book dialogue begins!

July 11, 2010

If anyone has any thoughts on the book, please share!

Here's some questions to get us going, and please answer any that

call you and skip those you don't wish to answer. This is to help us

all learn from each other in a safe comfortable space!

1. Any questions or comments on the Foreward?

I loved the comment that it's ironic that with the massive failure

rate for dieting, we don't blame the process of dieting itself!!!

2. Are you approaching Intuitive Eating with an attitude that " this

is dieting " ? (I have to check-in with myself about this, so thought

maybe I'd put it out there.)

3. How do you feel about shunning dieting and hailing body acceptance???

Chapter One: Hitting Diet Bottom

I'm going to omit my answers to give others a chance to respond.

1. What is your " diet bottom " ? Would you like to share about your

dieting history?

2. Do you believe that diets don't work?

3. How does " Diet Backlash " manifest for you, or how has it in the past?

4. Do you have any " food police " in your life? Who?

5. From whom or what media does the pressure to diet manifest, and

how do you react to this? What do you do, if anything, to avoid

being around diet-mania?

6. Did you look to any eating plans that swore they were " not diets "

in order to find peace, later realizing that they too were diets

indeed? How did that work for you?

7. Any other questions or comments on chapter one?

Thanks all! Lots to share about, and hopefully this will spark some

great discussions!!!

Cheers,

July 13, 2010

To: IntuitiveEating_Support Sent: Sun, July 11, 2010 11:55:36 PMSubject: book dialogue begins!

If anyone has any thoughts on the book, please share!

Here's some questions to get us going, and please answer any that

call you and skip those you don't wish to answer. This is to help us

all learn from each other in a safe comfortable space!

1. Any questions or comments on the Foreward?

I loved the comment that it's ironic that with the massive failure

rate for dieting, we don't blame the process of dieting itself!!!Yes, I found this comment ironic also, and sadly so true. I know my husband feels like it's not a matter of will for him and that IE wouldn't work because he can't imagine never craving his trigger foods, and feels that that's a flaw with himself.

2. Are you approaching Intuitive Eating with an attitude that "this

is dieting"? (I have to check-in with myself about this, so thought

maybe I'd put it out there.)Part of me feels like it's a diet. It's not my intent, but just because I"m supposed to be able to eat anything, the food police are still yelling at me about it.

3. How do you feel about shunning dieting and hailing body acceptance???This one is hard for me. I shouldn't accept my body where it's at. I am obese, and I do need to lose weight, but I don't want to diet to do it. So, this one is proving tricky. Plus, I am finding that with age comes body acceptance, so it's harder to look at myself and think that I need to loose as much weight at the Drs would have me believe.

Chapter One: Hitting Diet Bottom

I'm going to omit my answers to give others a chance to respond.

1. What is your "diet bottom"? Would you like to share about your

dieting history?I don't have a true diet bottom, never formally dieted, but my 'moment' was looking around my pantry thinking, "What will make me feel better?" That's when I knew my relationship with food needed to change.

2. Do you believe that diets don't work?Of course they don't. If they did, my mother would actually be thin. It's a holistic (sp) approach to life of eating food in a reasonable manner and exercise. Sadly though, with technology ever evolving to take up more of our time, and the other demands of day-to-day life, we are not managing this well.

3. How does "Diet Backlash" manifest for you, or how has it in the past?Diet backlash is present in my life in because I am a "last supper" eater and the mention of a diet, any ones, diet makes me hungry. Even just talking about trying to eat healthier makes me want to eat loads of junk.

4. Do you have any "food police" in your life? Who?I have 3 food police. One is my grandmother, who keeps swearing at me that I have to eat less, stop eating the fast food, eat lots of carrots and celery, "the only way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more." and "imagine your garbage can getting fatter and your waist littler." The second is me. I spend a lot of time telling myself I should eat this or that, or mentally figuring calories in a tortilla and egg. The third is part of the second, but it's my husbands health. He has high cholesterol and blood pressure, so I've in recent years told myself that I can't bake because, while I might only eat one or two cookies, he will eat a dozen or so (he has a sugar addiction.) So, I hold back on making those types of things, even though, I really like them, and I can eat them in moderation. Heck, I can throw them

away when they get old, but he can't, so I don't get those and the stress relief of the baking because they are bad. Hmm, really gotta do something about that. Got to get some control over the need for sugar he and at least my daughter have. I hide candy, not because I'm ashamed to eat it, but because if I don't I won't get any. There is a soda in the fridge that literally has my name one it, because again, he would have drank it a few weeks ago, but I just haven't had the desire to actually drink it yet.I have two big

5. From whom or what media does the pressure to diet manifest, and

how do you react to this? What do you do, if anything, to avoid

being around diet-mania?Being around or seeing pictures of my family makes me want to diet. They are larger than I am, and I really don't want to get there. Also, I've just joined a moms group where it seems like half the group is 'thin' and exercises, and I'm feeling a little chubby there, but trying not to go there.

6. Did you look to any eating plans that swore they were "not diets"

in order to find peace, later realizing that they too were diets

indeed? How did that work for you?I've done this to myself. We went 6 months once (trying to control DHs health) where we cut out the fast food, like 95%, and I only made recipes that were high in fiber and low in fat. Really, we were eating good food, and it was healthy, but it didn't take us long to fall off that. I still cook like that some, but I'm not as strict about it. Sadly, despite the food and the exercise we did, I think only 8 lbs was lost. The bad news was I was restrictive, but the good news is that it gave me a better feel for portions, which, I think even with IE are important to at least be aware of.

7. Any other questions or comments on chapter one?

Thanks all! Lots to share about, and hopefully this will spark some

great discussions!!!

Cheers,

July 13, 2010

These are great questions, . Thanks for getting us started!

-

> 1. Any questions or comments on the Foreward?

>

> I loved the comment that it's ironic that with the massive failure

> rate for dieting, we don't blame the process of dieting itself!!!

>

It is ironic, and yet, I think that because, as the authors discuss, most of us

are able to lose on diets, it's easy to blame ourselves for failure. For some

of us, the losing is the hard part. I know for me, that I'm in a place where I

rebel so much that I have a hard time even getting that initial loss, now. But

that wasn't always the case and isn't the case for many people. Before, I could

lose if I really worked at it. And the fact that I saw that I could lose made

it easy to blame myself when I didn't lose as much as I wanted or when I

regained. Because, clearly, the diet actually worked. It was the maintenance

part that was hard, so it's easy to see the inability to maintain the loss I

worked so hard to achieve as my fault.

I've said more than once that I actually don't like the diets don't work because

only 5-10% of people keep the weight off statistic, because in some ways, that

statistic seems misleading to me. Because the diet worked, the problem is that

we go back to the habits that made us fat to begin with. So what we really

should be asking ourselves is what is it that's preventing us from sustaining

the habits that first made us thin(ner)? And when I ask myself that and I

realize two things: (1) that I always expected, over the course of a diet, that

my tastes and desires and appetites would magically change and all of a sudden

I'd be perfectly content to dine on plates of plain steamed vegetables. How

crazy is that? And (2) that if my tastes don't magically change, without an IE

approach, the only way to sustain a loss is to white knuckle it through feelings

of deprivation for the rest of my life. Put that way, dieting starts to sound a

lot more like something that I'm unlikely to be able to do long term and

something that I feel less guilty about admitting.

> 2. Are you approaching Intuitive Eating with an attitude that " this

> is dieting " ?

This is a tough one. I'd say yes and no. I am, in the sense, that my goal is

to lose weight and I hope that following IE will help me do that. In the sense

that you diet when you want to lose weight, I guess you could say that I'm

approaching it as a diet.

But no in the sense that I really do believe that this is just a natural process

and way of eating and from that standpoint, it's not a diet, it's just what

people who haven't been screwed up or warped by society (as least as far as food

is concerned) do. Luckily, my mother is, by and large, an intuitive eater, so I

grew up understanding how people eat and stay thin without the slightest bit of

thought or effort. I apparently just didn't learn that skill and allowed too

many diet " experts " to convince me that I couldn't trust my body's own signals

to reach a healthy weight.

> 3. How do you feel about shunning dieting and hailing body acceptance???

>

Mostly, I feel great about shunning dieting, though I'd be lying if I said I

wasn't nervous about it and didn't worry that I will gain. The body acceptance

thing, oooooh, that's a *really* hard one for me. One of the hardest things. I

just *don't* like my body at this size and acceptance seems like a lot to ask.

I feel like I can make peace with it if I'm seeing that IE is helping me get

closer to my goal, even if the pace is very slow. But if I thought that I would

never lose weight and I had to stay at this size forever, I'm not sure I could

handle that.

> Chapter One: Hitting Diet Bottom

>

> 1. What is your " diet bottom " ? Would you like to share about your

> dieting history?

>

There's not enough bandwidth in the world to share all of my dieting history.

Let's just say I've done and failed at just about every diet there is. There

was a time in my life when I would have eagerly gotten gastric bypass. But at

that time, I didn't have health insurance and in any event, I think I would have

been a borderline case in terms of qualifying. By the time I did have

insurance, I was at a place in my life where I felt there were more risks

associated with gastric bypass than it was worth and that there was no reason I

shouldn't be able to just lose the weight, if I really worked at it.

I think I recounted my diet bottom story in one of my first e-mails to the

group. It was right before I re-discovered IE. I was contemplating putting a

big dent in my savings account to go to The Biggest Loser " fitness ranch " in

Utah. Even though I despise that show and everything it stands for, I was

willing to shell out my hard earned cash to be starved and forced to work out

for six hours a day because I thought that was the only way I was ever going to

be able to lose weight.

> 2. Do you believe that diets don't work?

>

I think, by and large, I answered that above. But just to add to that, I think

that statement is too extreme. If you believe the 5-10% statistic, clearly they

do *work*, but only for a small percentage of the population.

But, I guess I would say that I also wonder about motivating factors and whether

that would make a difference. For example, I work with a woman who was recently

diagnosed with Celiac Disease, so she can no longer eat foods containing gluten

or she's doubled over in excruciating pain and could permanently damage her

stomach. You better believe that she now excludes those foods from her diet, no

matter how much she may want them. Though it's not true of everyone, given that

there are many people who have heart disease but never change their diets or who

develop cancer but still smoke, in extreme situations, most of us have the

ability to make and stick to drastic dietary changes. I've often wondered if I

developed a serious illness, if I would have been able to successfully diet. My

father was overweight all his life, but lost 80 pounds when he developed type 2

diabetes. So far, he's kept it off, but whether he will permanently, remains to

be seen. I guess this is just another way that I still can see why I blame

myself for my dieting failures, because I have seen instances where people

successfully dieted or drastically changed their diet, and lost a significant

amount of weight and kept it off. (whether they're happy or not, I think is an

entirely different question!)

> 3. How does " Diet Backlash " manifest for you, or how has it in the past?

>

For me, it's just extreme rebellion. It doesn't matter what the diet is,

whatever you restrict me from eating, is what I want to eat in large quantities.

I think if I decided to follow a diet that said I couldn't eat steamed broccoli,

I'd have unbearable cravings for broccoli!

> 4. Do you have any " food police " in your life? Who?

>

I'm definitely food police for myself. I'd say another is my personal trainer.

When I first started working with her and I told her I wanted to lose weight,

she had me keeping a food journal that she'd evaluate each week at our sessions.

I'll never forget that one of the first times I gave her my journal, I was so

proud of myself because I'd stayed in my calorie range all week and had worked

really hard to eat plenty of fruits and veggies and drink water and all the

other stuff you're supposed to do. One morning, for breakfast, I'd made myself

some whole grain pancakes. They were really healthy, low fat, and full of

fiber. On top of the pancakes, I had put two very carefully and precisely

measured tablespoons of maple syrup and the tiniest sliver of butter. Yes, it

was a little splurge, but I had otherwise eaten " perfectly " the rest of the day.

When my trainer saw the journal for that day she literally gasped out loud (I

actually chuckle now when I think of it!). She was appalled that I had *both*

butter *and* maple syrup on my pancakes! It didn't matter that they were full

of fiber or that I'd choked down all kinds of fruits and veggies that day or

that I was perfectly within my calorie range for the day. Al that she could

focus on was the horror of having butter and maple syrup because it was too much

fat and sugar. I pretty much stopped sharing my food journals with her after

that, because even at the height of my diet craziness, I didn't believe I had to

be *that* restrictive. But I still feel guilty talking about food with her,

because I know that this is her opinion and that she must think I have a

terrible diet.

> 5. From whom or what media does the pressure to diet manifest, and

> how do you react to this? What do you do, if anything, to avoid

> being around diet-mania?

>

It might be easier to ask what media *doesn't* put pressure on us to diet and be

thin! I'm greatly affected by this because I'm definitely one of those kids

that grew up in front of the tv. I love tv, movies, internet, and magazines,

all forms of media, really. And because I'm so exposed to it, I'm constantly

getting the message that I'm not attractive and not healthy. I really

internalize that. It's hard. I'm trying to avoid it now. I talked about how

I'm going to stop buying magazines, but short of moving to a desert island or

going off the grid, I don't know how you avoid those messages in the real world.

I feel like it's something that I'm just going to have to learn to disregard or

tune out, because it's not going to go away.

> 6. Did you look to any eating plans that swore they were " not diets "

> in order to find peace, later realizing that they too were diets

> indeed? How did that work for you?

>

I dabbled in vegetarianism and veganism for a while, and even contemplated

trying a raw foods eating plan once (but that was just way too extreme)! I

think that vegetarianism and veganism are perfectly fine ways to eat and I'm

from California, so it's fairly easy to find great vegetarian restaurants that I

truly enjoy. But if I'm really honest, I wasn't really interested in saving

poor, harmless animals, when I dabbled in those. I was hoping that if I stopped

eating animal products I would lose weight.

> 7. Any other questions or comments on chapter one?

>

I'm pretty sure I've rambled on long enough! LOL I'll leave it to others now.

Josie

July 13, 2010