Intuitive Eating - My Microscope, The Intuitive Eater & How it Gets Buried

I'm not too proud to examine myself as exhibiting behaviours that I see in books. I have respect for science. I have a psychology degree for cryin' out loud! And some might say that Psychology may not be as black and white as say, Biology, but I think that those kinds of points of view are usually lacking the element of insight and imagination. We have all seen astonishing examples of how amazing the human brain truly is, so how can we be that arrogant to think that we could possible know it all, no matter how educated we are, if it's not black and white in a test tube? Know what I mean? That is why I was interested in pursuing my science undergrad in psych. It was always interesting to me that way. To me it was more than about memorizing text book studies (which just like every other discipline it was too) because it was something that you could really think about and apply your own mental thoughts and processes to understand.

I think many people are afraid of it because it makes them feel "weak" or "cliche." I struggle(d) with this as I'm now applying it to my own weight loss process especially because how many times during this process of losing weight have YOU been told/told yourself/told others that what you are doing is "not a diet, it's a lifestyle." The idea behind that is not a bad thing necessarily because changing your eating habits, which is what is necessary to lose weight, has to be approached in such a way that you can feel comfortable and see as lasting forever. But I think people do kind of hide behind that mentality sometimes so that they don't associate themselves with being on a "diet." I mean how many times have you put the word "diet" in quotes when you use the word on your blog? I guess what I'm getting at is yes, I was obese, I needed to lose the weight and I went about it in a healthy way and made a lifestyle change, but it's just that you can't be fooling yourself into thinking that you're not still capable of falling into the same kinds of negative behaviours exhibited by "chronic dieters" with the "diet mentality." No?

So I said before that I was sort of using myself as a guinea pig while going through this book, so I am going to be meticulous about the ideas and concepts as I go along. Part of this is because if I truly want to give this Intuitive Eating process a serious attempt, I want to make sure I'm catching myself when I revert to how my brain currently thinks because hello, this requires actually changing the way I have thought about food and weight loss since I've truly accepted it into my life over three years ago! I don't think that this is something that you can acheive simply by reading this book once, so going through it with a fine tooth comb will be helpful for me and maybe you too. This is part of the reason why I'm being so descriptive in this blog about my thoughts and the concepts because I want to make sure that I'm not reading it and forgetting it and skipping steps. Plus your comments and perspectives on it are helpful too because many of you are like me :-D

SOOOOOOO back to the book...

Okay so now that I've spelled out the eating personalities, here's how the authors describe whether your style of eating is not a good thing:

WHEN YOUR EATING PERSONALITY WORKS AGAINST YOU


Eventually, the eating styles of the Careful Eater, the Professional Dieter, and Unconscious Eater become an ineffective way of eating even when on the surface they appear okay. The solution for the frustrated eater: Try harder with a new diet! At first the new diet seems exhilarating and hopeful, but eventually the familiar pounds return. Dieting gets more difficult, and even when you resume your baseline eating personality, it may feel more uncomfortable than before. This is because with each diet and inner food rules get stronger. These food rules often perpetuate feelings of guilt about eating even when you are not officially dieting. Also, the biological effects of dieting (as detailed in Chapter 5) make it increasingly difficult to have a normal relationship with food.

The more I read this book, the more I am starting to let go of my "defensiveness" about it. If you really listen to what the authors tell you in this book and try to really put your own habits under a magnifying glass, you can see the points they are making as they apply to you. For instance, I have had the "try harder" mentality just mentioned above many times as I got back on track and even switched between counting methods. I experience feelings of guilt about food and I feel like I'm ready to be done with that.

The Intuitive Eater personality, however, is the exception. It is the one eating style that doesn't work against you, and can help you end chronic dieting and yo-yo weight fluctuations.

So finally we can move on to what the Intuitive Eater is all about:

INTRODUCING THE INTUITIVE EATER


Intuitive Eaters march to their inner hunger signals, and eat whatever they choose without experiencing guilt or an ethical dilemma. The Intuitive Eater is an unaffected eater. Yet it is increasingly difficult to be an unaffected eater in today's health-concious society when you consider the bombardment of nutrition, food, and weight messages from commercials, media, and health professionals. (Did you get that? No guilt. UNAFFECTED eater. That sounds like a vacation to me!)


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This is such an interesting point and I'm sure many of you moms out there can relate to this:


Consider toddlers. They are the natural Intuitive Eaters - virtually free from societal messages about food and body image. Toddlers have an innate wisdom about food if you don't interfere with it. They don't eat based on dieting rules or health, yet study after study shows that if you let a toddler eat spontaneously, he will eat what he needs when given free access to food. (This is probably the toughest thing for a concerned parent to do - to let go and trust that kids have an innate ability to eat!)

A landmark styde led by Leann Birch, Ph.D., and published in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that preschool-aged children have an innate ability to regulate their eating according to what their bodies need for growth...Researchers found that at a given meal, calorie intake was highly variable, but it balanced out over time. Yet, many parents assume that their young children cannot adequately regulate their food intake. Consequently, parents often adopt coercive strategies in an attempt to ensure that the child consumes a natritionally adequate diet. But previous research by Birch...indicates that such control strategies are counterproductive.


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A parent who feeds a child whenever a hunger signal is heard, and who stops feeding when a child shows that he's had enough, can play a powerful role in the initial development of Intuitive Eating.


In fact, groundbreaking work by therapist and dietition Ellyn Satter has shown that if you get the parents of overweight kids to back off, and let them eat without parental pressure, the kids will eventually eat less. Why? The child begins to hear and understand his own inner signals of hunger and satiety. The child also knows that he or she will have access to food.

According to Satter, "Children deprived of food in an attempt to be thin become preoccupied with food, afraid they won't get enough to eat, and are prone to overeat when they get the chance." We have found this to be true for adult dieters as well. Only for adults, the intuitive eating process has been buried for a long time, often years. Instead of having a parent loosen up the pressure, this loosening of pressure has to come from within. And against society's myth of dieting and distorted body worship.

Fortunately, we all possess the natural intuitive eating ability, it's just been suppressed, especially by dieting. This book is devoted to showing you how to awaken the Intuitive Eater within. (Thank God because honestly, this is going to be a DIFFICULT process for me I can already see it! )

HOW YOUR INTUITIVE EATER GETS BURIED

As toddlers get a little older, mixed messages begin to creep in - from the early influences of the Saturday morning food commercial, to the well-meaning parent who coaxes, "Clean your plate." The assault does not stop when you are a child. There are several external forces that influence your eating. (Okay so now I'm going to be a paranoid mom to my children about how they develop their "relationship with food"! lol Joking aside though, I think being conscious of all of that could possibly be gigantically important in that regard! I mean jeeez, it somehow got me to the point of being obese, consequently going through years of losing that weight and now having to read this book to "normalize" my cognition about food so that I'm not torturing myself and preoccuying myself with it for the rest of my life. Jeez this is deep! :-D)

Dieting. You have already seen the damage that chronic dieting plays, including but not limited to:

• Increased binge eating - I've never been a "binger" but lately have been a little alarmed by some of my inability to eat "in moderation" on things like sweets (a.k.a. higher calorie and a bit on the "forbidden" side even though I know I'm "allowed" to have them "if I work it in" but they are obviously to be limited if you're trying to lose weight, right? I think no matter how you look at it, if you are conflicted about eating anything because of the calories and the consequence to your weight, it creates the feeling of deprivation in the long run, hence why I've had difficulty eating these kinds of foods only in moderation.
• Decreased metabolic rate - Um, haven't I been sooking and whining about this forever now?
• Increased preoccupation with food - Constantly because staying OP always requires good planning and cooking, No?
• Increased feelings of deprivation - I reiterate my comment on the "binging" (although I have always recognized the difference between bingeing and "overindulging." I know that there are people out there who having serious issues with bingeing and I think it's a bit disrespectful to them to put my "overindulgences" in the same category.
• Increased sense of failure - as a result of feeling out of control on the overindulgences on the "forbidden foods" above, yup, especially since I'm leading the BLBE challenge
• Decreased sense of willpower - yeah if I didn't feel this I wouldn't be overindulging!

This only serves to erode your trust with food and urges you to rely on external sources to guide your eaing (a food plan, a diet, the time of day, food rules, and so forth). The more you go to external sources to "judge" if your eating is in check, the further removed you become from Intuitive Eating. Intuitive Eating relies on your own internal cues and signals. (Yup, I can see this being amind warp, but I'm excited to get there!)

Eat-Healthfully-or-Die Messages. Messages about eating healthfully are everywhere, from nonprofit health organizations to food companies touting health benefits of their particular product. The inherent message? What you eat can improve your health. Conversely, take one wrong move (bite) and you're one step closer to the grave. Is this an exaggeration? No. ... (Now we're all preoccupied with eating organic even though it's all valid and not really a dieting thing, although some people confuse the two)

...While there is no doubt that what you eat can have an impact on your health, the exponential increase in media coverage has served as a conduit to building food paranoia in the consumer, especially the dieter...

Are we saying that you should ignore the virtues of healthy eating? Of course not. However when you have a dieting mind-set, the barrage of healthy eating messages can make you feel guiltier about the food you choose to eat... (Yeah, honestly I'm starting to feel guilt when I go for the cheaper non-organic fruits at the grocery store!)

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We have found that establishing nutrition or healthy eating as an initial priority in the Intuitive Eating process is counterproductive. In the beginning we ignore nutrition, because it interferes with the process of re-learning how to become an Intuirive Eater. Nutrition heresy? No. It's possible to respect and honour nutrition. It just can't be the first priority when you've been dieting all your life. Or look at it this way, if you focused all your attention on nutrition, has it helped? People can embrace even the most nutrition eating plan (including counting fat grams) as another form of diet. (Okay this scares the hellouttame! I mean, not paying attention to the consequences of what you're eating??? Helloooooo!!!! That's why I became obese, is it not? But I'm warming up to the idea, because while I am going to accept this principle in starting off, I am not going to confuse it with "Last Supper" behaviour and listen to my body about eating and not just run up to the fridge and eat whatever and whenever I want. The comfort to keep in mind while doing this is, stop when you're satisfied or full because if you're hungry in an hour you can/are "allowed" to go and eat. It's soooo hard to balance this idea and rid the guilt factor! One thing remains true: calories in v. calories out. My body isn't going to give me a free pass while I experiment with the way I'm thinking, but at the same time if I truly listen to my body, I shouldn't be gorging on food either. This is better explained later in the book to help you accept this point btw. I'm not going to be typing out every single thing in the book, but just elements that are important to getting me where I want to go.)

You can recapture Intuitive Eating, but first you have to get rid of the diet mentality rules that keep the Intuitive Eater buried.

Okay, bring it on brain! :-D Are ya'll freaking out yet?