chapter 2 discussion

[Guest guest]

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.