some ideas for dealing with overeating and other concerns while in the early stages of IE (long again)

[Guest guest]

Hi again everyone,

I'm going to just share some ideas off the top of my head and I'm sure more will come later on and I can share those, too. For those of you that have additional ideas and experience, feel free to add to this.

Overeating:

1. Most important - set an intention before you eat. Ask yourself how you want to feel when you are done eating. This does not mean you can only eat to satisfied. All you need to do is make a CHOICE of how you want to feel. If you choose to overeat, that is ok. If you make a choice, it removes the guilt, preventing a potential binge. If you make the choice to overeat, trust that you won't choose to do it all the time, because you won't. This is part of the process.

2. This is only suggestion I ever make about what to eat. Having a small amount of protein when you eat carbohydrate will help keep your blood sugar stable, avoiding any blood sugar crashes and getting overly hungry. So many people, including myself, have found this to make a huge difference. It's not always in your head, sometimes overeating can be caused by physiological reasons.

3. If you have overeaten or binged - you may have the compulsion to exercise to "burn it off", skip the next meal or two, or plan your next diet. Stop - get yourself back into the present - decide that you will eat again when you get hungry. This is what natural intuitive eaters do. Sometimes they do overeat, but they don't stress over it. They just eat again when they are hungry. You may feel like you'll never get hungry again, but stay logical and in the present and know you'll eat again. This tool alone can prevent many, many extra calories from being consumed. And - don't do the "I'll start again tomorrow". Eat again when you are hungry, period. This will prevent you from slipping into diet mentality.

4. Check if you are doing the "intuitive eating DIET". Are you attempting to eat ONLY when you are hungry? Or eating only to satisfied? While these are the ideals, they are not the rules. IE does not have rules so if you are doing something "always" or "only", it will probably be a rule. Ask yourself if an intuitive eater would do it. For example, natural intuitive eaters do sometimes over eat, under eat, have one more bite, clean their plate, you name it. The big difference is they don't do it a lot and they don't feel guilty about it. They just move on.

If you are having negative thoughts, negative self-talk, anxious often:

1. Find 5 things you are grateful for in your life. They can be as small or big as you want. If this helps, do it often. Some people make it a daily practice because it can turn around their mood and outlook very quickly.

2. Ask yourself if you would say the things you are saying to yourself to a small child, preferably a child you have a close relationship with. If you wouldn't say it to the child, you don't need to hear it either.

3. Work on trust. I see IE as a process of gaining mutual trust between you and your body. Your body doesn't trust you because you have starved it at times and abused it with food on other occasions. You don't trust your body because you haven't been tuned into it for a long time and you aren't sure you can count on it to tell you what it needs. Recognize this is a process of mutual trust and it will build over time and with being mindful.

Not feeling hunger

1. If you find you're getting too hungry and missing the "hungry, ready to eat" hunger, write down all you can remember about what you were doing and how you felt before the crazy hunger hit you. Look for signs that you may have missed. For a day or two, ask yourself if you are hungry or where you are on the hunger scale every hour or so.

2. If you can't identify a number on the scale or really having trouble knowing what hunger is, start more simply. How do you feel? Are you comfortable or uncomfortable? Being uncomfortable may tell you that you are hungry. It may also mean you overate, but you will know which one it is based on whether you have eaten recently or not.

3. Take a couple days during the week and once on those days choose two different meals that you are going to eat. You can try one meal that you've had before and you weren't sure if you had reached fullness and compare it to another meal later in the day when you knew you were full. Identify what was different in how you felt after eating each meal. You can even track how full you feel 1 and 2 hours after eating. This will help you get more in touch with fullness and compare how different foods affect you. Everyone is different and foods will affect you differently. IE is about you, so you get to figure out what foods support you and your body the best - no more eating foods you hate or foods you think you should eat but don't make you feel good.

Not feeling fullness

1. I know it can be scary, but if you sit down and eat mindfully with no distractions, you will be surprised how much your body talks to you. You don't have to eat this way all the time, that's not realistic. But practicing mindful eating will help you find fullness even when you aren't being mindful.

2. Tune in to the taste. As you are moving closer to being satisfied, the food will not taste as good or as intense as when you began. Pay attention to this. Sometimes the difference between satisfied and too much is a few bites. Play around with this idea. If you overeat, it's OK! Figure out if your body was giving you a signal you missed, see what you can learn about how it feels for you.

3. Here's an idea that may sound familiar from dieting, but it's not the same. When you sit down to eat, divide your food in half. Eat the first half and then stop. Take a minute to tune in and see where you are on the hunger scale. How many bites do you think you have left until you are satisfied? How does the food taste? How did you want to feel when you are done? Consider all this and then continue to eat if you decide you want to until you are satisfied. The difference between this and doing this when dieting is here you are letting your body tell you when you are done, diets usually tell you to stop at the halfway mark and save or throw away the rest.

OK, there's a lot of stuff here! Anyone can add to this and anyone who tries an idea or two - please share with us what you find out.

For those of you who haven't read a book about IE yet or are still feeling shaky and want a simple read on the basics, you may want to check out my report I've written on it. It's called, "Six Steps to Guilt-Free Eating" and you get it if you sign up for my newsletter at http://www.healthieroutcomes.com/newsletter.html. No strings, you can unsubscribe whenever you want and I won't drive you nuts with worthless annoying emails. I'm not here to over-promote myself or push my services, but if there is something that I feel will be helpful for some of you, I will share it. Especially if it's a no charge resource, mine or otherwise! In fact, I have a few things I'll be sharing with you that I've been collecting on my list of IE resources.

Thanks!GillianGillian Hood-son, MS, ACSM

Get your report, "The 6 Steps to Guilt-Fr*e Eating" at http://www.HealthierOutcomes.com Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/gillianhood