Intuitive/mindful eating
Jleigh225
Posts: 49 Member
It seems silly to ask this question on myfitnesspal, a calorie counting website, but I am curious if others had a similar experience. For a very long time, I have yoyo'd between being on a diet (counting every bite i take) and off a diet eating all of the food I desire. I was at the end of my rope with it and decided if I didnt lose weight for awhile it was okay, i just wanted to stop yoyo dieting. I've tried intuitive and mindful eating for a few weeks and it's worked for me. I've lost weight and I am less bothered by hunger. When I was counting, my hunger was on my mind all the time even though I ate enough. Has anyone else ended up trying intuitive eating after being frustrated with counting?
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Yes! I totally know what you mean. I've reset my calories on here to maintenance and am still logging so that I can keep track of what I eat and how I feel. I'm done with calorie counting. I'm all hyped up on a book called "Always Hungry" which (among other things) talks about the futility of calorie counting.0
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no, but i tried intermittent fasting a while ago, and i found that useful to help me eat more mindfully.
i didn't start eating till 10am and half the time actually i was fine doing that as i wasn't actually hungry, and would have just eaten because it was 'breakfast time' not because i really needed food.
at the end of the day you've got to find what works for you and is sustainable!3 -
I actually do not see calorie counting as a restriction, or a way that I allow my self to keep hunger on my mind at all. Actually it is the opposite. It is now that I am finally mindful that I create calories that work for me instead of eating calories that left me feeling terrible or exhausted all the time. I never knew the foods I ate before made me really feel terrible..
Now if you find this program helps you better in the long run to loosing weight, I am all for any strategy or method that works for the individual to meet their goals.
The part this program that stated are you "Sick and tired of calorie counting and following rigid diets that leave you feeling exhausted, depleted and like a failure because they just don't work"... well this (MFP) is none of these for me and never has been, I was frustrated only at one time in the beginning before I bought and used the food scale..3 -
It's awesome that you are finally enjoying success. I have a friend in a similar situation; one for whom nothing much has worked except intuitive eating. Personally, I am baffled by intuitive eating and have only found success with calorie counting. It seems to me that eating what you want, when you want is how people end up too heavy in the first place and I have to laugh every time I see people counseling intuitive eating in children when it is not uncommon for children to eat themselves sick on junk food, fast food or candy and treats while steadfastly refusing healthy alternatives. But, luckily, you don't have to convince me and what works for you doesn't have to work for me so congratulations to you!3
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I calorie count precisely because I know from experience my intuition is wrong
That said, everyone needs to find a path that works for themselves. I plan to keep planning and logging in advance, I find it makes consuming the right amount incredibly easy.5 -
I think it's really important to bring eating into your conscious mind. For me this means mindful shopping, cooking and eating.
But most of us who have become overweight and especially those who have yo-yoed, will have damaged their metabolism. That can take years to put right. I can quote you the research!
Until my metabolism is repaired I'm gonna count calories or portions. It doesn't matter how you bring your consumption into conscious focus, but that you do.
If just mindfulness without any counting does the trick for you, then that is excellent news. At the very least, I'd continue to weigh myself every day. The mind plays such tricks on us (but you already know how easy it is to put the weight back on and how religiously you have to watch yourself.)
I've asked all my thin friends. And they all say they weigh themselves at least once a week, if not once a day. They also tell me they watch what they eat with hawk-like determination. For example my friend Jane always walks to the cafe where we meet. She never drives there.
Some people make maintaining a slim figure look easy, but in reality I think they work really hard at it. (They don't rely on a hunch, they use data)
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I find I need both: the calorie counting/logging part plus behavioral modification. Specifically for me, mindful eating -- which is not exactly the same as intuitive eating. I'd also suggest looking into Beck Diet Solution. Here's a description of all three with links:
Mindful Eating - "By using all your senses in choosing to eat food that is both satisfying to you and nourishing to your body, acknowledging your responses to food (likes, dislikes or neutral) without judgment, and becoming aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decisions to begin and end eating you can change your relationship to food." http://thecenterformindfuleating.org/principles
Intuitive Eating - "Intuitive eating is an approach that teaches you how to create a healthy relationship with your food, mind, and body--where you ultimately become the expert of your own body. You learn how to distinguish between physical and emotional feelings, and gain a sense of body wisdom. It's also a process of making peace with food---so that you no longer have constant "food worry" thoughts. It's knowing that your health and your worth as a person do not change, because you ate a food that you had labeled as "bad" or "fattening”. http://www.intuitiveeating.org/content/10-principles-intuitive-eating
Beck Diet Solution - "By following the Cognitive Therapy techniques dieters learn to: think differently and overcome common dieting pitfalls and sabotaging thoughts, eat favorite foods while steadily losing weight, feel in control in the most challenging situations, feel confident in their ability to follow a healthy diet and exercise plan, remain motivated to maintain weight loss for life" http://www.beckdietsolution.com/weight-loss-and-maintenance
Intuitive Eating particularly focuses on helping those with eating disorders (unhealthy relationships to food).
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I've always controlled my weight by mindful/intuitive eating. For a brief period I stopped thinking about food at all and started to eat for emotional reasons. That is when I became overweight. Someone told me about this site and I thought it sounded great. I am a numbers person by profession so I thought I'd love tracking my food too. But I was wrong. So I went back to what had worked in the past. Eating mindfully/intuitively. And I lost the weight.
I imagine I will yoyo a bit as I have always yoyo'd. The problem with eating intuitively for me is that when I get rushed or distracted by other things in life I tend to gain weight (I really LOVE food). But except for that one time I've never gained enough to make me overweight so I'm hoping I am back in that groove now. I don't mind if my weight fluctuates up and down a bit.1 -
Mindful eating and intuitive eating sounded like hogwash to me. Alternative hippie *kitten*. Eating what I like and letting my body decide? Yeah, that's exactly why I'm overweight
I had counted calories before, somewhere else, many years ago, and regained. When I started counting again, this time on MFP, my attitude was already different, as I was much more critical to "conventional nutritional wisdom", and no other goals than calories and macros was exactly what I needed. Instead of trying to follow some arbitrary rules, I ate what I liked, but I also started to pay attention to how differerent ways of eating affected me, how my hunger and satiety cues worked (the hunger scale is a great tool) - I sort of extrapolated what "satisfied" should feel like, based on how much food I'd have to eat to reach my calorie goal - and gradually, I realized I was entering mindful eating territory. After one year of losing weight, and nine months at goal weight, still counting calories, I felt I had finally learnt to eat, counting became redundant, boring, restricting, so I stopped counting, but continued planning/logging/weighing. I maintained my weight, effortlessly.
Nine more months passed as I was getting more and more confident, and one day I discovered I had stopped worrying about regaining. I just have to continue doing what I am doing, and this is fun and easy, so why should I stop? There was still a gap to bridge before I reached intuitive eating, but it got smaller and smaller, and I got there just under one month ago, trying to follow my plan, but couldn't eat all the food I had planned, and when I looked closer, I realized I would have had to overeat. My body knew when I had had enough, even though my brain didn't.
Surprisingly, or maybe not - as MFP is very factual and number and science oriented, for me, getting some distance to the emotions associated with food and eating, letting go of all the myths, feelings of disappointment and failure because I couldn't eat how I thought I "should", contributed to teaching me how to eat intuitively, instead of just how to weigh food and count calories. Food isn't the enemy anymore, but a source of enjoyment. (Thank you, Myfitnesspal.)7 -
kommodevaran wrote: »Mindful eating and intuitive eating sounded like hogwash to me. Alternative hippie *kitten*. Eating what I like and letting my body decide? Yeah, that's exactly why I'm overweight
I doubt the validity of this statement. First of all because "eating what I like" isn't the same thing as eating mindfully/intuitively. It's more about eating what you need than what you like. Paying attention to your body's needs rather than what your emotions or taste buds want at the moment. That's not to say that your food shouldn't taste good. Enjoying food should be a part of eating mindfully.2 -
I have tried intuitive eating and it did not work for me. I have a ton of respect for those who can successfully manage their weight without tracking all the details, but I learned that I am not one of those people. I have learned that weight management can be a very intense mental game because of my unstable relationship with food which caused me to be overweight in the first place. My hunger and fullness cues are way out of whack, so I'll be a loyal MFP user for as long as I'm caring about my weight.4
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I doubt it too. Hence the past tense and the rest of my storyNeed2Exerc1se wrote: »kommodevaran wrote: »Mindful eating and intuitive eating sounded like hogwash to me. Alternative hippie *kitten*. Eating what I like and letting my body decide? Yeah, that's exactly why I'm overweight
I doubt the validity of this statement. First of all because "eating what I like" isn't the same thing as eating mindfully/intuitively. It's more about eating what you need than what you like. Paying attention to your body's needs rather than what your emotions or taste buds want at the moment. That's not to say that your food shouldn't taste good. Enjoying food should be a part of eating mindfully. 2 -
kommodevaran wrote: »
I doubt it too. Hence the past tense and the rest of my storyNeed2Exerc1se wrote: »kommodevaran wrote: »Mindful eating and intuitive eating sounded like hogwash to me. Alternative hippie *kitten*. Eating what I like and letting my body decide? Yeah, that's exactly why I'm overweight
I doubt the validity of this statement. First of all because "eating what I like" isn't the same thing as eating mindfully/intuitively. It's more about eating what you need than what you like. Paying attention to your body's needs rather than what your emotions or taste buds want at the moment. That's not to say that your food shouldn't taste good. Enjoying food should be a part of eating mindfully.
Doh! Epic reading comprehension fail on my part. I should stop pretending I don't need my glasses.3 -
Lol! I fear we are approaching "that" age, both of us. And my post was a wall of textNeed2Exerc1se wrote: »kommodevaran wrote: »
I doubt it too. Hence the past tense and the rest of my storyNeed2Exerc1se wrote: »kommodevaran wrote: »Mindful eating and intuitive eating sounded like hogwash to me. Alternative hippie *kitten*. Eating what I like and letting my body decide? Yeah, that's exactly why I'm overweight
I doubt the validity of this statement. First of all because "eating what I like" isn't the same thing as eating mindfully/intuitively. It's more about eating what you need than what you like. Paying attention to your body's needs rather than what your emotions or taste buds want at the moment. That's not to say that your food shouldn't taste good. Enjoying food should be a part of eating mindfully.
Doh! Epic reading comprehension fail on my part. I should stop pretending I don't need my glasses.
I get so excited sometimes 
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I have a small example and many may have heard this. If you have food on your plate your mind and body say that you are full when the plate is empty. But plate sizes can differ! You trick yourself. If you take smaller plates you will eat less but will feel the same amount of full. Brian Wansink has a great book (mindless eating) about the psychology of eating. He discribes a lot of experiments he did with food and people. You cannot trust on your body to decide how much you have to eat. Funny one he did with people with short term memory loss. He kept inviting them for a lunch. At the third lunch the subjects starting eating less and say they werent that hungry that day.1
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my intuition led me to get up to 260 pounds.
just sayin.
now, i can maintain my current weight (150) with intuition and eyeballing, but thats after 2 years of religiously weighing my food and knowing calorie counts.4 -
I currently use mindful eating, which is not the same thing as intuitive eating, as I understand it (my hunger is driven much more by habit or sometimes desire than actual physical hunger and even when actually hungry, as after a long bike ride, I can't intuit what I need, but my mind can tell and I will be satisfied with that).
I enjoyed counting, though, and didn't find it inconsistent -- being mindful worked fine for me with also logging and logging helped me get more mindful again, although I don't log anymore. I was never hungry or obsessed with food when logging.0 -
My idea of mindful eating was getting the small combo at Wendy's every night after work instead of a large. Counting calories helped me realize that there was no reason to even get a combo, maybe just the sandwich and a diet soda or unsweetened iced tea, and only every so often. If I were to stop tracking, I don't doubt I'd start backsliding and convincing myself that everything I'd be doing is perfectly normal.0
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I think tracking is a perfectly fine way of practicing mindful eating.PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »My idea of mindful eating was getting the small combo at Wendy's every night after work instead of a large. Counting calories helped me realize that there was no reason to even get a combo, maybe just the sandwich and a diet soda or unsweetened iced tea, and only every so often. If I were to stop tracking, I don't doubt I'd start backsliding and convincing myself that everything I'd be doing is perfectly normal.
Intuitive eating shouldn't be a goal. Good eating habits and food peace should be a goal.5 -
kommodevaran wrote: »
I think tracking is a perfectly fine way of practicing mindful eating.PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »My idea of mindful eating was getting the small combo at Wendy's every night after work instead of a large. Counting calories helped me realize that there was no reason to even get a combo, maybe just the sandwich and a diet soda or unsweetened iced tea, and only every so often. If I were to stop tracking, I don't doubt I'd start backsliding and convincing myself that everything I'd be doing is perfectly normal.
Intuitive eating shouldn't be a goal. Good eating habits and food peace should be a goal.
I like the idea of having total "food peace".. never thought of it that way!
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I would really like to work in this. I have been logging for years and do not have a lot to show for it. My problem is I eat food that can't be logged accurately then I get in. The mindset well couldn't log that one item so might add well not log any thing today (this weekend) and eat all the food. I need to be more in control of my eating and be able to be okay even without the numbers.0
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This is where the Mfp app woaks, for me. I eat what I'm in the mood for, then log it after and the app counts calories etc for me, so I don't need to think about it.
The exception is when I (remember to) total up at the end of the day and instead of saying 'in 5 weeks you'd weigh xxx pounds' it gives me the warning that I'm probably not eating enough.
Usually this just means "you forgot to log something today- go back through your 'frequent' foods list for a hint". But if it's true, and my total calories for the day are significantly fewer than I ought to have, I go eat something, so I don't wake up starving at 5am.
The actual calorie counting thing never did work for me.1 -
I've really enjoyed everyone's responses! So intuitive eating works very well for me, but I've learned where it doesn't work well this past weekend. I think calorie counting may be important for social events that involve food. It's hard to properly eat intuitively at weddings or social gatherings with potluck style open food and where you are in fact distracted by the social environment and copious amounts of delicious food. The lessons I've learned in even a few weeks of mindful/intuitive eating has been incredibly eye opening and I actually think both strategies have their place.2
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Brilliant thread. I was wondering when one of these would pop up. I myself am a intuitive eater. In my excitement during the early stages of this way of eating I stumbled across this reddit post which describes intuitive eating pin point perfectly. Have a read, it's very thorough and probably answers any questions you may have about I.E.
https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/1t76ep/why_intuitive_eating_works_if_you_actually_do_it/5 -
YES! So glad to see this thread. I agree with all the above, and I can't wait to read through all the recommended reads. There are times when I'm in my zone and intuitively eat and lose or maintain my weight to find my happy place on the scale and feel great. There are times (every 28 days) when I need to track because there are just too many cheeseburgers on my way to/from work. Sometimes I track because stress can make me over or under eat, and I want to make sure I hit my macronutrients. Intuitive/mindful eating has led me to intermittent fasting (not every day) where I eat in a 6-8 hour window during the day. I also find I'm stronger at the gym if I workout in a fasted (but not totally glycogen depleted) state. I wonder if intermittent fasting (IF) and intuitive eating are opposite philosophies, (I flat out ignore hunger rather than confront my reasons for it when I IF). I feel great when I can IF, it's like hitting a reset button for my digestive system when I over-indulge, or am under a lot of physical/emotional stress at work. For mindful eating to be effective for me, I have to eliminate processed foods and fake sugars. I say use tracking and IE and IF- use all the tools you need to get to your goals. I don't think it's always as simple as a calories in/out balance (sorry MFP). The science behind a calorie measurement is ancient. I admire those that say that intuitive eating led to being overweight- that level of insight I think is what intuitive eating is all about.0
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jacksmom517 wrote: »For mindful eating to be effective for me, I have to eliminate processed foods and fake sugars. [...] I admire those that say that intuitive eating led to being overweight- that level of insight I think is what intuitive eating is all about.
Look at what you just wrote. I think this is crucial. I couldn't have learnt to recognize hunger and satiety cues and then trust my instincts to lead me to eat what I need in the appropriate amounts and in the right balance - without letting most of what I eat be real food. Because real food nourishes and satisfies. Junk food makes me excited, but never fulfills me. Diet foods fill me up, but never satisfies me.
My impression from the boards is that a majority of non-counting long time maintainers are basing their intake on real, home cooked food, with the occasional indulgence. Long time maintainers who still have to count, generally have a lot of cookies, ice cream etc in their diets. That is no coincidence.
Calories in - calories out is still valid, and trumps any diet preference, though.1 -
I like to use the ancient Greek system called the Trivium: Knowledge => Understanding => Action. Once you have developed a deep understanding of the art and science of nutrition your behaviour will change of its own accord and will be in keeping with your understanding while appearing to be "natural" and instinctive. However, it is based on a deep understanding of scientific principles which leads to knowledge in action or "praxis". Logging food for several months gives you the "scaffolding" to develop new knowledge and acquire new habits. After a while you can remove the behavioural scaffolding because your behaviour becomes automatic and habitual.
Talking about your new behaviours in a new social context helps you to construct your new social identity based on more healthy eating practices. This period may also require you to forego and avoid unhealthy social settings and unhealthy eating cues. After a period of consciously and deliberately "acting out" healthy eating and exercising you develop new unconscious cues for healthy behaviours so that they become part of your identity. At this point you can re-expose yourself to former eating cues without feeling the need to act out (i.e. you can just say no thanks). Or you could say "yes". You won't be so rule bound and will appear spontaneous and intuitive. Like a jazz musician improvising in the moment - he looks free - indeed, he IS free and intuitive but his freedom is based on years of dedicated study, discipline and practice.2 -
I think mindful eating can work, but it is actually just another type of discipline and is a lot easier if you have done a lot of calorie counting before hand and know what it is you are putting in your mouth so you don't have surprise calorie bombs.
I also think there are some people that may never get there, they need the discipline of calorie counting. Maybe they are emotional eaters or have attention issues or just don't have the internal discipline. Calorie counting is an easy choice for a lot of people as well and brings it own comfort. I think it really depends on a persons personality which one will work more comfortably for them.1 -
I agree. Whatever works for YOU is the right approach. All approaches however, seem to require a certain amount of discipline and self-control.0
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