Intuitive Eating

[noni]

Has anyone here ever practiced intuitive eating? (IE). I had tried this for 10 years after getting off the dieting roller coaster. It seems so natural and right but for some reason, I would tire of it lose a few pounds and then back the weight would come.

It was the timing of hunger and how much to eat at lunch so I can be hungry enough to eat with my family for dinner preoccupation as well as if I eat this fat-laden dinner, will I have room for dessert? and if I eat dessert later, will I be hungry for breakfast? It was good in that it taught me moderation and got me off the dieting merry-go-round but I really was preoccupied with food and timing when it was said I wouldn't be. Plus all the rules in various books. I think I owned them all!

No S is so simple. I don't have to think about if I'm hungry enough (as it turns out, I usually am) Don't have to worry about if I should eat this dessert now or later. (It will be later-like on an S day) Don't have to worry about eating inbetween meals because of hunger that I must honor. (I don't eat between meals. If I'm hungry, too bad. It'll wait. I won't die)

I've lost 11 lbs on No S in 2 months. More than I've ever lost on IE in 10 years. But I am greatful for them for another reason: I was lurking on an IE board and read about the no s diet!

[la_loser]

Oh, my goodness-Kathleen will be responding to this right away I'm sure.

Here's one thread she posted:
http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic ... 8400#48400

She has researched and done a lot of diets and this is the one she calls the Peanut Cluster Diet!

I never tried IE specifically but I did do some similar things. . . and all I did was gain! The concept sounds good but if my intuition was dependable, I wouldn't weigh what I do now!

How great that you're finding success with No S. Keep up the good work!

[Kathleen]

My husband was just teasing this morning about how I bought and threw away that book at least 15 times. I spent 6 months following the approach. My son immediately bet me I would give it up. I said -- no, this is it, this is what I'm doing for life. I gained 10 pounds between 12/15/07 and when I gave it up in June, at which time my son wanted $10 for the bet! My husband used to tease me about my getting hungry being an emergency. Yes, listening to my stomach became my #1 priority in life.

It's nice that this approach is taking less and less time. I want to focus on my husband and our chidren and the cardinal that right now is in the tree outside our house, not on whether or not I'm hungry! Plus it's nice to have meals with my family.

Kathleen

[MysteryLover]

I've also done IE quite a few times, or tried my best to. My problem was that I could almost always convince myself that I was hungry. And every time that I was hungry, I wanted sweets.

I like that No S is actually not too far off from following IE, in the sense that you can eat 'real' foods without the calorie or carb counting. It's also such a big help with taking away the constant cravings for sweets.

I think I'll always hold onto the fact that traditional diets don't work. There is no way that you can live your whole life counting calories/points, journaling and eating diet foods. So done with that!

[TexArk]

Oh Yes. Been there. Done that.
I bought all the different books, joined 2 websites, and gained 20 pounds all the while trying to analyze whether I was hungry or not and whether or not I should stop eating while I was eating a meal. I was about convinced that I was a seriously disturbed emotional eater. I don't even know how I found NoS, but I am very thankful I did before more pounds came back. I knew I could not make it through any more accounting diets after a lifetime of counting everything and apparently my intuition was just to eat. NoS is it for me for the rest of my life.

[bonnieUK]

Hi,

I recently read Paul McKenna's "I can make you thin" after my sister had success with it before her wedding (though, I'm sure the stress of organising a wedding was a factor in her weight loss!).

He basically says to eat when you're genuinely hungry (not yet ravenous) and stop when you are full (lightly full/satisfied rather than stuffed!) and to eat conscioulsy. So I guess that is like the whole intuitive eating notion.

I found I was able to take some useful elements from the book (& CD) but stick within the no s framework, so I generally eat my meals at the same times each day, but I am feeling more in tune with how hungry I actually am which has helped me cut down portion sizes a little most days, with odd days when I just seem hungrier so eat more (but I figure as long as it fits on one plate, it's ok ).

I guess for me the helpful part of the intuitive eating idea is knowing when to stop eating rather than worrying about when to start eating!

[Kathleen]

The Intuitive Eating and No S approaches have some similarities in that you have "unconditional permission to eat" as part of the program. For Intuitive Eating, it is all the time. For No S, or The S Day Diet as my 9 year old calls it, "unconditional permission to eat" is restricted to S Days.

My then 14 year old called the Intuitive Eating approach The Peanut Cluster Diet. Guess why? I probably ate -- no kidding -- 20 bags of peanut clusters in my first week on that diet.

She calls this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions.

With Intuitive Eating, I tried to understand hunger and fullness but learned instead about my capacity for self-deception. There's much less room for self-deception on The No S Diet. Either it's mealtime and this is a plate, or it's not.

Kathleen

[Vigilant2010]

I ate my way--"intuitively", of course--to my current weight, which is at its all-time high. I paid money to join a discussion board/support group, and found it to have a very negative and anxious vibe. (Who wouldn't be anxious, trying to constantly discern if they're at a 5 or a 9 or a 2 on the hunger-satiation scale, or if they are not actually hungry but rather thirsty or stressed or this or that....ugh. Just thinking about it makes me tired.) The intuitive eating approach deepened my fixation with food and exacerbated my already-existing eating disorder.

I'm glad I had this experience though, because it helped me identify no-S as a good thing when I encountered it.

I can't believe how quickly no-S is working to repair my relationship with food. Two weeks on no-S has freed me in a way that the intuitive eating approach promised but never delivered.

[brotherjohn]

noni,

I've tried intuitive eating, and I intuitively eat too much and too often!

I have been amazed at how much less food I become accustomed to eating on No-S. I used to be hungry (at eat) about every 2 hours. Now I am so much more at peace with food!

[reinhard]

Yeah... "Intuitive Eating" a nice idea, but I think it's (mostly) wishful thinking.

Relevant (lengthy) "teaser" content from the no-s book:

pages 50-53

You often hear formulas like “Eat only when you’re hun-
gry†and “Eat what you want, not what you shouldâ€
touted as liberating, antidiet weight- loss wisdom. But
despite their appeal to nature and their warm-
and- fuzzy feel, these formulas are no more effective than “Don’t eat
too much.†In fact, they’re worse. They are not merely
impossible advice, they are bad advice. And they are profoundly unnatural.

I have two cats. The concept of should is utterly
alien to them. But if I give them too much food, they
happily eat it and get fat. They want too much. So do I.
Superabundance is not a natural problem, so we don’t
have good instincts to deal with it. Why would we? No
animal (until us, now, perhaps) ever died because there
was too much food. Plenty died because there was too
little. That all too common scenario is the reason the
feeling of hunger evolved— to avoid starvation. So it’s
not going to be a very reliable guide to moderating
intake; that’s just not its job.

Eating whenever you’re hungry is not only unnatural,
it’s uncivilized. Human beings in traditional societies
didn’t eat when they were hungry; food was too scarce
and precious and hard to prepare for that. Our ancestors
were hungry a lot. When times were good, they ate at
regular, discrete, social meals, with real gratitude. When
times were not so good, they experienced something
that makes our “hunger†look like a joke.

Furthermore, if you’re a so- called emotional eater,
you may not get an honest answer to, “Am I really
hungry?†Depression is going to attempt to pass itself
off as hunger. So will stress. So will countless other
emotions. And they’ll be quite convincing.

It’s harder to deceive yourself when the question is,
“Is it mealtime?†or “Is this a brownie and is it 4 a.m.
Monday morning?†Self-deception is a powerful force,
and you can’t afford to be naive about it. No snacks
blocks this kind of self-deception. It simply doesn’t
matter when you’re hungry; you’re not allowed to eat.
Real or imagined hunger is not a valid excuse. And
soon enough, if you’re ï¬ rm, you’ll stop even trying to
make emotional excuses; any real hunger you have will
start to coincide with mealtimes.

Although dieting may not have done much good for
the problem of obesity, I don’t think it’s quite fair to
say that it caused it. There is nothing new about rules
governing the way people eat. What is new is that formerly the rules were externally imposed: by scarcity,
by social structures, by tradition. When these external forces passed away, it was only to be expected that
people would seek new rules. But most of those new
rules were poorly thought out; they didn’t resemble or
even take into account the old rules that had served so
well for thousands of generations.

I’m not saying we have no “nature†to work with
in regard to eating, simply that it’s not enough to rely
on. Eating discrete meals is satisfying and natural; but
without either social pressure, natural scarcity, rules,
or habit, that natural satisfaction by itself isn’t going
to be enough to make you do it. It’s just a foundation.
You can and should work with it (as the No S Diet
does), but don’t expect it to do the work for you.

...

So don’t eat when you’re hungry. Don’t eat when
you’re depressed. Don’t eat when you’ve seen a good
number on the scale and you think you can afford a
few extra calories. Eat when it’s time to eat, just like
thin people did for thousands of years.

Reinhard

[apomerantz]

I've tried intuitive eating, and I intuitively eat too much and too often!

LOL . . . ok, that makes two of us!!

Truthfully, I never tried an eating plan called "Intuitive Eating" - - but I am not sure why I would even need a diet if my intuition was any use.