chapter

[Guest guest]

1. What kind of eating personality are you? Do you have a secondary? Please explain!!! I definately relate to all of the eating personalities in some way or another. One more than another at different times of my life. Actually in reading this chapter this time around I felt a good balance around the way I eat right now. I guess I would mostly catagorize myself as a "Careful Eater" and "The

Chaotic Unconscious Eater". At times if I am not careful and conscious I will find myself focusing way to much on nutrition and not allowing myself to have what I want. Also at other times if I don't plan well I will end up waiting to long to eat and overeating at my next meal because I am overly hungry. 2. When, if ever, were you an intuitive eater in your life? I have had a few times of IE in my life. One when I was 15 and I ended up losing about 8lbs one summer because I was just out having fun with my friends and I wasn't thinking about anything else. I think it was one of the few times in my life that I wasn't completely obsessed with self. The second time was when I started a job at Nordstroms shoe dept and I had been dating my future husband for a few months. The job was

very physically demanding and I was so in love that I just didn't have time to overly think about food. The third time was after my daughter was born. At this time I was working really closely with a nutritionist on IE. I had an extremely successful 6 month period where I ate Intuitively, exercised joyfully, and lost 30lbs. The difference between the first two and the last one was that the first two happened without me being conscious of it and the third one happened while I was conscious of what was happening. It was such an experience being able to lose weight and be healthy and be aware that it was happening the whole time. I have this thing where once I become aware of the weight being gone I immediately try to exert some control over it and the weight loss stops. Not really sure what that is about except that I have this idea that maybe once I lose the weight I will be a different (ie: more successful, more

beautiful, more loved) person and once I start focusing on that the focus moves from working from the inside out to trying to work from the outside in which is completely contradictory to IE. 3. Did your parents every try to control your eating habits in childhood? Anyone else? How? Absolutely!! My parents where so extreme in their idea of health. Sugar wasn't allowed in any way shape or form. There were periods of time that we didn't have any money and we would only eat what came from our garden and perhaps some beans and rice. We were vegetarian for a time. It goes on and on. I would rebel of course and when sugar was available I would stuff my face.

4. How has dieting "buried" your intuitive eater? Personal experience, I mean. I just had no idea that my body could tell me what it wanted when it wanted it. It is such an amazing experience, hard at first to get in touch with, but invaluable when you do. 5. Do you encounter many "eat-healthfully-or-die" messages? Do you internalize them? How does this affect you? They don't really get to

me anymore, i'm not sure I put all that much stock into them in the first place.