Trying Intuitive Eating

All my life, the only way I knew how to “control” my weight was through dieting and starving and that always failed. Restricting lead, inevitably, to bingeing, each and every time.

When I began the journey of changing this cycle, I was bingeing and purging many times a day. Life was so miserable, I didn’t want to get out of bed most days.

Realizing that what I’d done up to that point didn’t work, I looked for a different approach to eating and discovered the idea of intuitive eating.

This approach involves legalizing food — carrot sticks are not any better or worse than carrot cake. No food is forbidden. In fact, we should stock up on all our favorite foods in quantities so large we couldn’t possibly eat them in one sitting.

If you love dark chocolate, don’t buy one chocolate bar, buy ten. If you love carrot cake, don’t buy one cake, buy three so you can keep two in the freezer.  If you like crusty bread, buy a few loaves.  If you want heavy cream in your coffee instead of skim milk, go for it! Cashews and almonds—buy the family sized packages.

The idea is this. We chronic dieters have spent our lives eating controlled, pre-determined portions of pre-planned food at specific times of the day. How much, what, and when we ate had nothing to do with how much or what we wanted or whether we were hungry. And then there were those times we ate from “mouth hunger” instead of “stomach hunger.”

We need to eat food on demand. Demand feeding requires learning to feel and respond to stomach hunger. This re-calibration of eating habits requires vigilance. In particular, it requires that we attend to emotional reasons for eating, since a lot of times we seek food for comfort (mouth hunger) even though what comfort it brings is fleeting.

How do we change our eating? Let yourself get hungry as much as possible during the day and eat just enough to satisfy that hunger each time.  Carry a food bag, filled with your favorite foods, so that you are never hungry and without something to satisfy that hunger.  Stop thinking in terms of meals or of food that is appropriate to specific times of day. If you wake up hungry and feel like eating a bowl of chili, eat it. If it’s “lunch time” and all you want is a piece of chocolate cake, have the cake.

Stop eating when you are satisfied — not stuffed.  Stick with this, learning to forgive yourself, keeping at it long enough to convince yourself that you can stop now because, in an hour when you are hungry again, it will be okay to eat.  The idea is that if you know you will have permission to eat later (unlike when you’re dieting), it’ll be easier to stop at a comfortable place.

I tried a lot of this approach. In my next blog, I will discuss what worked and what didn’t and how I incorporated some aspects into my current approach to food – and life!

How I lost 100 pounds and Keep it Off Peacefully

It's been a long road. I grew up a compulsive eater, weighing well into the 200s until around thirty when I got tired of being the "fat one". In my thirties, I stopped eating and starved myself down to a sickly and miserable 85 pounds. Then followed bulimia, years and years of binging and purging, day and night.

Then I turned 42, 10 years ago this June, and I couldn't live that way anymore. My entire life had run around food and weight. I had one friend, a miserable job, no boyfriend, as well as a burgeoning drinking problem. Something had to change.

Throughout my life of bingeing, bingeing and purging and starving, I'd read all the literature I could on the topic of eating disorders and found two approaches which made sense - Intuitive Eating and Overeaters Anonymous.

Many would say these two are divergent options, but I've been able to combine some of both to have a relatively easy and pretty darn free approach to food and my weight, which is exactly smack dab in the middle of those height and weight charts, without my even trying.

My next blogs will be about how I did it and how I still do it, every day.

Height and Weight

I went to the doctor today and had a few questions/concerns. My eyes have been giving me trouble – sometimes they ache, and my vision gets blurry. Also, my perimenopausal PMS is out of control – just yesterday, I broke down at work, sobbing and wailing in front of my co-workers AND my boss. I can’t live like this every month.

While there, I learned that for the first time in my life, I have high blood pressure. Me?!!!! My doctor looked a little concerned and ordered a full set of blood work.

Did any of this bother me? Sure, a little. But I got a referral to a good eye doctor, a prescription for Lexapro and we’ll monitor my blood pressure -  nothing alarming.

You want to know what sticks out most from this visit? My height and weight. I jumped on the scale and weighed what I’ve weighed every year, for as long as I can remember. The exact number, in fact. And a number I am quite happy about.

BUT – I’VE SHRUNK AN INCH, SO THE HEIGHT/WEIGHT RATIO IS DIFFERENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am, therefore, heavier than I used to be by about five pounds. THIS is what alarmed me.

Weird thinking dies hard. Happily, I am not planning on losing weight. I am just fine.

Weight Gain

It's rare that I gain weight these days. I've been so comfortable with my eating, my weight and body. But suddenly -- "hello"  weight gain and "good bye" comfort.

Perhaps what's most uncomfortable is how - uncomfortable - i still am with weight gain. I can say i'm easy, breezy about food, weight and body when I'm at my desired weight, but not so much right now.

Old thoughts creep in -- I need to restrict, cut out treats, weight myself daily. I begin to worry that i'll keep gaining and gaining until I'm the 200 pounds I weighed as a teenager. I chastise myself for overindulgence...

New thoughts try to push out the old. I tell myself I'm fine, still a healthy weight, I'm more than a number on the scale, this is disordered, mean and oppressive thinking.......

Let's see which side wins.

Thoughts on Childhood Obesity

In researching this topic, (so close to my former obese child's heart), the first article i found (from 2010) said this,"In February of this year, First Lady Michelle Obama presented her ambitious Let’s Move campaign to battle the terrifying childhood obesity epidemic. Childhood obesity has tripled in the past 30 years"

So, I was terrifying, huh? 

Oh, I get that obesity can be harmful to health with the added incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and asthma, etc.., It just so happens that,  as a 60 pounds overweight kid , I suffered none of these, but still, i get it.

However, what i did suffer was excessive bullying and ostracism leading to miserable self-esteem and loneliness. Every day, i begged to be allowed to stay home from school. what would have helped that problem was changing the OTHER kids, not me. No one talks about that!

But no, what we hear about is better nutrition and more exercise. Busy mom's get blamed for making processed foods instead of preparing healthy meals. Computer games take the rap for lack of exercise.

Hey, I've got nothing against good food and exercise, but, my mom served us vegetables, broiled fish (yick), and fruits. we weren't allowed more than one starch at a meal and got dessert only on special occasions. 

still I was huge, often stealing money to run to the candy store, buying everything i could and shoving it all in my mouth on the way home.

In contrast to me, my brother and sister were quite thin. . in terms of exercise, my sister had all the athletic genes - she swam, played tennis, cheer-leaded, did gymnastics. My brother sat on the living room couch with his nose in a book. As i said, both - thin

Could there be something more at work here than veggies and aerobics? i loved all vegetables - brussels sprouts rivaled ice cream as my favorite food........ i ate lots and lots of brussel sprouts and lots and lots of ice cream. pretty much, lots and lots of everything.

Could there be something else going on, something that fruits and veggies couldn't fix? i think so.

To me, obesity is an inside job. I ate because i was miserable - a lonely odd-ball whose parents were going thru an evil divorce. i had no idea how to fit in with others, i was afraid of everything (the dark, the Nazis, slavery, being kidnapped for starters), and looked for solace in the only thing that (i thought) wouldn't hurt me - food
 Trust me, filling my life with leafy greens and jumping jacks wasn't  going to help me. Filling myself with what I really needed, finally, did.

But no one talks about that. Just today, 5 years after that beginning of Mrs. Obama's war against Childhood Obesity, I read about her and her war. I read about doctors, nutritionists, exercise and of course, fruits and vegetables

I read nothing of sadness or fear or loneliness. I read nothing of therapists or going any deeper than the surface.

Obesity was linked with poverty -- more kids with less money and less opportunity
gravitate toward more fast food and less activity. However, there are plenty of thin kids who live in poverty. What's different? What's going on with the kids who turn to zoning out with food and TV?

Not getting enough rabbit food?

Supermodel Emme

I became familiar with Emme Aaronson, the world most famous supermodel about twenty years ago. Emme’s grace and success inspired me, a plus-sized thirty-year-old who lived miserably in my own body

Her first book, True Beauty—Positive Attitudes & Practical Tips from the World's Leading Plus Size Model, seemed written for specifically for me.  And I loved that we shared a first name - her given name is Melissa - and a birth year.

After reading Emme’s book, I wrote her a letter, letting her know how she inspired me and gave me hope I’d never known before. She wrote back - a lovely handwritten card with a kaola bear on the front (she was on a book tour in Australia.)

I will never forget her generosity and still think of her and that card when i'm having bad day, low days. Days where my self-esteem seems to have moved out of the country.

Since that book came out in 1997, Emme has had a child, gone thru a tough marriage and divorce and battled breast cancer. Yet, she still beams in photos and still radiantly carries her message of self-love for women of all sizes.

In a 1997 New York Times articles, she said ''I stopped dieting. 'I've changed my psyche, my self-esteem, the 'good girl, bad girl' thing. If you cheat on your husband or commit murder, that's bad. A cookie is just a cookie. I got tired of fighting myself every step of the way. I live my life now. I don't get crazy.'' 

Words to live by. Thanks Emme.

"Fat" "Camp"

When I was a fat kid, losing weight was my only goal.  My mother drove me to diet doctors, Weight Watchers, Behavior Modification specialists, therapists. We attempted every diet – eating only protein or only fruit or only rice. We cut out sugar, carbs, eating after 5 pm, eating before dinner, white food, anything but grapefruit……..

My mother lost a lot of weight. I got fatter. We tried another diet.

Defeated and disgusted, I believed myself to be the ugliest, most unlovable girl in the world. I was teased mercilessly for my weight (and  frizzy hair, coke-bottle glasses, braces, acne.)

At one point, my mother suggested “fat” camp, but my aversion to exercise and the label, “fat”, put an end to that idea. I cringed at the thought of being weighed and made to exercise and put on more diets.

Imagine being judged all summer by your weight? Awful. The school year was bad enough.

Instead, Mom sent me to regular camp, where my lack of athletic prowess made life, well, miserable. An insomniac since birth, I couldn’t sleep. I was the only one in my bunk without a boyfriend. What did I do at camp? I ate.

And dreamed of a summer camp where I could be free. Free to read and rest and watch movies (Melissa McCarthy movies!) and lie in the sun and maybe participate in gentle non-competitive exercise like dog paddling around a pool or going for an easy walk through the fields.

No one would chastise me and my fellow campers for lack of weight loss or lack of coordination or lack of dates. We would be accepted and cherished for just being us.

I suppose no parent would send their kid to my camp, not in today’s world where skinny is synonymous with all things good. Such a shame