Home Cooks: Does intuitive eating work for you?

I never (and mean NEVER) buy ready meals. It might be easier if I did because there is a fixed portion. I'm a home cook, I enjoy it, but if I don't watch it I get "portion creep". It's just soooo tasty!

I meal plan meticulously every week. I also pre-log meals for the entire week. Most of my homemade meals are relatively low calorie because I have been here for about four years now and I have a set of recipes that I usually make, or because I put things into the recipe builder and modify as necessary before I cook them. It doesn't have anything to do with eating "intuitively," which is how I (and probably most of us) got obese in the first place. It's just a routine I've developed.

Intuitive eating does NOT work for me. Meal prep DOES.

I'm considering a formal engagement and marriage ceremony to my digital food scale.

Like the OP, I make most of my food from scratch. I do utilize some canned products, and seek out the low/no sodium versions so that I can control the amount of sodium. Canned tomatoes (no salt added) are a staple that I use when making beans and also in some chicken dishes. Coconut milk, low sodium soups, are the only other canned goods I have in my cupboards.

I keep plenty of frozen fruits and vegetables on hand, for when fresh is out of season.

Salt is something I add in the least amount during preparation, and wait until eating to add it (maybe). I like seaweed flakes as a way to add interesting saltiness to rice.

My measuring cups and spoons live on the countertop now, right next to my food scale, which sits next to my Instant Pot. I'm a meal prep nerd and those are my most used tools! (I could go on for hours about how much, and why I love my Instant Pot.)

I thought I might be able to eyeball correct weights after two months of diligent measuring.
But....noooooooooooooooo, oh NO, NO, and NO , I cannot do that accurately. At least not yet, but, honestly it is fast and easy, and seems to be becoming second nature to measure everything as I prepare or plate my food, and use the tools in MFP to count the calories and macros.

I like making my own food and knowing exactly what is going into my body. Labels on packaged prepared foods are an education in additives that don't sound much like food.

good fitness to us all!
amyfb

I guess we are just old fashioned and cook our meals from scratch at least 6 times a week. Personally I also want to know what I am eating, i.e. we try to buy directly from farms and / or we know the suppliers and where produce comes from. We also like to eat meals which originate from different parts of the world, to get those ingredients for home cooking is usually not that difficult - but restaurants usually do not have such a wider selection where we live.

I haven't been even slightly successful at intuitive eating for the last 25 years.

All homecooked meals, rarely eat away from home. We cook together, so if someone wants food that the other doesn't it works out ok. For example; I don't eat pasta and bread, so I eat more vegetables. We have a flexible schedule, dinner is around 1:00 or 2:00 and supper between 6:30 and 7:30. Breakfast is 'whatever, whenever'.

mbaker566 wrote: »

eating intuitively doesn't work for me. doing that is how i ended up back here

Me too.
I did so well. Lost 65 pounds in 2015-2016. I hadn’t been a size 6 in my adult life ever. I logged religiously for over 1000 days but it was so tedious that I quit. And slowly but surely over 2018 and the beginning of this year, I mindlessly gained back 40 of those pounds. Argh

Mid May of this year I got back to MFP and I’m down 32 of that gain. I’m going to hang around here for a few weeks I think, trying maintenance. In retrospect I think I was so focused on losing that I swept down past my ideal weight(still searching for that place!) but I’m trying to be mindful of what goes into my stomach.

I’ve realized breads and other carbs like that lead me to temptation. I need to eat mega calorie-less vegetables to fill me up.

My intuition is wonky. 🥴

I mostly cook all my meals at home. I'm not into eating fast foods, period.Especially when i have time off from work, i'll cook 2 meals to last into the next day or so, left overs are good after marinating a day or so, depending what it is. Then I'll start all over. Now that I've started counting calories, i basically need help with some of the foods i buy, i cook for my husband also, so it's gonna be a little struggle for change.So i suggested that he can eat what he wants, because he cooks to, that way he can change his recipes also..I was very big on bread, i cut back a lot, so that's a big help for me.

I cook and eat at home 7 days a week except for special occasions. Still need to weigh and log everything to make sure I’m not eating larger portions than I should be.

Anecdotally, you’d think there was some correlation. However, I cook 90% of my meals from scratch. The rest are eaten in restaurants when I socialise (i.e not cos I don’t want to cook) and I’m overweight.

So, my point is that you can get overweight on “whole foods” just as you can on palm oil.

The reference your Mum makes to “her day” will also include other factors such as more manual jobs (less mechanized, even housework), less reliance on cars and probably a more frugal attitude to food in general (food was precious and you just had less on your plate).