Intuitive Eating and Weight Watchers

I have decided to count calories but pulled out my old weight watchers books.  I decided to try this with the calorie counting because with my schedule I can put the book in my purse and count my food intake.  I still used the concept of intuitive eating to eat when hungry and it worked.  When I ate 4 small chocolate chip cookies with a small bit of ice cream  between the two, I was delighted and no deprivation.  I am eating just what I wanted after waiting for hunger.  A year ago, I would not  have been able to stop with just two small sandwich cookies and the cycle would have begun.  Out of control I would have eaten  more points because I had no will power, then beat myself up for cheating.  Eating chocolate chip cookies would have been bad, then depression would have set in and I would have thought you are a failure and the diet cycle would have started again.  I have more energy today and I feel great.

New plan for intuitive eating

I was talking with a friend  and I started to explain, I eat healthier than I have ever eaten before and the weight is not coming off fast enough.  She suggested that I count calories because maybe I didn't know portions.  You know maybe she is right.  I went to my dailyplate.com and counted the calories and I in fact was eating 3500 calories.  I did this for a couple of days and realized I was eating between 3250 to 3330 calories each and every day.  No wonder I weight between 325 and 330.  Wow I really didn't think I was eating that much and because I was eating healthy I thought I was doing a good thing.  I remember reading somewhere this calculation, if you want to weight a certain weight you need to take that number and multiply for 10 and that is the amount of calories you should eat.  For instance if I wanted to weight 250 I need to take the 250 and multiply by 10 and that would give me 2500 calories to eat from.  It said your body will regulate it self to that weight.  I will try and post in about a week.         
 328

Today I am finally losing weight. I started intuitive eating October 2009 when I decided to never diet again. Intuitive eating is the process of letting go of the diet mentality. It teaches you how to go back to the basics of following natural hunger. The process was not easy for me.  I questioned what hunger is I started to ramble all day and became obsessed about hunger. I even used a scale to tell me when I was hungry.  I could not trust myself to make good choices and kept looking for the feeling of hunger.

I used this scale  to tell myself when to cut off eating.  When I realize it could help was when I sat at the table with a copy in front of me.  I fixed my plate and sat down. I started at number 1.  As I ate I went up the scale.  When I got to the number 5 while eating I realized what feeling content was and stopped at that point.   It takes is practice and practice is what I still do.  Sometimes I think, if  I wait till hunger I will be out of control and sometimes I am.  In these instances I drink a little fiber and that usually does the trick to slow me down.  I use Psyllium  Husk which expands in your stomach and helps stop some of those hunger pangs.  328

Woo woo woo

I have been practicing eating when hungry for almost a year. For a while I decided it was not working for me, but I knew I still could not diet any more so I started wondering why didn't this thing work. I did what they told me (intuitive eating), I feel much better, I have more energy so why didn't it work. For a while  I got a little sick, my blood pressure went up after eating everything under the sun. I went back to something I used to do when I lost 50lbs and that was adding fiber to my diet. That made all my unhealthy numbers go back into place. I'm back to my old healthy fat self. But I still wanted to lose the weight. Then I saw Geneen Roth on Oprah a few weeks ago, she said be kind to yourself.  What? I thought, what does that mean, "be kind to yourself". So I sat for a minute and said to myself, look deep, do you really like yourself. I thought who would you like to be more than you? After a long pause, I said, nobody. I really do like how I think, I really do like how kind I am. I really do like how I have raised my children, I have been a very good wife, I feel joy most of the time and I love learning new things. I said to myself, you're not bad looking, just a little fat.  I am who I am and I do like what I see.  Ever since that day, I have been waking up with, please show me more good things in me instead of bad things.

Make better choices about nutrition

I've tried to eat when hungry over and over again. I lost 17lbs since I started this journey. I've learned a lot from eating when hungry. I learned not make food so important. I gave it so much power. I use to think about food all day and on my way home from work I would think what will I have for dinner whether I was hungry or not. I use to come through the door and head straight for the kitchen. I'd cook but by the time the food got ready, I'd be full but would still sit down and eat. When I finished, I would be so tired that all I could do is watch TV and fall asleep. This eating when hungry worked on other things in my life. I realize I can eat every thing that I want but sometimes everything is not good for me. I started to make small changes in nutrition and found that I no longer have high blood pressure and my number for diabetes is 110. I am feeling good these days. I am still trying to lose weight and basically eating what I want but now I make better choices as far as nutrition. The point is to make better choices and feel better.

Make Living healthy a Habit Dr Ro

I love this, practice eating healthy for three weeks to create a habit. I will try this for the next three weeks.

Put some fiber in your life

Try some fiber to take hunger away. Dr Oz says you need about 30 grams per day to make your body work correctly. I usually look at for every 90 calories at least 2 grams of fiber. Look at your label. Don't start off too quickly with the fiber, try starting off slow maybe about 7 grams the first day and building up over time.