Everyday Systems

Hi all. I am reading about intuitive eating and wondering if this would work for me. I know some of you will have tried it so please let me know if it was helpful. Does it work with noS. Or is mindful eating better? . Tessy

Intuitive Eating is -- Eat only when you are Hungry...then eat whatever food you want....but only until you are Satisfied, not Full. It is impossible to eat Intuitively without Mindfulness. Actually... it requires LESS MINDFULNESS to eat 3 one-plate meals with no snacks daily.

Mindfulness is required for EVERY diet. If a person is overweight or obese, ...normally ... that person must become very AWARE of what and how they are eating in order to lose weight.

Hello. I have tried many different intuitive eating books/programs. I found they did nothing for me and were actually more harmful than anything else and definitely a waste of my time and money. You may be different, but the lack of structure drove me crazy, always having to question my hunger. I think that the fact I have a problem with overeating proves that I CAN'T eat "intuitively" without being overweight! My default setting is "eat" and I think that's a survival instinct, which I believe was only strengthened prior by the deprivation of the extreme diets I had been on. Also, I find that I get "hungry" at the times I have conditioned myself to get "hungry." I eat according to the habits I established in the previous days/weeks/months... No S addresses those habits directly which is perfect for me.
The bottom line for me, was that intuitive eating took too much mental energy and had too little structure to work for me. What I love about No S is that I know when and how much to eat. Now that I have adjusted to it, I get hungry for meals at set times and eat less than I used to which is the point.

I nearly drove myself insane with intuitive eating. Am I hungry? Have I eaten enough? I never knew the answers and questioned every single bite of food I put in my mouth.

No S takes away all that insecurity and indecision. You eat your one plate of food. You finish it. If you're still hungry, then you know to have more next time. If you're too full, you've learned that you don't have to fill your plate so full next time.

Ditto TunaFishKid. It was torture!

Hi, I am no expert for the No S diet, but I did try intuitive eating for a while. I found myself thinking about food all the time. I couldn't trust myself. They say that eventually you will not want to eat sweets and junk food, but that was not the case for me. I would have lived on those foods. I also think some people can go to the other extreme and eat too little.

I have read of many people having success with IE, I honestly think it depends on your personality. I think some types of personalities can handle certain diet plans better than others.

Thank you so much you wise noSers as I suspected, it is unlikely that IE will work for me. I am way too far down the dieting road to be able to eat whenever I feel like it and feel hungry. I always want to eat and my body is way too far off course to be allowed free reign. No I need structure. So I think I shall do as R.Jean and many others have done and stick to trying to be vanilla. I haven't managed it yet. But I keep trying so often that noS is now my default. Just need to make it my everyday practice coupled with some exercise and stop making it harder for myself by tinkering with new ideas !!!

I try to pay attention to my body within the structure of No S, i.e. how do I feel after a plate of fruit, veg, fish and rice, compared to after a plate of pizza? Am I ready for breakfast, or should I leave it 1/2 hour?

I've never had much luck with being purely intuitive. Partly this is because my life is very busy and if I want to have family meals etc is is often not practical to eat purely in response to my body. Also, my body seems to "want" peanut butter sandwiches much more often than it "wants" fruit or veggies. Even though my brain knows I feel better long term when I eat a balanced diet. My default when I go without structure is to gain (not quickly, but steadily) about 1 kg a month on average. The longest I've gone without structure was about a year, and I put on about 12kg.

owlface wrote:Hello. I have tried many different intuitive eating books/programs. I found they did nothing for me and were actually more harmful than anything else and definitely a waste of my time and money. You may be different, but the lack of structure drove me crazy, always having to question my hunger. I think that the fact I have a problem with overeating proves that I CAN'T eat "intuitively" without being overweight! My default setting is "eat" and I think that's a survival instinct, which I believe was only strengthened prior by the deprivation of the extreme diets I had been on. Also, I find that I get "hungry" at the times I have conditioned myself to get "hungry." I eat according to the habits I established in the previous days/weeks/months... No S addresses those habits directly which is perfect for me.
The bottom line for me, was that intuitive eating took too much mental energy and had too little structure to work for me. What I love about No S is that I know when and how much to eat. Now that I have adjusted to it, I get hungry for meals at set times and eat less than I used to which is the point.

I second this. I spent a fair amount of time trying to follow the intuitive approach, but it always ended in me constantly wondering about and rating my hunger. I did not like it. That being said, being aware of fullness, energy vs torpor after meals, etc. is probably helpfuln the whole.

As if there isn't enough said...

No slim cultures in the world rely on intuitive eating. They don't trust the whims of the body! It's true that they eat fresher food and may be more spontaneous about what they buy and cook for dinner, but they have rather set ideas about what and how much is eaten at each meal of the day. They do value being hungry for meals and don't value overeating, so they share that. But they don't approve of people deciding on their own when and what to eat. And the ones that are still intact would likely not trust perverting their natural taste and appetite with modern processed foods.

Be as intuitive as you like- at your meals.

Just adding a late reply to this, I like to combine both.

I like to follow my intuition about what to eat (mostly), but have the No S structure for when, and also to limit sweets and seconds.

I have had issues in the past with orthorexia (obsession with "dietary purity") and had many occasions where I would deprive myself of food groups I enjoyed because they were "bad" or force myself to eat things I didn't like because they were "good".

I've since recovered from 99% of those issues and part of that process was learning to rely on my intuition about what food is best to eat based on what I actually want and totally ignore any diet guru's wacky ideas about food groups to exclude or macronutrient ratios.

As oolala53 said though, it helps to have a structure as well though, like culturally acceptable meal times and portion sizes, or of course No S

I don't mean to imply that there aren't people who can rely pretty exclusively on intuition for their calorie intake and stay slim. I think those people exist in all cultures, and they seem to be adjustable to the culture as well. Even here, naturally skinny people will often wait to eat meals at meal times with others even though they are very hungry!

So much of what many call intuition regarding food is just habit, but that's not necessarily bad, given that humans seem to do pretty well on quite different food habits.

I also like to suggest that most people with a set-mealtime upbringing will be trained to eat at mealtimes only. All my Austrian and Italian friends are like that. The follow their "intuition" but what they are really doing is following their habit of 3 meals per day and from time to time they will outside of those ingrained norms (instead of S days).

So if you grew up with that kind of system you have a lot more success with intuitive eating than someone like me who intuitively wants chocolate 24/7 as I grew up with extremely disorganised eating.

I always go back and forth between ways of Intuitive Eating* and the No S Diet.
(*I must say that for me, Intuitive Eating doesn't mean eating according to a hunger scale.. it just means: eat the food and don't let your head interfere with your body's cravings AT ALL!).

Because everytime I commit to doing No S, I eventually end up exploding on a tuesday night, throwing everything overboard, because I just can't stand the fact that I cannot have some sweets with my friends on a TUESDAY, when it would be 'perfectly fine' for me to stuff myself (alone) on a SATURDAYmorning.
It just seems so ri-di-cu-lous to me. And I know. That's how you buy the habit. But I always feel like I keep missing out on life that way. In my head, all the spontaneity around food vanishes. And don't you miss that? Reinhard wrote something about having some humor about these kinds of situations.
But they are killing me! They're not fun. And they may be the reason I can't seem to stay on No S for too long without feeling deprived. What can I do?!

I wish I could just get over this little thing!

I am afraid that the No S 'good enough', sometimes doesn't feel good enough for me. That's why I keep reaching out for ways of eating 'intuitively'. I always dream of the day that my eating becomes so free, that I don't even need rules like: 3 meals a day. My sister basically does that all the time. Why can't I? Or am I just too messed up by all that dieting I did in my teenage-years?

My head hurts. I think about this SO much.
Right now I'm just trying to reach some food neutrality again... eating everything I like, whenever I want to. Being okay with gaining/loosing however much pounds my body wants to gain/loose. Accepting wherever my weight will fall. And I hope that an eating pattern will emerge naturally.

And then, if I should feel the need to structure my eating more (because I do like that about No S, I reaaally doooo!), I'd give No S a shot again.
For everyone who struggles with this intuitive eating thing, but still wants to try it, I'd really recommend this article (the rest of the website is great too):
http://thefuckitdiet.com/2014/08/07/why ... ve-eating/

This really helped me let go of my perfectionism. And I guess that this perfectionism also stood in the way of me being able to stay on No S. But however.. I don't even remember why I started writing this post... (:

Not to toot my own horn, but I suggest you reread my post of Dec. 10.

Do not judge yourself by the exceptions. There is nothing messed up about you just because you can't eat like your sister. What the IE people won't admit is that people like that are the EXCEPTIONS among humans. If that wasn't true, then most people in the world would be slim. That used to be true only because enough food was not available. If you look at world statistics, you'll see that overweight is becoming the norm everywhere enough food is available EXCEPT in cultures that adopt rather strict rules of moderation and very little randomness about eating. Guess what: they enjoy their food way more than we do.

Actually, you do have an option that would allow you to choose a greater variety of foods eaten at any time you want and lose weight: count the calories of every bite of food you take and keep lowering the limit until you reach and maintain the weight you want. Sound familiar? It's true that it would work for weight loss, but no matter how effective it is, most humans just aren't going to do it, and if you think skipping something sweet on Tuesday is hard, it doesn't sound like this strategy would be something you could live with.

I hope you'll see that giving up dessert most days of the year is MUCH less restrictive than that.

BTW, if you argue that slim cultures allow sweets more often, you're right. But even America was slim before the '70's, so if you want to allow yourself sweets more often, consider one tactic: limiting your yearly intake to the amount eaten in America back in 1957: 34 pounds a year. Distribute sweets any way and time you like, but you'll find you are going to have to be very careful doling the desserts out, not nearly as spontaneous as you imagine. If you're not careful, you could be done with your allotment by June. How about being spontaneous with them on, say, Saturdays and Sundays? And eventually only one day a week or just...sometimes.
Remember, don't use your sister as the measure. She may be typical of her kind, but her kind is not typical.

I know your pain. I got introduced to what IE is basically in 1980 and grappled with it, interspersed with about a year TOTAL of dieting, until Dec. 26, 2009. Decades lost to misery. I pray you don't lose the same time I did. Surrender to No S and move on to figure out what to do with all the time you used to spend either thinking about this or eating.

bjalda, I hear your pain.

My head hurts. I think about this SO much.

May I suggest you stop thinking about it? There is no point in making yourself crazy over something like what or how to eat. I've never tried a formal version of "intuitive eating" but that is how I lived most of my life and yet I'm still here on a diet site message board. It seems to me that if you have to think about eating intuitively, then you aren't really doing it and you may as well enjoy the structure of no-s instead.

In the meantime some food for thought:

Sometimes, I feel a bit sorry for myself because I can't party like I did in college -yes this is a for real scenario - On more than one occasion I've said to my husband "I wish we could get sh*t faced drunk then get in a car and drive home like we used to in college." But this is just wishful thinking on my part. It was never ok to do that. I just didn't know it at the time. So, after I give myself a stern talking-to, I pull up my big girl panties and face reality. Yes, I miss that. But it wasn't ever really like that either.

It doesn't matter what anybody else can do. It only matters what I can do. What do I care that the neighbor can eat whatever she wants? Doesn't help me any.

When I ate "intuitively" I didn't have access to the level of food that I have now. I spent the first 35 years of my life eating "intuitively". But you know what, I grew up poor and lived poor for most of my life. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sweets only at holidays and birthdays. cookies in the house? Only at Christmas. Chips and snacks? Never. Home popped popcorn was a treat for the weekends. Maybe "intuitive" works. But I don't want to go back to being poor to find out. If I could really eat intuitively, I wouldn't be here.

There are possibly a million ways to be spontaneous. If I can only be spontaneous with food. Then it isn't really spontaneous.


Kind regards and best of luck with your struggle.

I love reading the wisdom on this board, thanks gingerpie and oolala for some excellent food for thought. I live with a "naturally slim" husband, so I have a constant example of what the exceptions look like

bonnieUK wrote:I have had issues in the past with orthorexia (obsession with "dietary purity") and had many occasions where I would deprive myself of food groups I enjoyed because they were "bad" or force myself to eat things I didn't like because they were "good".

I've since recovered from 99% of those issues and part of that process was learning to rely on my intuition about what food is best to eat based on what I actually want and totally ignore any diet guru's wacky ideas about food groups to exclude or macronutrient ratios.

If it's not too personal, could you share how you made this recovery? I have a relative who is currently in the grip of very severe orthorexia and I'm not sure how to help.

In case you're wondering how not to think about it: put food on a plate three times a day and savor it. Allow yourself to plan enough to shop for groceries for common meals or get prepared food. Let yourself think and plan about 30 minutes a day average, max for now. Force yourself to keep dropping the topic and think about something else or meditate on the present! Go on a media diet: Avoid media for a few months, if you can, and look at only real people. Keep looking: what ELSE is my life about? (Not much? Uh oh. work to do. Scan a college catalog for interests? pinterest? charities? etc.)

You can DO this. Life is so much bigger than eating and how you look!

ironchef wrote:

bonnieUK wrote:I have had issues in the past with orthorexia (obsession with "dietary purity") and had many occasions where I would deprive myself of food groups I enjoyed because they were "bad" or force myself to eat things I didn't like because they were "good".

I've since recovered from 99% of those issues and part of that process was learning to rely on my intuition about what food is best to eat based on what I actually want and totally ignore any diet guru's wacky ideas about food groups to exclude or macronutrient ratios.

If it's not too personal, could you share how you made this recovery? I have a relative who is currently in the grip of very severe orthorexia and I'm not sure how to help.

Hi Ironchef,

I think the thing that triggered a change in me was this article:

https://gokaleo.com/2013/01/25/adrenal- ... tarvation/

I had been having symptoms of what, according to "Dr Google" seemed like adrenal fatigue, then I read the above article and had a lightbulb moment, a thought popped into my mind "maybe I'm just hungry!". I then googled around a bit more and read some people's experiences of taking time off dieting as a kind of body reset. I decided to try taking approx 1 month off all forms of dietary restriction and structured exercise and just see what would happen. I guess you could say I was attempting to eat intuitively. For the first 2 weeks I definitely overate and ate massive amounts of carbs, but then my appetite started to balance out. I did it for about 6 weeks and by the end, had settled naturally into something approaching No S, eating balanced meals (generous carbs, a little fat, some protein - a good balance for me) but admittedly I was allowing too many sweets, despite not really having a sweet tooth (I think it was just a bad habit I got into).

I gained 4kgs (8lbs), but could afford that bit extra so had to let myself be totally at peace with that, plus this was more than made up for by the fact that I finally had the energy to do whatever I wanted with my day, something I'd be struggling with for a couple of years. My niggly symptoms (fatigue, brain fog, moodiness) also disappeared. After this little experiment, I realised I needed to regain some discipline so I went back to (almost) vanilla No S and lost around 1kg (approx 2lbs). I think I would have continued losing a bit of the extra weight, but then I got pregnant (and am still pregnant, 41 weeks later waiting impatiently!)

If I could go back and do it again, the only thing I'd do differently is try to keep some No S structure rather than abandon all rules completely.

What it taught me though is the importance of actually eating enough food to support my activities.

I hope your relative finds a way to deal with their issues, perhaps you could point them to the above article (if their issue is under-eating/calorie restricting/over exercising) or resources about orthorexia - it is something that easily goes unnoticed because fad dieting has become so normal in our culture. I expect you've already tried to introduce them to No S, but as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.

P.S. sorry to hijack the thread, I could have probably written a whole new thread about that but thought it fits in here too as to some degree intuitive eating came into it.

Gingerpie! After a little while your post really sunk in. Thanks a lot!

gingerpie wrote:Sometimes, I feel a bit sorry for myself because I can't party like I did in college -yes this is a for real scenario - On more than one occasion I've said to my husband "I wish we could get sh*t faced drunk then get in a car and drive home like we used to in college." But this is just wishful thinking on my part. It was never ok to do that. I just didn't know it at the time. So, after I give myself a stern talking-to, I pull up my big girl panties and face reality. Yes, I miss that. But it wasn't ever really like that either.

I guess I feel the exact same way about eating as you did about college-partying. I 'miss' the days of eating intuitively, even though I can't even remember what they were like. I definitely have to pull up my big girl panties (little girl panties wouldn't fit anyways, I just stepped on the scale).

gingerpie wrote:There are possibly a million ways to be spontaneous. If I can only be spontaneous with food. Then it isn't really spontaneous.

Very true and a little embarrassing that I can be so focused on attaining 'happiness' 'freedom' and 'spontaneity' from food.
And thank you too ohlala!! I don't want to waste any decades on thinking about food. So I guess No S it is (again! ).


PS: Wow! I just saw that I already joined 4 years ago!!! I guess I could have had rock-solid NO S habits by now.
I'll do my best to not be saying that again 4 years from now...

bjalda I'm glad something I said was helpful to you. Good luck. I hope you can find peace with food. Perhaps, on days you feel a it is all a bit unfair, you can try imagining how people with severe food allergies or diabetes must feel.

Bonnie, thank you so much for responding. Happy to start a new thread if you prefer.

bonnieUK wrote: I decided to try taking approx 1 month off all forms of dietary restriction and structured exercise and just see what would happen.

Wow, I would love it if my cousin would consider this. Even for a week.

I think I would have continued losing a bit of the extra weight, but then I got pregnant (and am still pregnant, 41 weeks later waiting impatiently!)

Exciting times - first babies do have that tendency to run late though I know my cousin would love to have a child (she just got married), but I'm not sure it's enough motivation for her to change. She's suffering amenorrhoea at the moment, so not likely unless she changes her eating.

I hope your relative finds a way to deal with their issues, perhaps you could point them to the above article (if their issue is under-eating/calorie restricting/over exercising) or resources about orthorexia - it is something that easily goes unnoticed because fad dieting has become so normal in our culture.

I will send that article. I've spoken in the past about No S, but it wasn't well received and I guess the thing is from her point of view, I'm the one who needs educating. In her mind, I'm the stupid person killing themselves with sugar, gluten, sodium, dairy, etc.

Bjalda, when I started, I had to see that I had spent DECADES on eating stuff and still didn't have it handled satisfactorily. I dragged my feet for over a year on No S. Sometimes repeated failure can actually eventually galvanize your intention.

It's definitely worth a year of faithful attempts. If nothing else, you will learn discipline.

I haven't been back here for a couple of years, but now I wonder why. Of all the forums I've visited online, this one has the greatest number of posters with wisdom and good old common sense.

This thread interested me because I was tempted to try IE again. I've been maintaining a 35-40 lb. weight loss via calorie counting, but during the past year or so, I've regained 5-8 lbs (I don't regularly weigh myself, but I'm guessing that number based on the fit of my clothes). In desperation, I went on a low carb/low fat diet & have been doing that for a week, but I just keep thinking, "Here I go again"---hence my attraction to IE. But I dread that, too----all that "getting in touch with feelings" and over-thinking food. I can't stand it!

So here I am. I'm going to give NoS another go. This, time, though, I feel more mature about it all, i.e., I think I've shed the "perfection or nothing" mentality and realize that I have to use common sense to make this work for me.

bjalda wrote:Because everytime I commit to doing No S, I eventually end up exploding on a tuesday night, throwing everything overboard, because I just can't stand the fact that I cannot have some sweets with my friends on a TUESDAY, when it would be 'perfectly fine' for me to stuff myself (alone) on a SATURDAYmorning.
It just seems so ri-di-cu-lous to me.

This is what always trips me up, too. But you know what? The tweaks---if needed---can come later. Just because we must do this initially doesn't mean it's forever. My problem is that I am an extremist and tend to view things as all or nothing. But reading Kathleen's stickied post about the phases of NoS helped me to realize that if tweaks are needed, I can make them-----after I've established the habit well.

Congrats on maintaining at least about 30 lbs. lost!

I'll bet you remember some of the more delightful meals that got you there. I have to admit I learned what meals I actually preferred most of the time from a couple of diets I had been on in the past. I used those a lot unless I started to feel like they weren't allowing for more zip. It was pretty easy to supplement with more daring fare for a meal or two. That's often all it took.

Lo and behold, sometimes I actually want a pretty low carb meal!

Present company excepted, yes, this forum seems wisest and kindest. Our leader set the tone and the plan is also so human and compassionate. If not, it wouldn't have worked for millions of people in slim cultures already. In slim cultures, they don't depend on moment by moment intuition to have meals. They have relatively routine patterns that allow for variety over time. You'll find your mix.

oolala53 wrote:I'll bet you remember some of the more delightful meals that got you there. I have to admit I learned what meals I actually preferred most of the time from a couple of diets I had been on in the past. I used those a lot unless I started to feel like they weren't allowing for more zip. It was pretty easy to supplement with more daring fare for a meal or two. That's often all it took.

Lo and behold, sometimes I actually want a pretty low carb meal!

You're right! I have always eschewed low-carb because I never could see myself giving up bread, oatmeal, etc. permanently (nor do I believe that doing so is healthier than having carbs in one's diet, for the majority). However, I must admit that it REALLY helped to stem some rather out-of-control cravings. I mean, at one point a couple of weeks ago, I was eating anything sweet I could get my hands on---including brown sugar by the spoon, right out of the box! So, yeah, I needed something to stem that. And, as you say, I got a lot of ideas that I think will be useful going forward.

oolala53 wrote:Present company excepted, yes, this forum seems wisest and kindest. Our leader set the tone and the plan is also so human and compassionate

I agree completely about Reinhard, but disagree that you're excluded from the "wisest and kindest." Actually, I remember you from when I used to visit this forum, and I always looked forward to reading your posts because they exude common sense. Keep 'em coming!

I know that this is a slightly older topic, but when I was reading through the responses I have to admit that some of them really sounded familiar to me. I, too, tried the IE way, and while I think it helped me to limit my sweets cravings even before I started No-S I found that I needed something with a little more structure. I never actually put much effort into any of the "calorie counting" diets, and IE seemed like a way to get back in touch with my body.

After a little over three months of No-S, I think I can say that I do indeed combine some of the IE mindset with it, such as eating more slowly and really tasting my food and trying to check in with my body and see if I feel full when I'm almost done with my meal. Other than that, though, I've learned that the moderation of No-S has been much better for my mindset than IE ever was (and this discussion board has certainly been more helpful than a particular IE one that I belonged to).

I think IE really works for people who have not been on a diet and have grown up eating 3 meals or 4 meals at structured times a day. In that case IE is just a way to get back to that for them.

The intuition part I use is about WHAT is on my plate not WHEN I eat.

Exactly! But even then, eventually, many meals at the same time of day are going to resemble each other in general make up.

IE has worked for all sorts of people, but I'm pretty sure its success RATE is still pretty small. It may be how some slim individuals eat, but it's just not the way populations do. They don't leave it up to chance. Most people end up "intuiting" what's on their plate by what the cultural standards are for that particular meal. If your cultural standards stink, well...

We have to be our own tribe, but knowing there are whole populations that have done delightfully with this standard helps me.

Bjalda,

I'm new to No S, so take my advice with a lot of salt, but I was using a self-made system before No S that might be a modification to help you solve your problem: I would only eat "empty calories" if someone offered them to me. For me "empty calories" included sweets, salty snacks, and alcohol. And "offering" meant that I was being offered something special, like a slice of birthday cake, or something new and interesting that I'd never had before. Not, you know, being offered a cookie by my best friend every time I went over there...

I tended to gain a bit of weight at holiday times, but over all, my weight stayed steady. If you combine that with the No Snacks and No Seconds rule, and if your social life is not too wild, that might help you stay on track...

Lyra

I did wonderfully with intuitive eating when I was in my early 20s. I had a stress free life and able to focus on everything I wanted to. After I finished college, I lost everything and used food to compensate my emotions. Once that happened I could never successfully get back on the IE bandwagon.

I will always support the notion though. If you can do it successfully, then that's wonderful. I used Paul McKenna's system "I Can Make You Thin." 4 golden rules. Uses hypnosis to help you control emotional eating. I still use a couple of the rules (eat what you want and when you get full, stop) but also NoS. NoS fits in way better with my lifestyle and mindset now. I don't think I'll ever go another way!

I think it's so much more convenient. And you're still in charge of what's on the plate, for the most part.

I have read every single book on various intuitive eating programs (which I'm interpreting loosely as ones where you don't have to count points or calories at all) but have never had success (5:2, 4:3, Brian Wansink, Geneen Roth, Beck, 5-hr eating windows, hypnosis, slow food movement, volumetrics, raw foods, Michael Pollan's rules, Gabriel Method, etc.). I have found a way to gain or maintain weight every darn time. More power to those who can pull it off, but even doing No-S, I kind of guesstimate that each meal be somewhere around 500 calories. I don't make myself crazy about it nor do I record it, but the rough guess keeps me honest.

When I give myself too long of a leash, I tend to enter gorge-land. Nice place to visit but you don't want to live there.
Your mileage may vary.

If I'm honest, I have to admit I in early years I would sometimes do a rough guesstimate of calories at meals, especially ones I packed. I knew I wasn't likely to leave food on my plate, so I kept amounts down because I just didn't want to have that stuffed feeling.

Eating only three meals, a 500-calorie lunch and dinner seemed like a minimum. It was a ball park.