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.