First 1.5 Months Ups and Downs

[Guest guest]

Learning about Intuitive Eating has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for me. My first 1.5 months has been a lot of emotional highs and lows. Without this group I would have probably been quite confused, felt like a failure and given up. But I get to read in this group about other people going through the same types of things and I know that this is all part of a process.

I haven't been posting much lately; I can just barely keep up with reading the posts. So I thought I'd share some of the "Ups and Downs" that I've been going through. The upside of IE has most certainly "out weighed" the downside. The downside has been based on fears and misperceptions. The upside has been based on learning about myself.

Downs

I'm getting bigger and it freaks me out. It makes me depressed and makes my commitment to IE waver.

I still often continue to eat when I`m not hungry. It makes me feel like I will never get this under control and will just continue to get bigger.

Eating only when I was hungry and stopping when full started feeling like I was on a diet again. I had made it a rule. I missed just eating for pleasure. Having some tasty snack food when watching my favourite television show, even when not hungry and ending up over-full can be enjoyable. I started feeling deprived, so tonight I just did it. I have a lot of mixed emotions around this that I haven't sorted out yet.

Ups/Realizations

I realized that I really do need to eat what I really want or I just keep eating because I don't feel satisfied.

I was at a picnic and realized that I really only wanted to keep eating due to feeling uncomfortable in a social situation. Asking myself, "How do I want to feel when I leave here?" alleviated the cravings for food.

I love the freedom of Intuitive Eating.

Some things that I thought I would eat uncontrollable, I simply don`t want that much anymore.

I've learnt a lot about myself by doing IE.

I'm learning to consciously be kinder to myself and cut myself some slack. I don't need to do this perfectly.

I've learnt that a lot of my anxiety around food comes from unfounded fears of running out of food. This is a hangover from dieting that I need to let go off.

When I first stopped weighing myself every morning it was difficult. Most days now I don't even think about the scale.

I love watching my own progress, I love reading about others progress.

Arnie

IEing since August 2008