Intuitive Eating

How does it sound to never have to diet again? How about eating whatever you want? How would you like to feel peace about what you eat and not worry about calculating every little gram of anything again? How would you like to respect your body, love it for what it is? How would feel about not comparing every inch of yourself to others?

Do you find that when you even think about cutting sugar, carbs or fats out of your diet, all you can think about is eating them, even more than normal? Do you find that when you have a chance to eat the foods you cut out of your diet, you tend to binge on them when given the opportunity? Do you keep any of these foods out of your pantry so you aren't tempted by them? Have you ever begun a diet by have a "Last Supper" meal (eating all the foods you will be deprived from?)

This book discusses our different eating personalities...some of us are a couple of these...maybe they ring true to you, like they did for me.

Careful Eater - This kind of eater spends quite a bit of time planning meals or snacks, worrying about what to eat and carefully calculating it's health content. This kind of eater is interested in health and carefully eating for the sake of the body image. This kind of eater can eat well every week or month to find themselves binging on the weekends or holidays. This kind of person may not "diet" but they do over analyze every food situation.

Professional Eater - This kind of eater is always dieting. They move from one diet to the next, hoping each new diet will be the "one" diet that will work for them. It may work for the short term but not the long term. Sometimes dieting takes place in the form of fasting, or "cutting back". Professional dieters know all about portions, calories, and all other dieting tricks. These kind of dieters will usually have a "last supper" meal lasting one meal or a week or more before the next diet.

Unconscious Eater - This kind of eater usually eats while doing other things, like watching t.v., in front of the computer, reading or working. The author describes 4 different kinds of unconscious eaters:

• The Chaotic Unconscious Eater - This kind of eater is usually on the go all the time and grabs whatever is available from vending machines, drive thru, etc.
• The Refuse-Not Unconscious Eater - This kind of eater will eat whatever is lying around. These kind of eaters are not aware of what they are eating. They have a "clean your plate" mentality.
  
• Waste-Not Eater - values the food dollar, and will not let anything go to waste.
• Emotional Eater - obviously uses food to cope.

These behaviors almost always result in chronic over eating.

The Authors give us 10 Principles to follow:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality - The truth about deprivation, how it affects you psychologically. Willpower alone will never win. Do not deprive yourself of anything and in time you will find yourself turning away food.
   
2. Honor Your Hunger - Keep your body fed with adequate energy and carbs or you will trigger a primal drive to overeat. If you find yourself overly hungry, overeating will almost always ensue. Listen to your fullness. Do not eat yourself sick, experience this for yourself and you will find yourself turning away food.
   
3. Make Peace With Food - Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself you can't or shouldn't have it, it will lead to feelings of deprivation. (She has many studies of healthy people who haven't restricted food and how putting them on a diet causing them great stress and unhealthy views of food resulting in many months or years to recover).
   
4. Challenge The Food Police - "Scream a loud "no" to thoughts in your head that declare you're "good" for eating under 1,000 calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake." The food police give you many rules for eating and if you break those rules what that can do to your eating.
   
5. Feel Your Fullness - Listen to your body signals that tell you you are not hungry anymore. Pause in the middle of eating to ask yourself how your food tastes, and what your current fullness level is.
   
6. Discover The Satisfaction Factor - Ask yourself what you really want to eat and eat it. Enjoy it. Take time to eat. Satisfied now - eat less later. Sometimes we eat many things before we eat the thing we really want to eat causing us to eat many more calories than we would have. Pay attention to the color, taste, texture of food.
   
7. Cope with Your Emotions Without Using Food - Do we eat for comfort, distraction, sedation, punishment, excitement, sooth, love, anger, stress, frustration, bribery, reward, etc? Write down your feelings (studies show this is very effective). Meet your needs without food. Rest, express feelings, seek nurture in things you enjoy like: friends, pets, yoga, bubble bath, spa, keep fresh flowers in your house, garden, meditate, soothing music, rest, (whatever of these things sound good to you). Deal with your feelings by writing them down, talking to others, cry, breathe deeply. Allow yourself to feel what you are feeling and those feelings, in time, will diminish. She suggests getting help through therapy, if needed.
   
8. Respect Your Body - (this is my favorite chapter) Accept your genetic blueprint. Feel better about who you are. Be careful what you think about yourself and begin to replace it with the things you love about yourself. Do not compare yourself. (This is easier said than done, but I love her suggestions). If you respect and love yourself, you will naturally take better care of yourself. Throw away the scale and put away the tight jeans and wear beautiful clothes that fit you well, regardless of the size. Even a skinny person will feel fat in tight, ill-fitting clothes.
   
9. Exercise - Feel The Difference - Focus on how it feels. Exercise because you love yourself and because you want to. Find activities you enjoy doing. Don't get caught in the exercise mind games (ie - if I don't sweat then it doesn't count). Make exercise fun. She addresses beyond physical fitness, addressing those who exercise to much and how we can do that in the name of dieting. (maybe we allow ourselves to eat whatever we want and exercise it off - this is a diet mentality.)
   
10. Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition - Make food choices that honor your health AND taste buds and make you feel well. You do not have to eat PERFECT to be healthy. PROGRESSION, NO PERFECTION.

I put on my blog all of dieting woes. Last year I lost about 50 lbs. It was a great year, and I was successful but only in losing the weight, not in keeping it off. I have gained about 20 lbs back. I'm not happy about admitting that. I have spent so much time worrying about food and this book spoke many truths to me. I have battled food my whole life, even exercise. Since reading this book I have kept my house stocked with all the foods I haven't eaten...things like bread, potatoes, fruit, candy, etc. I have enjoyed eating it! I have not binged, which is interesting to me. I have candy in my house and it's not all gone yet (even if it was, thats ok)!!! I am on a journey to stop thinking about food and exercise all the time. I have turned down food, left food on my plate and have enjoyed not worrying about what kinds of exercise or how long I've exercised...I just go by how I feel! I find myself turning down junk food (the book calls them "play" foods) or eaten only a little because I find myself feeling sick or I find that I want something else more. In this book, we are encouraged that if we fight the fear (very scary to let our guard down and eat the foods we deny ourselves), we will find peace with food, no more binge eating and in time we will reach our natural weight. Doesn't that sound nice?! Already I feel so much happier about what I'm eating. I feel at peace already! I am not going to stress about how much weight I gain in the process (I have no scale anyway, lol). One very interesting thing to me is to watch children. We are born intuitive eaters. If they are not hungry, they won't eat. I highly recommend this book and any thoughts you have to share about it :)