Baby Steps

[Guest guest]

Hi guys -

Thanks so much for all the feedback. I've recently started to try to respond to

my hunger a little sooner than I was before, and eat smaller portions so that I

get hungry more often throughout the day. This seems to be helping me get

reliably hungry more often, and also helps keep me from eating past full since

I'm not starting out a meal starving. I've also been keeping an IE food journal

for a few weeks, writing down every time I eat, how hungry I was before I ate

and how full I was after, and how well I matched my hunger to what I ate. Seems

to be helping as well. I'm hoping this eating every few hours thing will keep me

from reaching a " starving " level while I'm at work, which is part of what I was

worried about in my previous post about " pre-emptive eating. " But I think I'll

try bringing some snacks with me just so I won't be stressed about it.

Also, unfortunately I'm still pretty stuck on losing weight - I've been able to

get out of this " I must lose weight " mindset before, but right now it's

something I really want to do and it actually seems like it might be possible. I

don't think I look horrible right now, and I really don't think I beat myself up

too much about my weight, but there are a variety of reasons why I would like to

be thinner so I think I'm gonna stick with that goal. As part of that, I think I

am going to keep my binge foods out of my house for now, until I get more

settled in with IE. I do agree that binging is an emotional event, not about

food at all, but since it seems that certain foods make it so much harder to

resist binging, I just don't want to tempt myself with that right now,

especially since it often seems like any setbacks (including binges) make it

much harder to continue with any sort of change in eating lifestyle. I would

definitely like to work on legalizing all foods in the future, though. Complete

freedom around food would be a great thing. I'm just hoping that I can do it by

taking baby steps, and that it's not something that has to be done all at once.

Thanks again, I'm so glad you guys are here to talk to

- Liz