I stumbled upon this great book called Intuitive Eating. It’s about re-learning how to eat in a natural and intuitive way by getting in touch with your hunger body signals that we became numbed for by dieting. It’s also about overcoming out-of-control binge eating, something I’ve been trying to overcome for a while.
 
I dieted my whole adult life. I didn’t call this dieting, but that’s what it was. I would choose a period in which I would eat less and exercise more. I kept saying to my self I wasn’t anal about it, and was choosing to eat in a flexible way, but all of the dieting components were there. I would try to eat more of some kinds of foods and stay away from other. Then, to avoid having “forbidden foods” I started counting calories. One way or another, I used external measurements and rules to choose the kinds and quantities of food I was eating. According to the book, this is the root cause of our eventually loosing control over eating. Because if you anticipate, even on a subconsciousness level, that you will have to give up some kinds of foods, or “punish” your self for eating them (by extra exercise or eating less in future), you will naturally want to eat as much of that food, when you have the chance, and therefore you binge.
 
They identify ten principles than one is to follow in order to re-learn intuitive eating (http://www.intuitiveeating.org/10_Intuitive_Eating_Princip.php). So far I read through the first five. Here are some thoughts.
 
(1) Principle 1: Reject diet mentality: it’s about deciding not to follow diets any more. Diets don’t work. They are a temporary change of our behavior, and lead to deprivation. Once we reach a certain point when we had enough of deprivation, we fall back to our old habits. This leads to regain of any lost weight, and often, we even end up gaining extra pounds. This is because every time we diet, we teach our selves that some foods are bad, and off the table for us, and that we reaffirm to our selves that we are convicted to life of awful self deprivation. And this, as I mentioned, is at the core of bingeing. Numerous studies have shown that people (non-dieters) tend to over-eat after being exposed to periods of food deprivation – either being deprived of certain foods, or simply not receiving enough calories. Therefore, without rejecting the diet mentality, there is no way to learn intuitive eating, and to overcome binge eating.
 
I find this one difficult to attain because I am scared that if I give up dieting, I give up the only way I know how to loose weight. I don’t think I will be able to give this up before I really believe there is an alternative. I therefore believe this to be a crucial step, but the one that has to be taken together with some of the others.
 
(2) Honor your hunger: it’s simply about eating when you’re hungry, not when you think you should be eating. It’s also about eating all the food groups our body needs (including carbs, a very important and apparently irreplaceable source of energy for our body). If you tend to get too hungry, you risk over-eating as a natural response of your body to starvation. Therefore, without honoring your hunger, there is no way to learn intuitive eating (because the intuitive eater eats when they are hungry, until they are comfortably full and satisfied), and to overcome binge eating.
 
I don’t find this one to be too difficult. A challenge here is having foods that I want to eat at hand (e.g. if I get hungry during work).
 
(3) Make peace with food: it’s about eating whatever you feel like eating. I think most of us have learned over the years that some foods are “bad”. The problem with forbidding our selves to eat some foods, even when we feel like eating them, is that if we get a chance to eat them, it will be very difficult to control our selves, and we risk over-eating that food (engage in what the authors call “last supper eating”). You have to know that you have the unconditional permission to eat any food before you can make a free choice to eat it or not, and before you can really feel if you had enough of it. Therefore, without making peace with food, there is no way to learn intuitive eating, and to overcome binge eating (we will keep on bingeing on the forbidden foods every once in a while). Now, this is not about eating unhealthy. The point here is in order to learn how to eat intuitively and make free food choices that don’t lead to rebellion, we first need to give our selves this unconditional permission to eat any food we like.
 
This one is tricky for me. Over the years, I have learned that some foods are bad for my health, and that some simply have too many calories. The second one is an interesting one: the underlying belief is that some foods get you fat (which is not really true). Furthermore, some foods that I kept forbidding to my self I find challenging because I find it difficult to control the amounts I will eat. And this is the vicious circle. Before you really know you can have a particular food at any time you want, you will tend to over-eat it once you have the chance.
 
(4) Challenge the food police: it’s about challenging the negative self-talk we have learned over the years. “The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created. The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments.” It is therefore critical to learn how to challenge these inner voices, and replace them with positive ones before our resulting behavior will change (because thoughts cause feelings and behaviors).
 
I start to hear some of the voices, or notice that I feel bas in some eating situations or around some foods. I do find it very difficult to really hear what my thoughts are, as I am so used to think them.
 
(5) Respect your fullness. This is the one I really want to learn. It’s about listening to your body’s satiety and hunger signals. And eventually obeying them. The first step, according to the authors, is to learn to be more aware of the way we feel while we eat. They suggest monitoring our hunger and fullness levels, and even provide a kind of table with ten levels to use before and while we eat.
 
So I would like to try this out. I created a sheet, and downloaded it to my cell phone. I will try to log my food levels before, during and after eating. Here’s how it could look like: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AuJtIchRSpdZdEVCN2p3RmU3d1AyNmNGNndTNmdDc0E&hl=en_GB
 
Stay tuned – I will try to share how this is working out for me.