Guest guest Posted July 25, 2010 Report Share Posted July 25, 2010 hi, my eating personality - I have pretty much done all of them at one point in my life. sometimes I've been a permitter other times a restricter. At times I've been a careful eater, planning out " healthy " meals with very low fat or calories or carbs. you name it, I've tried it until it got too much & I would throw in the towel & become a permitter again ( & gain it all back). I have also been a professional dieter (you should see my collection of books & magazines, not to mention all those library requests). LOL. Unconscious eater aptly describes me, too. Pretty much all of the unconscious categories fit me at some point. WELL, I guess I have pretty much done it all where the yoyo dieting & eating are concerned. Now I am really working on becoming an intuitive eater FULL TIME. This will be my new " role " . I just have to look to my 3 year old grandson to learn how to do it. It comes so naturally to him. He eats when he is hungry, he eats only what he likes ( & it is generally healthy) & he stops when he has had enough. He has NO problem leaving food on his plate & I have NEVER seen him eat food off other people'ss plates (which is something that I have been known to do in the past) lol. that's it for eating type for me mj > > > > My responses are below. Answering these was helpful! Sorry I went on so long. > > Laurie > > > 1. What kind of eating personality are you? Do you have a > secondary? Please explain!!! > > > I come from a family of what Geneen Roth would call " permitters, " who not only ate however much they wanted whenever they wanted, but also had no sense of certain foods being unhealthy. I definitely revolted against the unhealthiness of the diet I ate at home, and became a Careful but still Unconscious Eater. I am careful about quality and unconscious about quantity. I have for some time been an Unconscious Eater, paying no attention whatsoever to my level of hunger, eating instead when it was " time " or because there was an occasion (I have until late been a Refuse-Not Unconscious Eater), or in response to stress, or because I was just not paying attention to whether or not I was hungry. > > I am to some extent a " Waste-Not Unconscious Eater, " which is why I choose to use smaller plates and bowls when I eat at home, because I find I get just about the right amount of food if I am using these smaller items (and cleaning my plate/bowl). At some point I suppose I should learn more consistently not to let how much I serve myself determine how much I eat, but for now I'm content being able to do that in restaurants where I don't have so much control over how much is being served. In restaurants, I regularly don't eat the whole amount I'm given, because it's usually too much. > > I am also an Emotional Unconscious Eater, usually eating in response to small or large stresses. I rarely eat because of boredom or loneliness, because I am rarely bored or lonely. If I keep food easily available, I find I reach for it in response to the smallest stress, and so I try to keep food not so readily available (i.e., not in easy reach, and not out on the counter), so that I will have to make a conscious decision to eat it. Still, I'm not above making myself a sandwich and eating it before I even realize I've done so! > > I have until recently (with IE) very rarely had any success restricting the quantity of what I eat; for the last 15 or so years I've been unable to diet for more than a week or so. On the other hand, I am a compulsive and fitful exerciser. Either I'm exercising too much or not at all. It is very hard for me to strike a balance with exercising, because I have the attitude that if I don't do it excessively, it's not worth the effort. I am working to adjust that attitude, especially since I am now nursing a swollen Achilles tendon from overdoing my exercising after a hiatus from it. > > > 2. When, if ever, were you an intuitive eater in your life? > > I don't think I've been an intuitive eater since I was a toddler. My mother told me that at one point I threw down my tippy cup of milk and refused to drink milk from that time on. I suspect that may have been my very last intuitive eater act! I learned very early to overeat, following my parents' examples, so I would say that past that point I was no longer eating intuitively. > > 3. Did your parents every try to control your eating habits in > childhood? Anyone else? How? > > My parents were compulsive overeaters, so no, there was never any attempt to control my eating habits, and I don't remember anyone else ever trying to do so. At some point, though, I became aware that I was eating more than people outside my family, and became ashamed of that, and started hiding the quantities of what I ate. > > 4. How has dieting " buried " your intuitive eater? Personal > experience, I mean. > > I think attempts to diet simply added another layer of cement over my intuitive eater. Since I've been an adult, I've been a careful eater in terms of quality of food (eating mainly a " healthy " diet), so my diet challenges have always been ones of trying to restrict quantity of food. Restricting inevitably had me labelling foods like sweets and breads and anything with fat in it as " bad " ; dieting episodes caused me for the first time to binge (as opposed to my habitual, simple overeating) in rebellious response. When I dieted, I restricted quantities and banned entirely certain classes of foods (those containing sugar, white flour, and fat), I almost immediately began craving more of whatever foods I'm restricting, even if they are foods that I normally don't eat. Dieting turns me from an overeater into a compulsive overeater, one who is obsessed about food and can never get enough. So in this way there's one more layer burying my intuitive eater! > > 5. Do you encounter many " eat-healthfully-or-die " messages? Do you > internalize them? How does this affect you? > > For a very long time I have had a lot of self-imposed rules about what I will and will not eat (in terms of food quality), in the name of eating healthfully, because I do care about my health and do think that a healthy diet goes a long way towards making me feel better on a day-to-day basis. I do not drink sodas or, for the most part, eat sweets (I don't have much of a sweet tooth, so eat them sometimes); I avoid if possible anything made with white flour or white rice, and do not eat anything that contains trans fats, or anything with unidentifiable/unpronouncable names--in short, processed foods. Usually I'm not terribly careful about fats, though, since I don't have to watch those much because if I eat too much, I get sick, so it's self-controlling. I don't drink coffee and don't eat in fast food restaurants unless there is no way to avoid doing so. I don't eat anything with artificial sweetners in it. I know all the foods that are unhealthy (I read a lot about health) and most of the time I avoid those foods like the plague, because I want to, not because I think I ought to. I am (ironically) very health conscious in this regard, and so I'd say that these food rules are entrenched in my psyche, and I don't find them at all problematic. I don't crave or miss eating unhealthy foods, as I never anymore think of myself as restricting them--this is simply the " way I choose to eat. " I've lost my taste for those foods. If I'm someplace where food options are poor and I'm hungry and have to eat something unhealthy, I find I do not enjoy the food and tend to eat as little as possible; I often end up throwing most of it out. I am, however, not a " food Nazi " : I could care less what other people (exception: my husband) eat. My husband also likes to eat healthfully, so there is no conflict. > > I do work for a rather amateur food Nazi, though--my boss's wife (who is the VP of our company). I admit it amuses me that my she goes on and on about why people shouldn't eat iceberg lettuce, while she herself is eating lunch meat with all sorts of preservatives and nitrates in it, on cheap processed white bread, with that " healthy " romaine-based salad of hers, on which she puts highly processed bottled diet salad dressing, and then she trolls for candy others have in their desks just about every afternoon. I choose simply to avoid her and her lectures, and I don't care to tell her what I think of the way she eats, because it's none of my business. > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 25, 2010 Report Share Posted July 25, 2010 Laurie, I can SO relate to this! I have a very vivid memory of going on a diet about ten years ago and developing a craving for Cheez Whiz! Cheez Whiz!!!! Under normal circumstances, I would run away screaming before I'd eat Cheez Whiz, but I was on a diet and for some reason it caught my eye while grocery shopping and I knew that it wasn't allowed on my diet and all of a sudden, I couldn't think of anything else. I've had this happen many times when dieting. I always thought it was so weird to develop such intense cravings for foods that I didn't even really want. That was the same diet where I used a tip I'd learned from a fellow Weight Watcher member of taking an entire bag of frozen vegetables and eating it with some sort of saucy frozen dinner (like beef stroganoff) in order to crank up the volume of food for as few calories as possible. Plus, the sauce made the vegetables more palatable since adding butter was " bad " . I remember one night coming home from work and having my big plate full of nuked frozen broccoli topped with this miniscule portion of some frozen diet beef stroganoff and very literally shoveling it into my mouth like I was crazed. I was so hungry I simply could not eat it fast enough. You'd think I would have realized then that this was not normal, healthy behavior, but I just thought the problem was with me! Josie > > > > 4. How has dieting " buried " your intuitive eater? Personal > experience, I mean. > > ..... dieting episodes caused me for the first time to binge (as opposed to my habitual, simple overeating) in rebellious response. When I dieted, I restricted quantities and banned entirely certain classes of foods (those containing sugar, white flour, and fat), I almost immediately began craving more of whatever foods I'm restricting, even if they are foods that I normally don't eat. Dieting turns me from an overeater into a compulsive overeater, one who is obsessed about food and can never get enough. So in this way there's one more layer burying my intuitive eater! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 25, 2010 Report Share Posted July 25, 2010 Laurie, I can SO relate to this! I have a very vivid memory of going on a diet about ten years ago and developing a craving for Cheez Whiz! Cheez Whiz!!!! Under normal circumstances, I would run away screaming before I'd eat Cheez Whiz, but I was on a diet and for some reason it caught my eye while grocery shopping and I knew that it wasn't allowed on my diet and all of a sudden, I couldn't think of anything else. I've had this happen many times when dieting. I always thought it was so weird to develop such intense cravings for foods that I didn't even really want. That was the same diet where I used a tip I'd learned from a fellow Weight Watcher member of taking an entire bag of frozen vegetables and eating it with some sort of saucy frozen dinner (like beef stroganoff) in order to crank up the volume of food for as few calories as possible. Plus, the sauce made the vegetables more palatable since adding butter was " bad " . I remember one night coming home from work and having my big plate full of nuked frozen broccoli topped with this miniscule portion of some frozen diet beef stroganoff and very literally shoveling it into my mouth like I was crazed. I was so hungry I simply could not eat it fast enough. You'd think I would have realized then that this was not normal, healthy behavior, but I just thought the problem was with me! Josie > > > > 4. How has dieting " buried " your intuitive eater? Personal > experience, I mean. > > ..... dieting episodes caused me for the first time to binge (as opposed to my habitual, simple overeating) in rebellious response. When I dieted, I restricted quantities and banned entirely certain classes of foods (those containing sugar, white flour, and fat), I almost immediately began craving more of whatever foods I'm restricting, even if they are foods that I normally don't eat. Dieting turns me from an overeater into a compulsive overeater, one who is obsessed about food and can never get enough. So in this way there's one more layer burying my intuitive eater! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 25, 2010 Report Share Posted July 25, 2010 Laurie, I can SO relate to this! I have a very vivid memory of going on a diet about ten years ago and developing a craving for Cheez Whiz! Cheez Whiz!!!! Under normal circumstances, I would run away screaming before I'd eat Cheez Whiz, but I was on a diet and for some reason it caught my eye while grocery shopping and I knew that it wasn't allowed on my diet and all of a sudden, I couldn't think of anything else. I've had this happen many times when dieting. I always thought it was so weird to develop such intense cravings for foods that I didn't even really want. That was the same diet where I used a tip I'd learned from a fellow Weight Watcher member of taking an entire bag of frozen vegetables and eating it with some sort of saucy frozen dinner (like beef stroganoff) in order to crank up the volume of food for as few calories as possible. Plus, the sauce made the vegetables more palatable since adding butter was " bad " . I remember one night coming home from work and having my big plate full of nuked frozen broccoli topped with this miniscule portion of some frozen diet beef stroganoff and very literally shoveling it into my mouth like I was crazed. I was so hungry I simply could not eat it fast enough. You'd think I would have realized then that this was not normal, healthy behavior, but I just thought the problem was with me! Josie > > > > 4. How has dieting " buried " your intuitive eater? Personal > experience, I mean. > > ..... dieting episodes caused me for the first time to binge (as opposed to my habitual, simple overeating) in rebellious response. When I dieted, I restricted quantities and banned entirely certain classes of foods (those containing sugar, white flour, and fat), I almost immediately began craving more of whatever foods I'm restricting, even if they are foods that I normally don't eat. Dieting turns me from an overeater into a compulsive overeater, one who is obsessed about food and can never get enough. So in this way there's one more layer burying my intuitive eater! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 27, 2010 Report Share Posted July 27, 2010 Well, I've been trying to actually reread the chapter the past couple of nights before I go to bed, but I keep drifting off to sleep before I finish. Nevertheless, I have some time on my hands right now, so I thought I would give my best answer to these questions: 1. What kind of eating personality are you? Do you have a secondary? Please explain!!! I would say mostly the unconscious eater, and a bit of the dieter. I tend to overeat because 1) I am feeling down, anxious or bored 2) Situational- I'm at a celebration and I want to eat the good food 3)Habit 4) Post-diet binge. I am not really the " professional dieter in terms of ascribing to diet mythology. For the most part in my life, I've never done the " grapefruit diet " or the " Zone " or whatever, but I have been an avid calorie counter at various points. An interesting question that I just thought of to ask myself is, what kind of eater am I when I am not overeating? My immediate response to this question was to jump to my overeating tendencies to describe my eating personality, but maybe it would be just as useful to look at the times when I don't overeat. Usually I feel like most of the times I don't overeat are when I am trying consciously not to overeat, if that makes sense. I feel like I don't just automatically not overeat. I think my Intuitive Eater is in there somewhere and does surface occasionally. More so since I've been into the IE stuff. 2. When, if ever, were you an intuitive eater in your life? Maybe when I was a young child, but not any time within my memory. I remember feeling the same way about food that I do now from a young age, when I would often feel unsatisfied with what I had eaten and look forward to eating more. I remember being at daycare when I was maybe 9 or so, when a new girl started there one day and my babysitter told her that we kids could pretty much eat what we wanted from the cookie jar in the kitchen. I remember taking about four cookies from it not long after and feeling self-conscious when the new girl said she didn't want any. I remember eating as entertainment . . . maybe this is normal stuff to do, but I wouldn't describe it as an intuitive style of eating. 3. Did your parents every try to control your eating habits in childhood? Anyone else? How? I think they probably exerted the normal pressures when I was a kid. I remember having to sit at the table once until I ate my lima beans (bleh!). When it became apparent that my weight was a real issue, in middle school sometime, I remember going to Weight Watchers with my mom and then another time when I did a program at a local clinic with a couple of other kids to learn about nutrition/weight loss, etc. I don't think my parents put a huge effort into stopping me from overeating or saying, you can eat this but you can't eat that, which is good because I think it would have just made me angry at them and not stopped me from overeating anyway. 4. How has dieting " buried " your intuitive eater? Personal experience, I mean. Reading back over what I wrote above, about having been an overeater from an early age one, I'm not sure that it was dieting that buried my intuitive eater. Certainly in middle school/high school, it did make it worse and I did experience the whole end of the diet/binging cycle as well as eat sometimes because the forbidden food seemed tempting, but I feel like that's not all. I feel like it was more my tendency to use food as a comfort that buried my intuitive eater, whether because I was bored or sad or what. I don't think it was just dieting that had that effect on me. 5. Do you encounter many " eat-healthfully-or-die " messages? Do you internalize them? How does this affect you? Recently, I've been feeling this a lot, that I would be a lot more healthy if I wasn't overweight or hadn't been morbidly obese in the past. Just looking at my main ailments at age 26 make me feel nervous for my future. I developed a herniated disc in my back within the past year, and for the past three months or so, it has had a major impact on my quality of life. I can't walk farther than a block or two before stopping to relieve the pain, and sometimes an even shorter distance than that. Even though I think I can expect that this issue will resolve in the next six months (I hope!) or so, it is causing me a lot of pain, a lot of worry, and a lot of money quite frankly. It has me questioning a lot whether I shouldn't try to lose weight again, as it seems logical that my weight has played a role in giving me this problem this early on. I've had one doctor that tells me that this is the case, another that says no not necessarily. But in any case, it's one thing to get this message from people in general and internalize it, it's another to actually experience what seems like the result of my eating habits. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I think there is a reason that these messages are out there and while it is best to not freak out over them or let them become your main focus, it is hard to ignore the fact that eating habits and health are correlated to some extent (although I think it is valid to question in what ways they are correlated). I don't know, I've been doing a lot of questioning about all of this lately. I really like the idea of intuitive eating and I think if I gave it enough time and enough thought it could be a really positive thing, but sometimes there seem to be other factors in play that make me unsure if I don't need a different solution. Any thoughts about this? Especially about the health question? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 28, 2010 Report Share Posted July 28, 2010 I don't doubt that weight impacts health. I have several health conditions that are exacerbated (but not caused) by my weight, as well. But the important thing to understand is that there are any number of things you can do to improve your health that have nothing to do with what your pants size is. Improving the quality of your diet and engaging in regular exercise will make you healthier even if you're no thinner. Things like yoga, weight training, and pilates do wonders for bad backs. The media does a great job of making us think that skinny = healthy, when in fact, that's not necessarily the case. After years and years of having seriously crappy doctors (I could rant about bad doctors, but I'm not even going to start!), I'm incredibly lucky to have found one that's encouraging me to stop focusing on the scale and restricting food and to start focusing on the positive things I can do for myself, like just adding healthier foods to my diet (and not necessarily taking away " bad " foods) and just getting outside and walking more instead of thinking that I have to kill myself in the gym for hours every day in order for it to matter. That's a huge perspective change for me. The thing you should ponder is *how* you want to get to healthy. I want to lose weight myself and I know how many conflicting messages we get about how best to do that, so I *completely* understand where you are. As a matter of fact, I was probably in much the same place at your age. All I can say is that I *wish* I'd known about intuitive eating when I was 26. With a little patience (which I don't have much of, so that would have been a challenge in itself) and hard work, I think I could have changed my relationship with food and reached my natural weight ages ago. And maybe my 30s would have been a heck of a lot happier than they were. Instead, I'm 43 and I'm fatter and more unhappy than I was at 26 and all I did was waste another 17 years hating my body and beating myself up for not being able to succeed at dieting. Sometimes when I think about that, it's kind of heart breaking. I get the doubts. This is scary stuff and I sometimes ask myself if I'm falling for yet another supposed miracle cure that won't work any better for me than Atkins or Zone or WW and any of the thousands of other diets I've tried. I really really hope that's not the case, but who knows? But I figure that I have to give it a try and give it 100% effort to see if it works. That's why I've committed to following IE for one full year to see where it takes me before I make any decisions. I figure if I can give 30+ years of my life to dieting with no discernible progress whatsoever, I can give one year to IE. Worst case scenario is that I'm in exactly the same place in a year that I am right now. And if that's the case, as history has demonstrated, I'll be no worse off than if I had dieted. Josie > > 5. Do you encounter many " eat-healthfully-or-die " messages? Do you > internalize them? How does this affect you? > > Recently, I've been feeling this a lot, that I would be a lot more healthy if I wasn't overweight or hadn't been morbidly obese in the past. Just looking at my main ailments at age 26 make me feel nervous for my future. I developed a herniated disc in my back within the past year, and for the past three months or so, it has had a major impact on my quality of life. I can't walk farther than a block or two before stopping to relieve the pain, and sometimes an even shorter distance than that. Even though I think I can expect that this issue will resolve in the next six months (I hope!) or so, it is causing me a lot of pain, a lot of worry, and a lot of money quite frankly. It has me questioning a lot whether I shouldn't try to lose weight again, as it seems logical that my weight has played a role in giving me this problem this early on. I've had one doctor that tells me that this is the case, another that says no not necessarily. But in any case, it's one thing to get this message from people in general and internalize it, it's another to actually experience what seems like the result of my eating habits. > > Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I think there is a reason that these messages are out there and while it is best to not freak out over them or let them become your main focus, it is hard to ignore the fact that eating habits and health are correlated to some extent (although I think it is valid to question in what ways they are correlated). > > I don't know, I've been doing a lot of questioning about all of this lately. I really like the idea of intuitive eating and I think if I gave it enough time and enough thought it could be a really positive thing, but sometimes there seem to be other factors in play that make me unsure if I don't need a different solution. > > Any thoughts about this? Especially about the health question? > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 28, 2010 Report Share Posted July 28, 2010 I don't doubt that weight impacts health. I have several health conditions that are exacerbated (but not caused) by my weight, as well. But the important thing to understand is that there are any number of things you can do to improve your health that have nothing to do with what your pants size is. Improving the quality of your diet and engaging in regular exercise will make you healthier even if you're no thinner. Things like yoga, weight training, and pilates do wonders for bad backs. The media does a great job of making us think that skinny = healthy, when in fact, that's not necessarily the case. After years and years of having seriously crappy doctors (I could rant about bad doctors, but I'm not even going to start!), I'm incredibly lucky to have found one that's encouraging me to stop focusing on the scale and restricting food and to start focusing on the positive things I can do for myself, like just adding healthier foods to my diet (and not necessarily taking away " bad " foods) and just getting outside and walking more instead of thinking that I have to kill myself in the gym for hours every day in order for it to matter. That's a huge perspective change for me. The thing you should ponder is *how* you want to get to healthy. I want to lose weight myself and I know how many conflicting messages we get about how best to do that, so I *completely* understand where you are. As a matter of fact, I was probably in much the same place at your age. All I can say is that I *wish* I'd known about intuitive eating when I was 26. With a little patience (which I don't have much of, so that would have been a challenge in itself) and hard work, I think I could have changed my relationship with food and reached my natural weight ages ago. And maybe my 30s would have been a heck of a lot happier than they were. Instead, I'm 43 and I'm fatter and more unhappy than I was at 26 and all I did was waste another 17 years hating my body and beating myself up for not being able to succeed at dieting. Sometimes when I think about that, it's kind of heart breaking. I get the doubts. This is scary stuff and I sometimes ask myself if I'm falling for yet another supposed miracle cure that won't work any better for me than Atkins or Zone or WW and any of the thousands of other diets I've tried. I really really hope that's not the case, but who knows? But I figure that I have to give it a try and give it 100% effort to see if it works. That's why I've committed to following IE for one full year to see where it takes me before I make any decisions. I figure if I can give 30+ years of my life to dieting with no discernible progress whatsoever, I can give one year to IE. Worst case scenario is that I'm in exactly the same place in a year that I am right now. And if that's the case, as history has demonstrated, I'll be no worse off than if I had dieted. Josie > > 5. Do you encounter many " eat-healthfully-or-die " messages? Do you > internalize them? How does this affect you? > > Recently, I've been feeling this a lot, that I would be a lot more healthy if I wasn't overweight or hadn't been morbidly obese in the past. Just looking at my main ailments at age 26 make me feel nervous for my future. I developed a herniated disc in my back within the past year, and for the past three months or so, it has had a major impact on my quality of life. I can't walk farther than a block or two before stopping to relieve the pain, and sometimes an even shorter distance than that. Even though I think I can expect that this issue will resolve in the next six months (I hope!) or so, it is causing me a lot of pain, a lot of worry, and a lot of money quite frankly. It has me questioning a lot whether I shouldn't try to lose weight again, as it seems logical that my weight has played a role in giving me this problem this early on. I've had one doctor that tells me that this is the case, another that says no not necessarily. But in any case, it's one thing to get this message from people in general and internalize it, it's another to actually experience what seems like the result of my eating habits. > > Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I think there is a reason that these messages are out there and while it is best to not freak out over them or let them become your main focus, it is hard to ignore the fact that eating habits and health are correlated to some extent (although I think it is valid to question in what ways they are correlated). > > I don't know, I've been doing a lot of questioning about all of this lately. I really like the idea of intuitive eating and I think if I gave it enough time and enough thought it could be a really positive thing, but sometimes there seem to be other factors in play that make me unsure if I don't need a different solution. > > Any thoughts about this? Especially about the health question? > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 28, 2010 Report Share Posted July 28, 2010 Wow, Josie! Powerful email! I can relate to ALL of it! I'm also 43 and look back over the years of dieting and wish I could have just lived and enjoyed my life instead of waiting for that magic number on the scale that would have made me "happy and have a perfect life". Rhonda From: josiesjunkmail Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 11:22 AM To: IntuitiveEating_Support Subject: Re: chapter 2 discussion I don't doubt that weight impacts health. I have several health conditions that are exacerbated (but not caused) by my weight, as well. But the important thing to understand is that there are any number of things you can do to improve your health that have nothing to do with what your pants size is. Improving the quality of your diet and engaging in regular exercise will make you healthier even if you're no thinner. Things like yoga, weight training, and pilates do wonders for bad backs. The media does a great job of making us think that skinny = healthy, when in fact, that's not necessarily the case. After years and years of having seriously crappy doctors (I could rant about bad doctors, but I'm not even going to start!), I'm incredibly lucky to have found one that's encouraging me to stop focusing on the scale and restricting food and to start focusing on the positive things I can do for myself, like just adding healthier foods to my diet (and not necessarily taking away "bad" foods) and just getting outside and walking more instead of thinking that I have to kill myself in the gym for hours every day in order for it to matter. That's a huge perspective change for me. The thing you should ponder is *how* you want to get to healthy. I want to lose weight myself and I know how many conflicting messages we get about how best to do that, so I *completely* understand where you are. As a matter of fact, I was probably in much the same place at your age. All I can say is that I *wish* I'd known about intuitive eating when I was 26. With a little patience (which I don't have much of, so that would have been a challenge in itself) and hard work, I think I could have changed my relationship with food and reached my natural weight ages ago. And maybe my 30s would have been a heck of a lot happier than they were. Instead, I'm 43 and I'm fatter and more unhappy than I was at 26 and all I did was waste another 17 years hating my body and beating myself up for not being able to succeed at dieting. Sometimes when I think about that, it's kind of heart breaking.I get the doubts. This is scary stuff and I sometimes ask myself if I'm falling for yet another supposed miracle cure that won't work any better for me than Atkins or Zone or WW and any of the thousands of other diets I've tried. I really really hope that's not the case, but who knows? But I figure that I have to give it a try and give it 100% effort to see if it works. That's why I've committed to following IE for one full year to see where it takes me before I make any decisions. I figure if I can give 30+ years of my life to dieting with no discernible progress whatsoever, I can give one year to IE. Worst case scenario is that I'm in exactly the same place in a year that I am right now. And if that's the case, as history has demonstrated, I'll be no worse off than if I had dieted.Josie >> 5. Do you encounter many "eat-healthfully-or-die" messages? Do you> internalize them? How does this affect you?> > Recently, I've been feeling this a lot, that I would be a lot more healthy if I wasn't overweight or hadn't been morbidly obese in the past. Just looking at my main ailments at age 26 make me feel nervous for my future. I developed a herniated disc in my back within the past year, and for the past three months or so, it has had a major impact on my quality of life. I can't walk farther than a block or two before stopping to relieve the pain, and sometimes an even shorter distance than that. Even though I think I can expect that this issue will resolve in the next six months (I hope!) or so, it is causing me a lot of pain, a lot of worry, and a lot of money quite frankly. It has me questioning a lot whether I shouldn't try to lose weight again, as it seems logical that my weight has played a role in giving me this problem this early on. I've had one doctor that tells me that this is the case, another that says no not necessarily. But in any case, it's one thing to get this message from people in general and internalize it, it's another to actually experience what seems like the result of my eating habits.> > Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I think there is a reason that these messages are out there and while it is best to not freak out over them or let them become your main focus, it is hard to ignore the fact that eating habits and health are correlated to some extent (although I think it is valid to question in what ways they are correlated).> > I don't know, I've been doing a lot of questioning about all of this lately. I really like the idea of intuitive eating and I think if I gave it enough time and enough thought it could be a really positive thing, but sometimes there seem to be other factors in play that make me unsure if I don't need a different solution.> > Any thoughts about this? Especially about the health question?> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 28, 2010 Report Share Posted July 28, 2010 Wow, Josie! Powerful email! I can relate to ALL of it! I'm also 43 and look back over the years of dieting and wish I could have just lived and enjoyed my life instead of waiting for that magic number on the scale that would have made me "happy and have a perfect life". Rhonda From: josiesjunkmail Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 11:22 AM To: IntuitiveEating_Support Subject: Re: chapter 2 discussion I don't doubt that weight impacts health. I have several health conditions that are exacerbated (but not caused) by my weight, as well. But the important thing to understand is that there are any number of things you can do to improve your health that have nothing to do with what your pants size is. Improving the quality of your diet and engaging in regular exercise will make you healthier even if you're no thinner. Things like yoga, weight training, and pilates do wonders for bad backs. The media does a great job of making us think that skinny = healthy, when in fact, that's not necessarily the case. After years and years of having seriously crappy doctors (I could rant about bad doctors, but I'm not even going to start!), I'm incredibly lucky to have found one that's encouraging me to stop focusing on the scale and restricting food and to start focusing on the positive things I can do for myself, like just adding healthier foods to my diet (and not necessarily taking away "bad" foods) and just getting outside and walking more instead of thinking that I have to kill myself in the gym for hours every day in order for it to matter. That's a huge perspective change for me. The thing you should ponder is *how* you want to get to healthy. I want to lose weight myself and I know how many conflicting messages we get about how best to do that, so I *completely* understand where you are. As a matter of fact, I was probably in much the same place at your age. All I can say is that I *wish* I'd known about intuitive eating when I was 26. With a little patience (which I don't have much of, so that would have been a challenge in itself) and hard work, I think I could have changed my relationship with food and reached my natural weight ages ago. And maybe my 30s would have been a heck of a lot happier than they were. Instead, I'm 43 and I'm fatter and more unhappy than I was at 26 and all I did was waste another 17 years hating my body and beating myself up for not being able to succeed at dieting. Sometimes when I think about that, it's kind of heart breaking.I get the doubts. This is scary stuff and I sometimes ask myself if I'm falling for yet another supposed miracle cure that won't work any better for me than Atkins or Zone or WW and any of the thousands of other diets I've tried. I really really hope that's not the case, but who knows? But I figure that I have to give it a try and give it 100% effort to see if it works. That's why I've committed to following IE for one full year to see where it takes me before I make any decisions. I figure if I can give 30+ years of my life to dieting with no discernible progress whatsoever, I can give one year to IE. Worst case scenario is that I'm in exactly the same place in a year that I am right now. And if that's the case, as history has demonstrated, I'll be no worse off than if I had dieted.Josie >> 5. Do you encounter many "eat-healthfully-or-die" messages? Do you> internalize them? How does this affect you?> > Recently, I've been feeling this a lot, that I would be a lot more healthy if I wasn't overweight or hadn't been morbidly obese in the past. Just looking at my main ailments at age 26 make me feel nervous for my future. I developed a herniated disc in my back within the past year, and for the past three months or so, it has had a major impact on my quality of life. I can't walk farther than a block or two before stopping to relieve the pain, and sometimes an even shorter distance than that. Even though I think I can expect that this issue will resolve in the next six months (I hope!) or so, it is causing me a lot of pain, a lot of worry, and a lot of money quite frankly. It has me questioning a lot whether I shouldn't try to lose weight again, as it seems logical that my weight has played a role in giving me this problem this early on. I've had one doctor that tells me that this is the case, another that says no not necessarily. But in any case, it's one thing to get this message from people in general and internalize it, it's another to actually experience what seems like the result of my eating habits.> > Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I think there is a reason that these messages are out there and while it is best to not freak out over them or let them become your main focus, it is hard to ignore the fact that eating habits and health are correlated to some extent (although I think it is valid to question in what ways they are correlated).> > I don't know, I've been doing a lot of questioning about all of this lately. I really like the idea of intuitive eating and I think if I gave it enough time and enough thought it could be a really positive thing, but sometimes there seem to be other factors in play that make me unsure if I don't need a different solution.> > Any thoughts about this? Especially about the health question?> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 28, 2010 Report Share Posted July 28, 2010 Wow, Josie! Powerful email! I can relate to ALL of it! I'm also 43 and look back over the years of dieting and wish I could have just lived and enjoyed my life instead of waiting for that magic number on the scale that would have made me "happy and have a perfect life". Rhonda From: josiesjunkmail Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 11:22 AM To: IntuitiveEating_Support Subject: Re: chapter 2 discussion I don't doubt that weight impacts health. I have several health conditions that are exacerbated (but not caused) by my weight, as well. But the important thing to understand is that there are any number of things you can do to improve your health that have nothing to do with what your pants size is. Improving the quality of your diet and engaging in regular exercise will make you healthier even if you're no thinner. Things like yoga, weight training, and pilates do wonders for bad backs. The media does a great job of making us think that skinny = healthy, when in fact, that's not necessarily the case. After years and years of having seriously crappy doctors (I could rant about bad doctors, but I'm not even going to start!), I'm incredibly lucky to have found one that's encouraging me to stop focusing on the scale and restricting food and to start focusing on the positive things I can do for myself, like just adding healthier foods to my diet (and not necessarily taking away "bad" foods) and just getting outside and walking more instead of thinking that I have to kill myself in the gym for hours every day in order for it to matter. That's a huge perspective change for me. The thing you should ponder is *how* you want to get to healthy. I want to lose weight myself and I know how many conflicting messages we get about how best to do that, so I *completely* understand where you are. As a matter of fact, I was probably in much the same place at your age. All I can say is that I *wish* I'd known about intuitive eating when I was 26. With a little patience (which I don't have much of, so that would have been a challenge in itself) and hard work, I think I could have changed my relationship with food and reached my natural weight ages ago. And maybe my 30s would have been a heck of a lot happier than they were. Instead, I'm 43 and I'm fatter and more unhappy than I was at 26 and all I did was waste another 17 years hating my body and beating myself up for not being able to succeed at dieting. Sometimes when I think about that, it's kind of heart breaking.I get the doubts. This is scary stuff and I sometimes ask myself if I'm falling for yet another supposed miracle cure that won't work any better for me than Atkins or Zone or WW and any of the thousands of other diets I've tried. I really really hope that's not the case, but who knows? But I figure that I have to give it a try and give it 100% effort to see if it works. That's why I've committed to following IE for one full year to see where it takes me before I make any decisions. I figure if I can give 30+ years of my life to dieting with no discernible progress whatsoever, I can give one year to IE. Worst case scenario is that I'm in exactly the same place in a year that I am right now. And if that's the case, as history has demonstrated, I'll be no worse off than if I had dieted.Josie >> 5. Do you encounter many "eat-healthfully-or-die" messages? Do you> internalize them? How does this affect you?> > Recently, I've been feeling this a lot, that I would be a lot more healthy if I wasn't overweight or hadn't been morbidly obese in the past. Just looking at my main ailments at age 26 make me feel nervous for my future. I developed a herniated disc in my back within the past year, and for the past three months or so, it has had a major impact on my quality of life. I can't walk farther than a block or two before stopping to relieve the pain, and sometimes an even shorter distance than that. Even though I think I can expect that this issue will resolve in the next six months (I hope!) or so, it is causing me a lot of pain, a lot of worry, and a lot of money quite frankly. It has me questioning a lot whether I shouldn't try to lose weight again, as it seems logical that my weight has played a role in giving me this problem this early on. I've had one doctor that tells me that this is the case, another that says no not necessarily. But in any case, it's one thing to get this message from people in general and internalize it, it's another to actually experience what seems like the result of my eating habits.> > Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I think there is a reason that these messages are out there and while it is best to not freak out over them or let them become your main focus, it is hard to ignore the fact that eating habits and health are correlated to some extent (although I think it is valid to question in what ways they are correlated).> > I don't know, I've been doing a lot of questioning about all of this lately. I really like the idea of intuitive eating and I think if I gave it enough time and enough thought it could be a really positive thing, but sometimes there seem to be other factors in play that make me unsure if I don't need a different solution.> > Any thoughts about this? Especially about the health question?> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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