As I mentioned earlier, I started reading about intuitive eating. The time has come to start practicing. And I know that in order to own the change, it's good to reflect on my experiences and take credit for the stuff I did - a good part of which I get from posting. The first four principles (reject diet mentality, honor your hunger, make peace with food and challenge the food police) prepare you for the big step: respect your fullness. You know, after all these years of fighting my self when it comes to food, reading about possibility to be able to stop *because I feel like it*, is almost like dreaming about winning lottery. Oh, I would like that very much. But unlike with lottery, I start believing this just might be in the cards for me. 

And although there are only two solid days of practicing this principle, I will take the credit for them. The trick here will be focusing on the learning process. All these years of dieting have left me with some ingrained thinking and behavioral habits that will take *time* to unlearn and replace with healthier ones. And I found this credit taking to help keeping an eye on the big picture.

So, how was it?

The first thing I tried is to increase awareness while eating. This seems like a key, as my moderation experience teaches me it was with learning how to become an intuitive drinker. An interesting question is what to be aware of - or - what are the steps to increase the awareness about eating. I started with a "hunger level". For that I tried to use the "hunger discovery scale", as suggested by the book. They define several levels, from very hungry (empty) to over-eaten (sick): empty-ravenous-set-pangs-neutral-satisfied-full-stuffed-sick. This scale if of course very subjective. But it's very interesting to think about how hungry you are during the day, especially before, right after and after eating. I make a difference between after and right after because I feel the difference. Sometimes, right after eating I still feel unsatisfied, and twenty minutes later I feel full. Sometimes I feel satisfied right after eating, but later I feel quite neutral. It's also interesting to see when we eat (with respect to our hunger level), because it ties in to the second principle: honor your hunger. Not very surprisingly, I noticed that if I wait to long and feel too hungry, it's very difficult to control my eating - even being aware while eating.

To learn awareness, I tried keeping a kind of simple log, logging my hunger/fullness levels before, right after and (~20 minutes) after eating. See an example.

Now I think the first  four principles are crucial in order to be able to respect fullness and eventually learn to stop eating when our body tells us to (rediscovering our body's "stop button"). It's surely difficult to respect fullness if:

* We are contemplating a next diet. Although this can result in a surge of hope, on the subconscious level our body and mind remember the deprivation that necessarily accompanies diets. And if we think we're going to go on a diet, we will be tempted to use the "last" opportunity to feast before the hunger strikes. Don't starved animals do exactly the same?
* We are too hungry. We all have the experience of eating when ravenous: we tend to eat fast, and very easily eat past comfortable levels. Even natural intuitive eaters know this
* We are eating "forbidden foods". As long as we do not give our selves the unconditional permission to eat a certain food we crave, we will crave it. And once we have the opportunity to eat it, we will tend to eat more of eat (thinking it will be literally off the table for us).
* A voice in our head is screaming negative messages at us, telling us we are somehow bad for eating at this hour, or that kind or quantity of food (because of calories, fat grams or whatever).

But what I discovered reading the book forward is that even when we overcome those obstacles, there may be an additional component needed to learn how to stop when we feel full. Satisfaction. I always saw my self as a gourmet, hedonist almost, when it comes to food. I have known intense pleasures from food. However, what I did not realize is that often, I was enjoying my "last meal" or "forbidden foods" or taking a break from the negative self talk. I think a key thing is rediscovering a simple, guilt-free satisfaction of eating foods we like. It is this feeling of satisfaction that will help us stop when we feel "satisfied" (look back at the food discovery scale above). So I practiced taking the time to eat, and next to being aware of my hunger level, being aware of the taste, texture, temperature... in one word: how the food feels like. On several occasions, I tried to "complete" my lunch - which is usually some sort of salad - with soup, bread and something sweet at the end (e.g. a yogurt). Combining the different food kinds, tastes, temperatures and textures really helped in feeling satisfied by the end of the meal. One additional thing I discovered is that for me, the key will be learning to be much more aware while I eat, as without paying attention to all these aspects of food, it is difficult to feel the satisfaction.

For example, I ate breakfast this morning around 9, but I felt peckish already around 11. So, to honor my hunger, I decided to eat a bite. I really felt like eating an egg. So I ate the most "sinful" combination: Spanish Serrano ham and egg fried on butter with some white bread. To round up, a peace of milk chocolate with hazelnut. It felt so intensively satisfying to allow my self to eat all these foods. This kind of eating has known to push me into a binge. But I took my time and challenged the negative self-talk and managed to replace it with simple focus on the satisfaction. It was one of the most satisfying meals in the long time.

It's good to look back this way - I realize that quite some learning happened. But as the work week went on, and the stress and daily event accumulated in my tiredness, I found it increasingly difficult to keep this newly found mindfulness. As I said in the beginning, this is a learning process. I can simply not expect to "get there" in only a few days. The learning continues.