Intuitive Eating Thoughts

Can I just tell you how hard it is to listen to your body while not letting your head get involved? Hard!!! Anne, you weren’t kidding! Haha, okay I’ve been doing it for 1 ½ day, and whew, I’ve got my work cut out for me! I still haven’t finished reading the book yet, so I need to do that, and then I need to read it again I think. I want to make sure I have clear ideas of what I’m trying to accomplish. Also, I was thinking I should find some blogs of people who are doing the whole “Intuitive Eating” – so if you have any suggestions of who I should check out that would be great!

I have a couple of fears in doing this. One is that I won’t be able to and then I’ll really feel like a failure. I have to just recognize that it’s just something that I am going to try out and if it doesn’t work, that’s okay; I’ll go back to WW. I am committing to myself to do it for at least a month. If it’s going pretty well (and the scale will not be the only judge of whether it’s going well or not), then I will commit to doing it to the end of the year. And then I’ll look at things again in January. I don’t want to hop from thing to thing, as then nothing gets accomplished. But I am finding that by saying I’m only going to do it for a certain amount of time, it kind of frees up the fear of not being able to change my mind.

Here is the thing with WW, I KNOW that if I follow plan, I will lose weight. I don’t know that with this. I have a strong hope that it will work. This is scarier for me though, because with WW I just follow the plan and hold tight to it, like a railing, and it works. But with this, there is no railing. Just me. That is scary. How do you learn to trust yourself after years of not doing it? I’m not sure there is really a learning curve, I think it’s just a “Jump in and do” type of situation. And probably a “fall flat on your face” situation as well… a couple of times… but then… after getting back up over and over maybe I’ll start to crawl in the right direction, then get up on my wobbly feet and take a few steps. Before I know it, I’ll be running so fast I’ll get to take off in flight! :) Cheesy I know, but as you know, that’s my specialty! :D

So the thing I’ve been struggling with already, is how to know when it’s really my body telling me I want something, or when it’s just because I want it. As I typed that I thought, “Oh duh Sam, just ask yourself if you’re hungry”! I’ve been so worried about what I’m eating, I totally forgot about when I’m eating (well not totally forgot, but I haven’t been giving it as much focus). Maybe I should focus on the when first? I've restricted myself for so long it's really difficult to just, not. She does say in the book that a part of this is giving yourself the freedom to really eat whatever it is your body wants. In the beginning she ate cookie dough for like 2-3 weeks. While I don’t see myself doing that, I do see that if I just listen to my hunger signs first and not worry so much about what I’m eating, that would be a good start. I think in the beginning I can see myself probably not making the best food choices, but that by allowing myself (spirit and body) to see that really there is no forbidden foods, they will eventually lose their appeal and I still to actually crave the foods that give me real energy. See what I mean I haven’t thought this all out. As much as possible, I’m going to do that on here. I think (and hope) that will be helpful for people deciding if this is for them or not. I’ll be the test dummy (don’t get any ideas!).

The other part of this is the spiritual side. I’m not talking about religion, although that certainly plays its part, but about spirituality. The relationship between self and spirit, and spirit to God (I just made that up, so if it doesn’t make sense, I guess you’ll just have to trust that I know what I mean. Haha). Taking the time to be aware of my feelings, and then being willing to dig under those feelings to find what’s causing them. And then being willing to swim through past experiences and all that can bring up, to then move myself to a point to be able to let it go. And the theory is that by feeling it, it’s basically like validating those feelings which then allows them to dissipate, thus relieving the pressure to stuff them with food.

Well there it is, some of my initial thoughts as I head down this path. It will be interesting to see how that changes as I go.