Had my first conversation with a friend about Intuitive Eating. Was not the response I expected. "Why would you just give up," she asked? Because I needed to. I love Cindy's blog title I Surrender. Meee tooo.
I haven't lost any weight in almost a year now. I bounce between 180 and 185. No lower, no higher. I have been following Kay Sheppard's Food Plan stringently and not so stringently. No weight loss. I did lose down to 178 when we first moved up here. I was eating fast food for every meal. I am sick to death of worrying about each morsel of food I put in my mouth. I am discouraged. I am bored with non-taste food. Believe me there is only so much you can do to non-fat yogurt. So I surrender.
Got my lab results back and went to the doctor. I am normal. High normal, but still normal for my age. I feel good. I ride my bike every day. (Not well mind you. I fall down frequently.) I have taken up singing in the choir. I am divesting myself of excess stuff. I am ready to be normal. A normal fifty year old woman who has a good life and does not want to spend her remaining years obsessing about food. I am ready to move on. So I have given up dieting and major food planning.
Thanks to Kay I now know what are normal portions and what foods are my triggers. I learned to space my meals and how use high fiber foods. I lost 65 pounds. I am grateful. And now I want to learn what my body has to say about what I eat. I do not want to eat stuff that does not taste good just to fill me up. I don't want to feel stuffed, or groggy from a sugar high. I want to eat when I am hungry. And not eat when I am not hungry. I want to satisfy a craving with one or two bites. I don't want to eat because I deserve a treat, but because I am hungry. And I also want some treats in my life. I want to feel my feelings and eat my food, separately. I want to accept myself as a regular every day fifty year old woman with wrinkles, sun spots and varicose veins and a tad bit of menopausal padding. I do not want to be Sharon Stone. I just want to be me completely revealed. So I surrender.
For breakfast I had a bowl of cinnamon oatmeal with a tablespoon of walnuts, some blueberries, 2% milk and molasses for sweetener. Also had a slice of low sodium ham and a teaspoon of cream in my coffee. I love walnuts and molasses and ham. I haven't had any for eons. Was wonderful. Yes I registered every extra calorie. And, this was not an outlandish meal. It was normal. I enjoyed every bite. I was satisfied. I even left a mouthful or two of oatmeal because I was full. I dreamed last night about being released from prison.
I am anxious, but glad to be out.
Treat yourselves. Love Bea
2 comments:
I know how you feel. When I tell someone I've stopped or given up on dieting, I'm sure they're thinking "Oh boy, she's gonna' gain all her weight back now." So I suppose it makes sense that I haven't talked to a lot of people about it.
Even though it's the most common-sense thing in the world -- eat when I'm hungry, eat what I want, and stop when I'm satisfied or full -- the diet mentality has been so ingrained in our heads that we can't fathom it. I feel like a trendsetter even though I'm trying to follow the basic hunger and fullness cues we were born with.
As fate would have it, as well as I did with IE yesterday, I feel like I'm not doing so well with it today. But I'm not binge eating, so anything other than that is success in my book.
the better question, i think, is why would you NOT give up? after how many years (42 for me) of fighting this, why not give up and try to reclaim normalcy?
i know intellectually there is really nothing wrong with me. i am intelligent, capable, responsible, functional ~ everything necessary to accomplish a diet if it were possible. i have come to believe it is not. that's not to say i haven't had my long periods of freedom from sugar, or fat or whatever the poison food du jour might be, with resultant euphoria.
but the aftermath is always always always that i rebel against restriction and i go crazy. when i don't restrict, i am NOT CRAZY!!! and that is stunning news.
when i first met you and debra, we had a discussion about the food addiction thing and i was convinced. i am far less so now, now that i'm able to eat all foods with no problem. i don't think the foods are the problem, it's the process of restricting and starving and punishing and denying. those are the things that get me into trouble.
life is far too short to lose it to dieting. i absolutely know i'm not be wishing for another successful weight loss as i lay dying. i will be wishing that i'd had those 42 years full of life without obsession, that i'd traveled as much as i wanted to, spent as much time with loved ones as i could, helped somebody, taken part in a kid's life. life is only all about food if we make it that way. i am fed up with it. i resign.
you are a brilliant, talented, capable woman, bea. you can do this and do it successfully and you will be amazed. freedom.
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