Re: Re: Principle 3 - Make Peace with Food

[Guest guest]

Hi Jennie...thanks for sharing. I'm a WW "survivor" too. I went to WW from Nov 2002 until the spring of 2005. I lost a lot of weight in that time. I stopped going because I thought I should be able to just eat what I wanted in moderation and maintain the weight loss. Well I did good for a year...I ate what I wanted but I still monitored my weight pretty closely. Then in May of 2006 I sprained my ankle. I had to stop exercising and the weight started piling on. Then I went back to WW for the summer and my eating got CRAZY! I would binge practically every night...I was stressed about my weight and why my ankle wasn't getting better. I found out about IE that August and quit dieting.

SOmedays I think I should go back to WW just to lose weight. I know I would lose some weight but I also know my disordered eating would get worse. I had a bad day the other day and even was surfing the WW site to see what promotions they had on. I'm happy to say I came to my senses after only a few minutes!

Kipkabob

(Intuitive eating since September 2006)

Subject: Re: Principle 3 - "Make Peace with Food"To: IntuitiveEating_Support Received: Thursday, August 28, 2008, 9:31 AM

I have a feeling this principle is going to be where I spend most of my time over the next few months. Apologies in advance - this is going to be long and bloggity and I'm going to talk about food and diets! I have been on and off Weight Watchers for the last 10 years. The last time I joined I thought I was doing it to help develop a healthy relationship with food so that I did not pass on any issues to my son, who is now 20 months old. Over the course of the last few months, I came to the realization that WW was not helping normalize my relationship with food - it was messing it up even more! Even though I was not "counting points" because I was on core, I was still restricting and denying myself things I really wanted because my food choices were limited to a list, five points a day (the amount in a snickers bar) and whatever points I could earn though exercise. Every week I went over

points and every week I felt like I was a failure. Then I started to notice how my son was eating. He ate only what he wanted and stopped when he was full. Sometimes he would eat a lot of fruit and sometimes he would firmly shake his head NO. Sometimes he would eat a lot of veggies and throw his chicken over the side of the high chair. The next day it was the veggies that hit the floor. He did something I could never do - walk away from a cookie because he wasn't hungry anymore! I remembered a friend talking about IE and started asking her questions. Then I found this group, cancelled my WW membership and haven't looked back.Since then, I've been working my way through all the foods I wanted to eat, told myself I couldn't have because it wasn't "on the list", and then felt bad about it when I ate - more likely overate - it anyway! I've started cooking and baking again because I really enjoy

it. I made three peach and blueberry cobblers in the space of 10 days because I could. I started making pancakes for breakfast on the weekends and using real syrup and eating them with bacon. I make casseroles using canned soup because I like them! I have Oreo's in my house. Not the 100 calorie packs - the real deal. And yesterday, I put the last two in a baggie to save for my son instead of eating them. Because I can have Oreo's any time I want them. I'm still bringing back foods I haven't eaten in a while - like sandwiches, snack foods, cereals, peanut M & M's. I'm finding that I eat them like crazy for a week and then I don't *need* them anymore. I'm starting to eat fruits and veggies again because I like them, not because I "have" to. I've found my favorite afternoon snack isn't a sugar free pudding because I deserved a treat, but baby carrots and snap peas dipped in red pepper hummus -

or a laughing cow cheese wedge spread on a whole grain cracker. I still struggle with some of the diet mentalaties - and I think we all do - but every day that leap of faith (thanks Norma for that post) gets a little easier. Phew. I feel better for having gotten that out!

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[Guest guest]

Wow! Great story! It's so good to hear someone's experience with that! I have not tried it yet. I am eating foods I had previously sworn off - I was following OA for a while, and sugar is a big no- no; treated like an addictive drug.

I did notice one thing about me and sugary foods - if I eat too much in one sitting, I get an energy spike and start cleaning,can't sit still. And then the sugar rush ends, and I'm irritable and bi***y. I don't like that feeling, so I have decided to eat sugary foods when I'm not very hungry. That up and down mood/hyper thing is not fun!

Anyways, I'm feeling so good about intuitive eating. My fear of food is slipping away, I'm building trust in my own body's signals!

Kim H.

Subject: Re: Principle 3 - "Make Peace with Food"To: IntuitiveEating_Support Date: Sunday, August 31, 2008, 11:53 PM

>> ~ You must tell all the newbies about making peace with cake! Hi everyone,Per Meg's request, I will share my experience with making peace with cake. I know this can seem like a really scary concept and I am hoping that by sharing some of what I learned (the HARD way, I might add), it might help some of you who are considering taking this step. I decided to tackle this principle on my fifth week of Intuitive Eating, after I felt like I was getting comfortable with honoring my hunger and rejecting diet mentality. In retrospect, I probably should have waited a little longer. I did not fully trust in the program at that point and I think in order to get through this step, you should feel committed to

the program and secure in your decision to reject diet mentality. I say this because there will be times when you may question the sanity of what you are doing! :-)I chose cake to start with because it has always been my binge food of choice, ever since good old Weight Watchers introduced me to the world of the deprivation / binge merry-go-round that would plague me for the next 35 years and eventually lead me into morbid obesity.So I decided if I could make peace with cake, I could handle ANY food. I had been brainwashed by one diet "guru" to believe that sugar was a drug and even a spoonful of sugar on my oatmeal or a tablespoon of maple syrup on my pancakes would send me running into the streets, breaking into the corner store in the middle of the night, just to get my sugar "fix". So you can imagine I was VERY worried about trying to make peace with cake with THAT mindset. I will

spare you all the gory details of the process. This post will be long enough as it is! Instead, I will just share with you some of the things I learned from the process, the HARD way. First of all, if you want to make peace with a certain kind of food, I find it is best to eat the real deal, not some healthy, low fat, low sugar version of it. I believe it is important that you choose a food that you feel really holds some kind of power over you. (At least in my humble opinion.)Secondly, try to avoid self-sabotage. Choose a time when you know your life won't be extremely hectic or stressful. Try not to eat the food on an empty stomach, if possible, when you naturally will eat a lot more of it because your body is ready for a meal. Try to eat it after a full meal. In the case of sugar, this will also prevent major bloodsugar spikes and crashes which can set off cravings.MOST IMPORTANTLY,

be a food anthropologist, as the book recommends. Observe your response to the food WITHOUT JUDGEMENT. This is very challenging, at first, because all of our lives we have heard "the voices" in our heads after just a few bites of these foods. "What are you doing? You will get fat! (fatter!) You are out of control! Put the fork down!" etc. etc. If you can turn off those voices and objectively observe what is REALLY going on with your body in terms of hunger, satisfaction and fullness, you will learn a LOT this way. You will learn things like, "If I am having a very stressful day and there is a homemade cake in the house, I am very likely to turn to the cake for comfort. BUT most days are not stressful enough to cause that reaction." Or…"If I try out a new recipe and it comes out really good, I am likely to eat beyond fullness, but usually only the first time I make the recipe." Or…"If I drink a

glass of milk with the cake, I notice I am satisfied after only one piece of cake, instead of two." I always thought I was a bottomless pit where cake is concerned. Turns out I'm not. But sometimes it takes 2 pieces to satisfy me. In the past, when I would go for the second piece, I would feel so stressed and emotional about it that I would end up eating 3 or 4! And as I continued to work on making peace with cake, sometimes I only wanted one piece. And sometimes I didn't want any!I wouldn't want to make it sound TOO easy! I definitely had one very bad day, on Cake #3. I was having a particularly difficult day caring for my mother, who has late stage Alzheimer's. Between the fact that I was stressed to the max AND it was a new recipe which added to the "excitement factor", I devoured the whole cake within 24 hours, a good old fashioned binge, fork in one hand, cake pan in the other, standing in

the kitchen. I beat myself up for about 48 hours after that, even went back to the insanity of dieting for a couple of days. I quickly came running back to Intuitive Eating, however. I got right back on the horse and baked another cake. No binge on the next cake, or on any since. And as the book promises, after eating cakes for a few weeks, I was getting downright sick of eating cake! I even ended up throwing part of some of them away when they got stale! I never thought I would live to see THAT day. At one point, I realized I had been eating fruit for dessert for a few days. I never thought I would live to see THAT day either! I was, and still am in complete awe of the authors of "Intuitive Eating". I wonder how they dared advise that first client to run out and buy a box of their favorite chocolate or whatever and tell them if they eat it all in one sitting to go right out and buy another.

How on earth did they know it would work? It still blows my mind. But…they are RIGHT.Thanks to making peace with cake, I now feel I can go anywhere, any social occasion, buffet, restaurant, you name it, and not be afraid of food. I have gone on to challenge my fears of other foods since then, candy, donuts, etc. Once you tackle your biggest fear, the rest come much easier. No food has any power over me now. As I said, it seems scary at first and it definitely takes a big leap of faith. But once you do it, you will be far happier, knowing that no food has any power or control over you. And if, on occasion, you may overeat that food, you will understand that there were unusual circumstances that particular day and so you made a decision to eat beyond fullness. You were not out of control, you were not powerless, you just made a choice to eat beyond fullness on that occasion. When

you feel ready, just know that you CAN do this and - it WORKS. Best wishes,

[Guest guest]

jennie_4 wrote:

> I have been on and off Weight Watchers for the last 10 years. The

> last time I joined I thought I was doing it to help develop a healthy

> relationship with food so that I did not pass on any issues to my

> son, who is now 20 months old.

It's so ironic that a lot of people say they join WW to " develop a

healthy relationship " with food and that they " want to learn " how a

" normal portion " looks like and what is " healthy eating " because WW is

after all " NOT a diet " and is " for life " .

Duh!

This only shows that WW's marketing strategies seem to work really good!

Regards

s.