire life. It was time to stop. It was time to reason myself. And that’s when I reread Geneen Roth’s Breaking Free from Emotional Eating and came across a paragraph that reminded me that no matter how many biscuits or how much ice cream I ate, I would never make up for all the years of deprivation, of not allowing myself these particular foods.
These lines really meant something to me that day, and from then on, I stopped eating for England and for the past. I started focusing on the present, asking myself how many biscuits I truly needed right now. It turned out it was never a lot. It certainly was never five or ten! It was just one or two. I also became ‘reasonable’: I told myself ‘Come on, that’s enough now, you’ve already had two, you don’t need any more, and you know it’. It worked for me because I wasn’t rebellious any more – I knew there was no need to be, since I could still eat anything I wanted.
Yes, despite the weight gain and the fear of putting even more on, I still didn’t go on a diet (I simply couldn’t; I tried for two days and failed miserably), I still told myself that I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. But I also reminded myself that just a little was enough. I didn’t need to eat that much. And of course, I had to fit in that dress... It was a good incentive, yes...
Since the wedding, my weight has been going down slowly. Some days I’ll eat what I consider ‘crap food’, some days I’ll eat really good, healthy food. Most days now, I eat well and respect my body. It doesn’t want to eat loads, it doesn’t want to eat bad foods, it doesn’t want to eat things it can’t cope with. We’re partners now. And I try not to think about the weight loss too much. It only stops me from focusing on the real, better goal: the one of having a healthy relationship with food and with my body.
Wednesday 20 June 2007
N for ‘need’ (1)
Today at meal times, I repeated to myself: ‘No, you don’t need extra food, you don’t need a treat (or several!). You’re fine as you are. You’re not hungry any more. You can live without extra food. Food is not your crutch.’
And it worked! I have felt fabulous all day, because I listened to myself and fulfilled my morning promise.
And it worked! I have felt fabulous all day, because I listened to myself and fulfilled my morning promise.
P for ‘principles’
I know for sure that all I need to do to find my body (I don’t like to use ‘to lose weight’ – these are dieting-days words) is:
- to pay attention
- not to overeat
That is all it takes.
And then forbid myself to think about it toooooo much, of course. Thinking about it too much makes me focus on the wrong thing(s) (When will I be hungry next? When will I lose weight? Am I going to be hungry at lunch time? etc.)
Yes, the two principles outlined above our my life-savers. And they are all I need to change my life.
What are your life-saving principles?
- to pay attention
- not to overeat
That is all it takes.
And then forbid myself to think about it toooooo much, of course. Thinking about it too much makes me focus on the wrong thing(s) (When will I be hungry next? When will I lose weight? Am I going to be hungry at lunch time? etc.)
Yes, the two principles outlined above our my life-savers. And they are all I need to change my life.
What are your life-saving principles?
S for ‘strong’
- Every time I eat when I’m not hungry or I overeat, I then feel bad about it and feel like eating even more or even more often.
- Every time I eat just what I need and want, I feel good and in control and I feel like a normal eater: there’s no need to think about food! My body is in control, my body tells me what it needs and wants.
- Every time I don’t pay attention to what I eat (e.g. by reading or by thinking about something else, not focusing on the present), I send a signal to my brain that says ‘I don’t care’. And when I don’t care, I feel bad and... you know what happens next.
Question: Where do you get the strength to pay attention and then to stop? Basically, where do you get the strength to be strong?
My answer: I find that the first moments of the day are when I decide things. I decide to be strong, I decide that today I will not overeat/will pay attention/will not get distracted/will respect food, my body, myself. Come eating time, I remember my morning promise and reiterate it. It helps me stay strong and aware throughout the meal/eating experience, and it then gives me the strength to stop when I’m full or have had enough of the taste.
- Every time I eat just what I need and want, I feel good and in control and I feel like a normal eater: there’s no need to think about food! My body is in control, my body tells me what it needs and wants.
- Every time I don’t pay attention to what I eat (e.g. by reading or by thinking about something else, not focusing on the present), I send a signal to my brain that says ‘I don’t care’. And when I don’t care, I feel bad and... you know what happens next.
Question: Where do you get the strength to pay attention and then to stop? Basically, where do you get the strength to be strong?
My answer: I find that the first moments of the day are when I decide things. I decide to be strong, I decide that today I will not overeat/will pay attention/will not get distracted/will respect food, my body, myself. Come eating time, I remember my morning promise and reiterate it. It helps me stay strong and aware throughout the meal/eating experience, and it then gives me the strength to stop when I’m full or have had enough of the taste.
G for 'guilt'
I’m finding it hard to stop and ask myself this question during the day, so I’ve decided to sit down and write it all out here.
Why can’t I stop eating when I’m full?
Why can’t I decide that enough is enough, before I eat the last crumb?
Why do I think that food is good and I can’t live without its nice taste in my mouth?
What makes me believe that this problem will never be solved, not entirely, not really?
How can I change my beliefs about myself, about my ability to solve this problem?
Do I really want to change?
I feel guilty for not trying hard enough.
I feel guilty for not being there for one of my friends who needs me right now.
I feel guilty for taking too much on.
I feel guilty for not doing enough.
I feel guilty, guilty, guilty, and this is not helping my eating patterns!
Therefore, I MUST stop feeling guilty.
Why can’t I stop eating when I’m full?
Why can’t I decide that enough is enough, before I eat the last crumb?
Why do I think that food is good and I can’t live without its nice taste in my mouth?
What makes me believe that this problem will never be solved, not entirely, not really?
How can I change my beliefs about myself, about my ability to solve this problem?
Do I really want to change?
I feel guilty for not trying hard enough.
I feel guilty for not being there for one of my friends who needs me right now.
I feel guilty for taking too much on.
I feel guilty for not doing enough.
I feel guilty, guilty, guilty, and this is not helping my eating patterns!
Therefore, I MUST stop feeling guilty.
Tuesday 19 June 2007
E for ‘enemies’
I realised today that my first enemies are my habits. I have three habits (as far as eating is concerned – I have many more for other things!!):
1) I read while I eat my breakfast and most of my lunches (those I spend at home when I don’t go to work and my husband is not at home, i.e. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays).
2) I put too big portions on my plate/in my bowl.
3) I finish what is on my plate/in my bowl no matter what.
My aim from now on will be to eliminate these habits, and for ever. Indeed, I have managed to stop reading and/or serving too big portions and/or finishing what’s on my plate/in my bowl for long stretches of time before, but I always go back to these horrible, ancestral, learned habits. This MUST stop if I am to get to my normal body weight and shape.
What are your habits and why would you like to change them? How are they detrimental to you/your IE goals?
1) I read while I eat my breakfast and most of my lunches (those I spend at home when I don’t go to work and my husband is not at home, i.e. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays).
2) I put too big portions on my plate/in my bowl.
3) I finish what is on my plate/in my bowl no matter what.
My aim from now on will be to eliminate these habits, and for ever. Indeed, I have managed to stop reading and/or serving too big portions and/or finishing what’s on my plate/in my bowl for long stretches of time before, but I always go back to these horrible, ancestral, learned habits. This MUST stop if I am to get to my normal body weight and shape.
What are your habits and why would you like to change them? How are they detrimental to you/your IE goals?
The idea
I have written an entire book about intuitive eating, originally in the hope to have it published and that it would help anybody who would read it.
Recently, I’ve thought about it some more and I think I want to remain anonymous, so I have given up on the idea of having my book published. Also, I haven’t lost as much weight as I think I can by following my own principles, so I don’t think I would be taken seriously. ‘Who is she to tell us what to do when she’s obviously not quite there herself?’ is the type of comment that might welcome me if I ever tried to send my book to a publisher.
However, I still like the idea very much, and I still want to help people on their path to recovery from food addiction or overeating or whatever they want to call it. So I have decided to write a blog about it all – my experiences, my book, my diaries, my ongoing (though fading) struggle.
In this blog, I will probably mix it all up – some lines from my book, some lines from my diaries, and some lines about the present and my current problems (yes, they do recur every now and again).
There was a time when I thought that it was probably better to stop thinking about it completely and live life to the full. This only lasted for a few months. My demons are coming back slowly. And I now know that the only way forward is to think about them again, write about them, and provide advice – to myself and to others. When I write with people in mind, I also write with ‘me’ in mind, and so I help myself by helping others – and, hopefully, vice versa.
Welcome to my blog!
Recently, I’ve thought about it some more and I think I want to remain anonymous, so I have given up on the idea of having my book published. Also, I haven’t lost as much weight as I think I can by following my own principles, so I don’t think I would be taken seriously. ‘Who is she to tell us what to do when she’s obviously not quite there herself?’ is the type of comment that might welcome me if I ever tried to send my book to a publisher.
However, I still like the idea very much, and I still want to help people on their path to recovery from food addiction or overeating or whatever they want to call it. So I have decided to write a blog about it all – my experiences, my book, my diaries, my ongoing (though fading) struggle.
In this blog, I will probably mix it all up – some lines from my book, some lines from my diaries, and some lines about the present and my current problems (yes, they do recur every now and again).
There was a time when I thought that it was probably better to stop thinking about it completely and live life to the full. This only lasted for a few months. My demons are coming back slowly. And I now know that the only way forward is to think about them again, write about them, and provide advice – to myself and to others. When I write with people in mind, I also write with ‘me’ in mind, and so I help myself by helping others – and, hopefully, vice versa.
Welcome to my blog!
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