Re: new here-hi!

[Guest guest]

Hi Kelli,

Welcome to the group! Glad to have you with us. And thanks for sharing your story.

IE is a huge change for many of us, and it can be scary! I suggest picking one thing to work on first, and take this in baby steps. For example, maybe you can commit to just trying to observe hunger and fullness signals, and eat whenever you notice you're hungry? Ideally before you are starving, if you are able to tell before then. The good thing is that you are less likely to overeat if you eat when you are only a little hungry. When I was starting out I would often stop eating too soon... but since I committed to eating again as soon as I was hungry... I would go back and eat more fifteen minutes later! As I got more comfortable with trusting myself that I would feed myself whenever hungry I was less and less likely to eat even to " full " - I don't like the feeling any more. Now I aim to stop when I am no longer hungry and the food doesn't taste as good. And I found, and many others have shared this too, that I am eating much less than I used to.

So don't feel like you need to tackle WHAT you eat at the same time that you tackle WHEN and HOW MUCH you eat... that can be overwhelming!

I hope this is helpful. Please keep us posted on how you are doing!

Best,

Abby

 

Hi, I am going to introduce myself . My name is Kelli and I am just stumbling onto this through another health lifestyle group. I have been beating myself up about food for a long time now and recently it has gotten very obsessive. I bought the book and really feel connected to the ideas but the whole thing is really overwhelming and hard right now for me.

I am a long distance runner currently training for a marathon in the fall. I was counting calories because I had gotten about 10-15 pounds over what I would prefer myself to be at. I got down to a weight that was a lot lower than I normally see myself and felt good for the most part. Except I kept wanting to go lower and lower and I started to plateau and obsess over the correct amount of calories I needed. Since I am training

pretty hard, I couldn't really figure out how many calories I needed and would restrict hard and then binge on the weekends. The scale has slowly inched back up about 5 pounds and I started beating myself up again.

I feel really consumed with food now. I lost touch with my hunger signals and tend to eat past being full for fear that I will never get to eat what I am eating again. I am extremely afraid of gaining weight. For years I have been restricting myself disguised by nutritional purposes (health, allergy, etc). I think about food constantly...all day long. I look at people and wonder if they think about food all the time too.

Anyway, I look forward to reading posts for a while to get acclimated but I wanted to introduce myself in the meantime and get any advice that wants to be given .Thanks!-Kelli

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the welcome! I am trying to notice hunger feelings and letting myself eat things I normally wouldn't. I feel a little out of control as I lost so much weight and was at my ideal weight (performance wise but maybe slightly under healthy) and now I feel like I am creeping back up. I am sure my heavy training isn't helping because of water weight gain and muscle swelling (I am running 45 miles a week now on top of weight lifting). It's really hard to let go and I still have to stop myself from the counting in my head. I am definitely seeing some budge in obsession though. Thanks again for the welcome!!My Best, Kelli Sent from my iPhoneOn Jun 2, 2010, at 9:51 AM,

bcpeditor@... wrote:

Hi, Kelli,

Welcome to the group! I'm fairly new here, too, and fairly new to IE. I've been rereading the IE book and the section that describes the calorie restriction studies really reminds me of what you're saying here, about how you think about food all the time. The same thing happened to the men in that study, and any dieter knows that feeling all too well. I think the comforting idea from reading this is that we can recognize that this is a condition we've created in ourselves, that it is NORMAL for anyone going through calorie restriction, and it is in fact a HEALTHY thing our body does to try to get our attention to get us to eat a proper amount of food. It's disheartening to know that it takes some time to recover from a disordered relationship with food, but please keep in mind that there's nothing wrong with you. You have a good body that's trying to keep you from consuming too little food to sustain the activity you're undertaking.

Abby's advice is--as always--very sound. Take it slow. Do one thing at a time. Know that you're not alone in this.

Laurie

Kelli wrote:

>>>I think about food constantly...all day long. I look at people and wonder if they think about food all the time too.<<<