Re: Report of this week of IE

[Guest guest]

Tilly,

Wow, those are some powerful realizations. I, too, notice that when I'm no longer hungry, but really want to eat, I will start eating faster to "get it all in before it's too late." What helps me is to tell myself to calm down around food. It will be there later. I have been having experiences like you lately, just wanting to eat even when I know I am not hungry, and not honoring the food. I had a candy incident, too. . And I don't even like candy!

So, I feel a little sheepish saying this, but I've been experimenting with moderating my intake of certain foods. I don't want to get into the restriction realm and end up with lots of last supper eating and binges, but I want to choose foods that I know honor my body better. But slowly, gently, and without any rules as to what I can and cannot eat. I don't recognize my body anymore, but I've noticed that I am not judging it as harshly either (big step for me). I just notice that it has become something else while I wasn't paying attention. I'd like to take IE a step further by starting to make choices with both my body and my head.

Mimi

Subject: Report of this week of IETo: IntuitiveEating_Support Date: Saturday, November 19, 2011, 2:49 PM

Please remind me that this is a process, that even days that make me really unhappy are part of the learning process, though I knew years ago that eating all day long makes it so that I feel really yucky, and can't sleep at night, and that buying three bags of candy will lead me to eat....well, three bags of candy. So I don't know what I've learned, except that four months ago I never would have bought the candy in the first place. But I really wanted some candy, and I found three varieties that sounded really good, and if I ate myself sick, at least I was aware that it was happening when I was eating candy while doing other things--working on the computer, reading, grading papers, and for the latter anyway, it made that process a whole lot more enjoyable. I realized that the candy I ate while I was "honoring the candy" (ie, doing nothing but eating the candy, and really paying attention to how it tasted and felt in my mouth) didn't make me sick,

and it was really pleasurable. And the eating all day was when I spent the day cooking a most incredibly delicious meal for about twenty people for our dance weekend, and it started with sampling the filling for the eggplant almond enchiladas, and evolved into snacking on morsels of chicken, cheese, chicken/cheese/pepper mixture, and then apple crisp topping as I was mixing it up, and on and on. This is a long-standing habit, one which I've been slowly changing as I want to be able to enjoy the meal when it's finally done. But I didn't yesterday, and then ate the meal anyway, and it was good, even though I was too full when I started and I had two servings of apple crisp, and more snacks--homemade pizza mostly--late at night, and spent a wretched night now sleeping. Mso what did I learn from that? I dunno....my temptation is to say that I've learned I can't be trusted around food, which is areal shame because I really love to cook, so I'm not going to

say that. I'm working on that one.....But other things--what Katcha said turned out to be right, that once I noticed once how when I started to start eating faster so as to not miss out on any of a meal because I wasn't hungry anymore. I didn't necessarily believe her, but I noticed it at least three times during the week. There is definitely a point where, after eating slowly and savoring my food, I start eating more quickly. And that's a signal for me that perhaps I'm really done. Interesting.Another thing I noticed, today after yesterday's eating fest that I wasn't hungry for breakfast until later in the morning, and then was quite satisfied during a.long morning of dance workships (it's our local contra dance weekend), that I was really hungry for lunch, and I fixed up a big plate of leftover enchiladas, refrained beans, and ice with peas in it, and then I saw a container of leftover zucchini and onions sautéed in lemon juice, and I

thought, wow, that looks good, so I put that on my plate too. This was an enormous plate, because I was really hungry, and I wanted to read while I was eating, but said, no, this is really good food, and I should honor it by paying attention to it, so I didn't read, but then after a few bites of enchilada (what I had been looking forward the most to eating), the zucchini and the rice turned out to be the best thing. One tiny bite of beans told me they were too salty(though I had eaten a ton of them the day before), and even the enchiladas were too salty. So I enjoyed the slightly lemony rice with the sweet peas and the definitely lemony zucchini, which was from a lunch earlier in the week, and then there was a point where I started to eat the zucchini faster, and my slow-but-not-stupid brain said, "duh, that must mean you're not hungry any more," even though most of my food was still on my plate. So I wrapped it up for later, or some other time when I

might be hungry again. So I'm encouraged.My thought for the week is one I mentioned earlier about acting like you love the food that you're eating. I'm all for honoring my body, but it's so easy to abuse it. But honoring one's food....it's really pretty amazing the abundance we have, and I'm going to make a point of truly appreciating it this coming week.Sorry about how long-winded this is. It helps me to process. What did you folks learn this week?Tilley