The holidays seem to be a trying time for my friends who are still following conventional diets...Weight Watchers...Jenny Craig...NutriSystem...cutting back...whatever. What gets me is the sense of fear that they all seem to have about the holidays...the focus they have on food...and what they eat and don't eat. There seems to be an essence of white knuckled control...which strikes me as sad.
The recipes for banana bread that is made with "legal" ingredients...and the cookies that don't really taste like cookies...it all makes me very thankful for the "no diet" approach that I follow.
I love the smorgassboard of food choices at the holidays. Love that there are so many good things from which to choose.... And I find it joyous to choose the most tasty morsels to satisfy my hunger.
Food should be pleasurable. We should take pleasure in the foods we choose. The problem is when we allow food to become our only pleasure and our only respite from stress.
Intuitive eating is about learning to live better, to balance better, so that food is no longer our only pleasure and so that we have other means than food to deal with our stresses.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
Intuitive Eating Is Like a Rubber Band
Intuitive Eating...and the process of doing it...reminds me of a rubber band. There is the same elasticity. And for me the concept of hunger and satiety is a bit like a rubber band too. It is flexible...it changes day to day.
There are days I am comfortable being a little on the edge of hungry most of the day. There are other days that I want to feel the comfortable warm sensation of satisfaction. I want hunger to be soft, and short lived, not edgy and ragged. It isn't that being on the edge of hungry is better than being satisfied or that it is worse. It is that it is different. The beauty is being able to accept the elacticity of it...being able to accept that it is okay to want a softer, fuller feeling some days and to be comfortable with a more edgy feeling just on the edge of hunger some days.
There are days I am comfortable being a little on the edge of hungry most of the day. There are other days that I want to feel the comfortable warm sensation of satisfaction. I want hunger to be soft, and short lived, not edgy and ragged. It isn't that being on the edge of hungry is better than being satisfied or that it is worse. It is that it is different. The beauty is being able to accept the elacticity of it...being able to accept that it is okay to want a softer, fuller feeling some days and to be comfortable with a more edgy feeling just on the edge of hunger some days.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
It Just Feels Good
I've been away for a few days, visiting family for Thanksgiving. While I was away I did not focus very much on eating when I was hungry or stopping when I was satisfied. Though there have been many Thanksgivings when I have maintained an iron grip focus on hunger and satiety and I have managed to eat in accordance this year I decided not to focus for these few days...instead to enjoy family, to enjoy a much needed break from work.
Though my eating was far from clean, and though I may gain a pound or two as a result I am happy with my choice. Eating when we aren't hungry is something that normal eaters do from time to time. They do not ALWAYS eat when they are hungry and stop when they are satisfied. Sometimes they enjoy eating socially, when they are not particularly hungry. Sometimes they gain a pound or two from their social eating. They don't get wacky and worry that they are going to go crazy and never stop eating. They know that they will return to what is normal for them.
For me one of the crucial tenents of successful intuitive eating is trusting myself. I need to trust that if I relax for a day or two and do not focus as tightly on hunger and satiety as I normally do, that I will not go off the deep end and forsake intuitive eating in favor of unrestrained eating.
What I have learned is that I looked forward to the return to what has become normal to me. Though I enjoyed the freedom of not checking in with myself and not trying to schedule my eating around everyone else's schedule for the past four days I am happy to be back to listening for hunger and satiety and eating in harmony with my body's signals.
Eating in harmony with hunger and satiety just feels good.
Though my eating was far from clean, and though I may gain a pound or two as a result I am happy with my choice. Eating when we aren't hungry is something that normal eaters do from time to time. They do not ALWAYS eat when they are hungry and stop when they are satisfied. Sometimes they enjoy eating socially, when they are not particularly hungry. Sometimes they gain a pound or two from their social eating. They don't get wacky and worry that they are going to go crazy and never stop eating. They know that they will return to what is normal for them.
For me one of the crucial tenents of successful intuitive eating is trusting myself. I need to trust that if I relax for a day or two and do not focus as tightly on hunger and satiety as I normally do, that I will not go off the deep end and forsake intuitive eating in favor of unrestrained eating.
What I have learned is that I looked forward to the return to what has become normal to me. Though I enjoyed the freedom of not checking in with myself and not trying to schedule my eating around everyone else's schedule for the past four days I am happy to be back to listening for hunger and satiety and eating in harmony with my body's signals.
Eating in harmony with hunger and satiety just feels good.
Monday, November 19, 2007
More on Enoughness
A bit more on Enoughness....because it is a big issue for me...
One of the things I have found over time is that if I listen carefully, a lot of the time the things that are food issues are also echoed in other areas of life. Yes, I have issues around enoughness with food...but I also have them around other things...the biggest one right now is that there is never enough time to do everything I would like to do and that makes me feel squished, closed in, claustraphobic sometimes. What I think I have been learning the past few weeks is that it isn't so much about what I have or don't have...it is about my attitude toward myself and what I have that makes the difference. A few weeks ago I was stressing about work...I work very long hours...and still there are always dozens of things I would like to do...and I am always finding myself limited by the lack of time to do them.
I think sometimes it isn't about taking a class and learning to manage time better, it is about learning to give ourselves space and time. It's about not driving ourselves nuts with all the tasks we didn't get done but giving ourselves a pat on the back for the ones we did accomplish.
One of the things I have found over time is that if I listen carefully, a lot of the time the things that are food issues are also echoed in other areas of life. Yes, I have issues around enoughness with food...but I also have them around other things...the biggest one right now is that there is never enough time to do everything I would like to do and that makes me feel squished, closed in, claustraphobic sometimes. What I think I have been learning the past few weeks is that it isn't so much about what I have or don't have...it is about my attitude toward myself and what I have that makes the difference. A few weeks ago I was stressing about work...I work very long hours...and still there are always dozens of things I would like to do...and I am always finding myself limited by the lack of time to do them.
I think sometimes it isn't about taking a class and learning to manage time better, it is about learning to give ourselves space and time. It's about not driving ourselves nuts with all the tasks we didn't get done but giving ourselves a pat on the back for the ones we did accomplish.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Holidays -- A Time for Triggers
I've been having difficulty the past couple of days with stopping when I'm satisfied...or even judging how much to cook to begin with. There has been a little devil on my shoulder urging me to cut up a bit more bacon to put into the scrambled eggs...and add another egg or two too...and more toast.... I haven't done the out of control quickly bingeing that I have sometimes been known to do...but I have been eating more than I need at most meals for the past couple of days.
As often happens, I have been working out on the issue...mentally questioning why I am having such a hard time with this when a week ago I was peaceful and centered and was finding it very easy to wait till I was hungry and to eat just enough to satisfy.
This morning the answer I have been searching for came to me kind of suddenly, out of the blue.
It's the holidays....it's the fact that I will be traveling to my parents home...it's the fact that I will be out of control of my own food. I will be a guest in their home...I will not have the ability to as easily eat on my own schedule. It's partly returning to a setting that reminds me of times in the past that were similar...when it was important to "stock up" on food because meals were eaten on an irregular basis at restaurants or at my grandmother's house. There wasn't usually food in our house. Snacks were not an option as we were not snackers. There were times in the past when I was hungry and it was not yet time to eat or when my parents would be embroiled in a heated argument and when everything else took second, third, or tenth place to their battle of wills.
The threat of returning to a situation that was problematic in my childhood has triggered a fear of being hungry and not being able to eat...and that has triggered me to almost compulsively want to "stock up" by eating more now...as if that will help me two days from now. :-)
The situation is much different now than it was when I was a child...there is now no real danger of being hungry. If I really wanted to I could get in the car, drive to town, dine at McDonalds or Pizza Hut. But the compulsion isn't really about whether there is enough food now...it is about the feelings that are left over from the past. It's about reacting now to a feeling that has its roots in my childhood 35 years or more ago.
So often we go along oblivious to all the things that lie just under the surface....not really realizing that though 35 years have passed and we have grown up, we are still triggered by things that happened when we were children.
If I look at the reality today I know I can arrange things so that there is sufficient food to eat whenever I choose to eat it. However, my actions the past few days have not been based on the reality of today...they have been based on the leftover feelings (and the reality of childhood). I have been "stocking up," eating more than I have needed to eat because of emotional triggers I was not even aware I was feeling until the knowledge hit me this morning...after I had been trying to figure out why I've been wanting more than I need for the past couple of days.
Holidays are prime time for triggers as many of us travel, many of us return to people and places that contain emotional triggers. We may not feel the trigger...we may not know that we feel uneasy or fearful...we may simply realize that we are eating a little more than we normally do. We may be quite stumped about why we are doing this and we may not be quite sure what to do about it.
Understanding the triggers helps...because knowing that I'm going back to a situation where I feel out of control and uneasy about the availability of food gives me some specific options for dealing with the feeling and making myself more comfortable with the situation. It is important that I make myself comfortable with the situation in a way that doesn't include eating more food than I need.
As often happens, I have been working out on the issue...mentally questioning why I am having such a hard time with this when a week ago I was peaceful and centered and was finding it very easy to wait till I was hungry and to eat just enough to satisfy.
This morning the answer I have been searching for came to me kind of suddenly, out of the blue.
It's the holidays....it's the fact that I will be traveling to my parents home...it's the fact that I will be out of control of my own food. I will be a guest in their home...I will not have the ability to as easily eat on my own schedule. It's partly returning to a setting that reminds me of times in the past that were similar...when it was important to "stock up" on food because meals were eaten on an irregular basis at restaurants or at my grandmother's house. There wasn't usually food in our house. Snacks were not an option as we were not snackers. There were times in the past when I was hungry and it was not yet time to eat or when my parents would be embroiled in a heated argument and when everything else took second, third, or tenth place to their battle of wills.
The threat of returning to a situation that was problematic in my childhood has triggered a fear of being hungry and not being able to eat...and that has triggered me to almost compulsively want to "stock up" by eating more now...as if that will help me two days from now. :-)
The situation is much different now than it was when I was a child...there is now no real danger of being hungry. If I really wanted to I could get in the car, drive to town, dine at McDonalds or Pizza Hut. But the compulsion isn't really about whether there is enough food now...it is about the feelings that are left over from the past. It's about reacting now to a feeling that has its roots in my childhood 35 years or more ago.
So often we go along oblivious to all the things that lie just under the surface....not really realizing that though 35 years have passed and we have grown up, we are still triggered by things that happened when we were children.
If I look at the reality today I know I can arrange things so that there is sufficient food to eat whenever I choose to eat it. However, my actions the past few days have not been based on the reality of today...they have been based on the leftover feelings (and the reality of childhood). I have been "stocking up," eating more than I have needed to eat because of emotional triggers I was not even aware I was feeling until the knowledge hit me this morning...after I had been trying to figure out why I've been wanting more than I need for the past couple of days.
Holidays are prime time for triggers as many of us travel, many of us return to people and places that contain emotional triggers. We may not feel the trigger...we may not know that we feel uneasy or fearful...we may simply realize that we are eating a little more than we normally do. We may be quite stumped about why we are doing this and we may not be quite sure what to do about it.
Understanding the triggers helps...because knowing that I'm going back to a situation where I feel out of control and uneasy about the availability of food gives me some specific options for dealing with the feeling and making myself more comfortable with the situation. It is important that I make myself comfortable with the situation in a way that doesn't include eating more food than I need.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Enoughness
Enough...and having enough...trusting that there is enough... These are sometimes difficult things for people who suffer from eating disorders. Many of us overeat simply because we do not trust that there will be enough. We feel that if we don't eat whatever we want right now it will be gone and there will be no more. So we eat more than we need...stocking up for that future time when there won't be any more. While the behavior may (probably does) stem from a time when that was a positive action to protect us from the lack we may have suffered as children, when we keep practicing the behavior into adulthood when we have ready sources of food and other things we need, we get into a cycle of continually eating more than we need...continually stocking up. With food...the excess that we "stock up" on is stored in our bodies as fat.
Clearly, if we want to reach a place with intuitive eating where we are releasing excess weight we need to find peace with the issue of enough...and it isn't just about stopping when we have reached satiety, although that is the goal. In order to reach the goal we need to move ourselves to an emotional space where we trust that there will be enough of all the things we need. Enough food, enough love, enough intimacy, enough material things. In order to reach a space where we feel confident that we will have enough of whatever we need we need to begin to reparent ourselves...to step into the emotional breech that exists within us...and begin to foster a relationship with ourselves in which we always give ourselves exactly what we need.
Whether it is fortunate or unfortunate I am not sure...but food is a metaphor for many other things in our life. If we suffer from issues of not trusting there to be enough when it comes to food there is a good likelihood that we will suffer the same fear of lack in other areas of our lives as well. One of the things I have learned in following the intuitive eating approach is that food issues are rarely isolated. They are most often very interrelated and what we are doing with food is often a metaphor for other areas of our lives.
There is a good likelihood that feelings of lack in areas not directly related to food will trigger us to want to "stock up" with food as well. For example, if one feels a lack of love in their life, not only will they want to stock up on love when they find it...and not only will they not really trust that there will be enough...it will trigger feelings of lack that relate to food too...and they will find themselves stocking up in terms of food even though the area that initially felt a lack had nothing to do with food. Food is a metaphor for many other things.
Clearly, if we want to reach a place with intuitive eating where we are releasing excess weight we need to find peace with the issue of enough...and it isn't just about stopping when we have reached satiety, although that is the goal. In order to reach the goal we need to move ourselves to an emotional space where we trust that there will be enough of all the things we need. Enough food, enough love, enough intimacy, enough material things. In order to reach a space where we feel confident that we will have enough of whatever we need we need to begin to reparent ourselves...to step into the emotional breech that exists within us...and begin to foster a relationship with ourselves in which we always give ourselves exactly what we need.
Whether it is fortunate or unfortunate I am not sure...but food is a metaphor for many other things in our life. If we suffer from issues of not trusting there to be enough when it comes to food there is a good likelihood that we will suffer the same fear of lack in other areas of our lives as well. One of the things I have learned in following the intuitive eating approach is that food issues are rarely isolated. They are most often very interrelated and what we are doing with food is often a metaphor for other areas of our lives.
There is a good likelihood that feelings of lack in areas not directly related to food will trigger us to want to "stock up" with food as well. For example, if one feels a lack of love in their life, not only will they want to stock up on love when they find it...and not only will they not really trust that there will be enough...it will trigger feelings of lack that relate to food too...and they will find themselves stocking up in terms of food even though the area that initially felt a lack had nothing to do with food. Food is a metaphor for many other things.
Friday, November 16, 2007
About Binges
Binges don't just happen...they stem from something. The key to stopping the bingeing behavior (for me at least) is to dig down to the root cause. The digging may not all happen in one day...and the relief from the desire to binge may not happen all in one day either but I have noticed that the urgency to binge lessons once I stop and think...okay...something is going on here...what is it? A good place to start digging into the root cause of the current desire to binge is to look at what are you feeling right now.
Start with the current feeling then dig. I use some combination of the following questions to help me get at the feeling. Here are some of the questions that I ask myself. Sometimes if the feeling is really strong I will write or journal the answers...letting myself vent all of my thoughts with no internal censoring.
So...what am I feeling right now? What do I feel physically? Emotionally?
Is this a new feeling I haven't felt before? If not, when was the first time that I can remember feeling this feeling?
What was going on at the time I felt this feeling for the first time?
How did I react to the emotion the first time I felt it?
How did others around me react to the same feeling, the situation, or my reaction to the feeling?
What positive and negative messages did I receive about the feeling?
Are any of those messages playing into what I feel now?
Are any of those messages playing into how I am coping with the feeling now?
Are any of those messages playing into my desire to binge in any way?
What triggered this feeling on this occasion?
Is it reasonable for me to feel this emotional reaction in this situation or am I reacting based on old tapes?
Is there something constructive that I can do to help myself cope with this emotion in a healthy, centered, balanced fashion?
Is there something besides food that will help me deal with this feeling?
As I have said before, there are two parts to intuitive eating...there is the part you must do to manage weight within the intuitive eating appraoch...that is the eat when hungry, stop when satisfied part. The reason why I say that this is the part you must do to manage weight is that there is no way around the fact that weight gain and weight loss are a refelction of the balance between calories consumed and calories expended through activity. The theory behind intuitive eating is that our bodies instinctively know how much, and which types of fuel it needs at any given time and we will know what to eat and when to eat it if we listen to our bodies.
The problem is that we have spent years, and years, and years NOT listening to our bodies and using food for things other than nutrition. This has tangled the intuitive knowledge of our bodies with other physical and emotional cues which we now interpret as a signal to eat. This makes eating intuitively, eating when hungry, stopping when satisfied, very difficult. And brings us to the hard fact that once was automatic is no longer automatic. Many of us have not felt hunger in a good long time, and many of us have almost entirely lost the ability to know when we are satisfied because we are so used to ignoring the satisfaction messages of our bodies.
So...we have to go back...often to where things began to go haywire...which is often in our childhoods. We have to patiently and diligently begin to untangle all of our emotions and the emotional cues to eat which go with them so that we can gradually, through compassion, understanding, and knowledge begin building a positive relationship with our bodies, which many of us have secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) hated because of their inability to remain slim, trim, and healthy in spite of the years of abuse we have dealt them.
Much of the work of intuitive eating is about rebuilding the relationships we have with all of the parts of ourselves so that we can honor both the emotional parts of ourselves (in healthy ways that don’t rely on too much food) and our bodies (by listening to and heeding the signals it gives us about when it needs fuel and when it has received enough fuel).
Start with the current feeling then dig. I use some combination of the following questions to help me get at the feeling. Here are some of the questions that I ask myself. Sometimes if the feeling is really strong I will write or journal the answers...letting myself vent all of my thoughts with no internal censoring.
So...what am I feeling right now? What do I feel physically? Emotionally?
Is this a new feeling I haven't felt before? If not, when was the first time that I can remember feeling this feeling?
What was going on at the time I felt this feeling for the first time?
How did I react to the emotion the first time I felt it?
How did others around me react to the same feeling, the situation, or my reaction to the feeling?
What positive and negative messages did I receive about the feeling?
Are any of those messages playing into what I feel now?
Are any of those messages playing into how I am coping with the feeling now?
Are any of those messages playing into my desire to binge in any way?
What triggered this feeling on this occasion?
Is it reasonable for me to feel this emotional reaction in this situation or am I reacting based on old tapes?
Is there something constructive that I can do to help myself cope with this emotion in a healthy, centered, balanced fashion?
Is there something besides food that will help me deal with this feeling?
As I have said before, there are two parts to intuitive eating...there is the part you must do to manage weight within the intuitive eating appraoch...that is the eat when hungry, stop when satisfied part. The reason why I say that this is the part you must do to manage weight is that there is no way around the fact that weight gain and weight loss are a refelction of the balance between calories consumed and calories expended through activity. The theory behind intuitive eating is that our bodies instinctively know how much, and which types of fuel it needs at any given time and we will know what to eat and when to eat it if we listen to our bodies.
The problem is that we have spent years, and years, and years NOT listening to our bodies and using food for things other than nutrition. This has tangled the intuitive knowledge of our bodies with other physical and emotional cues which we now interpret as a signal to eat. This makes eating intuitively, eating when hungry, stopping when satisfied, very difficult. And brings us to the hard fact that once was automatic is no longer automatic. Many of us have not felt hunger in a good long time, and many of us have almost entirely lost the ability to know when we are satisfied because we are so used to ignoring the satisfaction messages of our bodies.
So...we have to go back...often to where things began to go haywire...which is often in our childhoods. We have to patiently and diligently begin to untangle all of our emotions and the emotional cues to eat which go with them so that we can gradually, through compassion, understanding, and knowledge begin building a positive relationship with our bodies, which many of us have secretly (and sometimes not so secretly) hated because of their inability to remain slim, trim, and healthy in spite of the years of abuse we have dealt them.
Much of the work of intuitive eating is about rebuilding the relationships we have with all of the parts of ourselves so that we can honor both the emotional parts of ourselves (in healthy ways that don’t rely on too much food) and our bodies (by listening to and heeding the signals it gives us about when it needs fuel and when it has received enough fuel).
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