Faith in the blossom...

"And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  (Anais Nin)  I saw this as a window into the fear involved in going totally "IE" and I posted as such on the Intuitive Eating website.  A very wise member answered me this way:

"A blossom is a prelude to a fruit which grows into a new tree with more blossoms! What is to fear of a blossom 'dropping'?!? Its all a part of the lovely cycles of nature. Why deny yourself of that experience and joy?

And until you fully 'embrace' IE as you seem to have WW, how can you compare these? It seems to me that you may be ascribing 'limits' with control which may feel safe or comfortable (a known?) for you? I have come to realize that IE IS and always has been my true grounded and 'comfort' spot. Happy to read that you are coming to peace with this (IE) too. I sure found it to be peaceful for me."

I also realized that fear and faith cannot co-exist.  I think that is one of the things that is hardest about IE.  That leap of faith.  Faith that you can tune into your body's signals.  Faith that once you eat according to the ebb and flow of your needs your weight will return to a natural and healthy state.  Faith that your body will know what it wants and in what quantity it wants it.  Faith that you do not need diet programs or scales or points or calories or grams.  Faith that there are no good foods or bad foods, but that your own body will know what not to eat if it has allergies or problems.

My blossom is having faith that whatever follows "I am" will find me.  I am an intuitive eater.  I am able.  I am beautiful.  I am more than a number on the scale.  I am making progress with all the IE work that I am doing - on my own, with my counselor, with the help of my friends who also respect my decision to do IE instead of a diet,  and with my supporters at my IE community.

Is it Spring yet?

Miriam 

Diet Scare

So yesterday (Sunday) is my usual cooking day.  I made no-noodle lasagna (which came out sort of like eggplant Parmesan - which is fine by me; barley skillet casserole; sausage breakfast casserole; pumpkin pie; then everything for dinner: roast chicken, couscous pilaf, cranberry orange relish, and brussels sprouts with shallots and bacon.  (ALL WW and Emily Bites recipes, by the way!!)  Okay I'm cool.  I don't need to eat it all at once - it's for the whole week.

What I did do was have a slice of the lasagna.  OMG --- TOO yummy.  I had a second piece.  Enter: THE DIET MENTALITY.  In my mind I know each slice is 9 points (even though I didn't write it down!) and when I had the two slices I am thinking - OMG 18 points - that's more than half my allowance for the day.  If I stopped with the thought I wouldn't be having this conversation.  IHowever, IMMEDIATELY my mind went to the "black and white I've blown it" version of how I've lived the past 50 year of my life, and I started to think of everything else I could possibly eat. Then I called up my WW tracking site again and started to write things down. Ditched that.  Started to look up Core-type programs figuring out if I could get away with calling the lasagna "Core" thereby giving myself after-the-fact permission for eating it.  I could see myself being sucked into the bottomless vortex of diet mentality.  I left the house and pursued my other addiction - shopping.

I ate WAY too much at dinner (not way too much because of points values, but way too much because I was full and kept eating -- after all, I had already blown the day).  THEN scouted out chocolate candy once I was in bed for the night.  This was all triggered, of course, not by the lasagna but going back further into the day - by getting on the scale and seeing a gain. (Sorry for the graphic - but I should have weighed myself again AFTER going to the bathroom - lol.)   I should have just gotten back in bed at that first point and have stayed with covers over my head for the rest of the day.

So after contemplating that this IE experience is so new it still takes so little to catapult me into diet mentality, I decided to make this a fresh day.  As I went to finish my second cup of coffee, I realized I didn't want it but was only drinking it because I had already measured out (and "counted") the cream.  WHAT AM I DOING?  I threw it out.  Then I was a little hungry (I had eaten so much yesterday I wasn't starving at my usual 6AM) but instead of eating at that moment, I realized that what I really wanted was the breakfast casserole that I had assembled yesterday and "soaked" overnight.  So I put it in the oven and patiently waited.  I had the most yummy slice (without that second cup of coffee) for breakfast.  THEN I faced that lasagna again later for lunch.  But this time I did it in a SMART way.  I had a salad first.  Then steamed asparagus to have on the side.  AND put it all on my favorite plates, that I have reserved for company (I think I will use them more often - just for me!).  It was a perfect portion -- same as yesterday, but today I wasn't blinded by the sparkle of DM (diet mentality).  

I was watching Oprah's Lifeclass last night and my favorite person (Joel Osteen) was on it - they were talking about this:  "Whatever follows 'I am' will find you."  So today instead of the usual "I am's" I am going to say today:  I am smart.  I am able to understand and incorporate IE into my life.  I am able to pick myself up after falling into the DM vortex.  I am able to be patient with myself.  I AM STRONG.

Miriam

Finally understanding Intuitive Eating

         So this was my latest project (below).  I am working on finding myself with Intuitive Eating.  I've been working with a counselor since before my trip to Italy, but I could not bring myself to agree to that which is the foundation of all Intuitive Eating:  Principle #1: REJECT THE DIET MENTALITY.  My desire to reject the diet mentality dates back to many many blog entries ago when I said that I knew in my heart that I should be able to trust myself after all these years, but after years and years of dieting (my mother dropped me off at a Weight Watchers meeting in 1969!) I could not shake the core belief that I must follow a prescribed diet in order to lose weight.  Moving into Intuitive Eating is an entire paradigm shift which I was not ready for.  I did a lot of hard work trying to figure out how to let Weight Watchers go.  I wrote page after page of pros and cons of each; I wrote a long LONG letter to "Dear Diet" - in which the diet was able to answer me back as long as I got the last word; and I worked on the venn diagram below. I think that I've found the path to meld what I've learned all these years through Weight Watchers tools, while at the same time letting  go of the diet mentality to start the journey of Intuitive Eating.

         I think that most people (myself included) have misunderstood Intuitive Eating to mean: Eat whatever you want, whenever you want, until you are satisfied.  That is a recipe for gaining weight and learning nothing. What I have found in my work on Intuitive Eating since July is that I need to stop and think about what would really really satisfy me, make sure I am hungry - but do wait if it is only an urge or a craving, make sure that I am feeding physical hunger, and learn the cues for what "being satisfied" means.  It also means really tuning into my body signals to figure out that tipping point where it's too much, or not really the food that my body wants.  The more I tune into those signals the more I can make decisions.  If I eat a HUGE salad with some protein and a wonderful dressing I feel GREAT!  If I eat even a medium portion of lasagna I tend to fill immediately and feel uncomfortable afterwards.  These are signals that I never listened to before.  So even though I want lasagna and can eat it if I want I also have to respect my body and have just a little piece (even if in points-speak I have 15 points to "spend") and absolutely stop before I am satisfied/full because I know from experience I will not feel well later.  So IE really isn't a free-for-all.  You still have to respect certain things about how, why, when and how much you eat.

          I've also done a lot of hard work on the relationship between emotions and eating.  A diet will teach you to reach for "non-damaging" foods when you have an emotion you need to stuff down.  How many carrots and celery and heads of lettuce (and in really desperate times how much candy and chips) have I eaten instead of sitting quietly with the emotion, identifying what it is, and either letting it pass or thinking it through, maybe reframing how you feel about it or finding solutions for it?  IE isn't about eating a bag of baby carrots because you need the crunch to work out the anxiety or anger or nervousness. It's about sitting with those emotions and riding them through WITHOUT food.  IE is hard hard work.  Much easier to bowl through a bag of carrots (if you are out of points) or chips (if you have plenty of points).  I'm not saying that diets encourage you to eat your emotions, but they are less instrumental in having you work with them and more instrumental in helping you find ways to find less "damaging" foods. 

        Anyway, from here on this blog is going to take an Intuitive Eating twist.  I really feel that this is the way "normal" people do it.  And, as I am now in my 60th decade, I think it's time to learn what it is to be "normal" and stop the diet madness.