I've been trying out to practice intuitive eating. The more I read and practice, the more the approach makes sense to me. It makes sense, but it's a difficult one to learn and apply. 
I'm having difficulties with the first principle: reject diet mentality. The idea is very simple. 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 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.

It all makes sense. I've been convinced for a while now - before reading the book on intuitive eating. However, I didn't really realize what really constitutes dieting. I didn't realize I was dieting when 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, with no forbidden foods. Not really true - I would try to eat more of some kinds of foods and stay away from other, sounded like a common sense. Or I counted calories. One way or another, I used *external measurements and rules* to choose the kinds and quantities of food I was eating, not my body's natural cues (hunger, fullness, my body's cravings...).

I will take credit for realizing this, it's in fact a big step. Trying to apply this in practice - to completely reject the diet mentality - is still a challenge for me. Especially because during summer and my last trip, I gained quite some extra weight. I really want to lose this weight, it even makes some yoga positions difficult. My old fear is awakening: I'm afraid I will not be able to loose this weight, and fear I will gain more of it. The paradox is that this reduced confidence is actually caused by dieting. The difficulty now is being patient and focusing on learning the new skill, trusting that I will eventually converge to my "natural" weight. This is a big leap of faith for me. Sometimes I feel okay with this, but sometimes I'm taken down by doubts. Especially as I am trying to learn how to give my self unconditional permission to eat all foods. This means actually eating them until I feel satisfied.

Posting and reflecting helps.