Intuitive Eating: What it is & Why I’m Doing It.

I first heard of intuitive eating as a “thing” on a twitter chat a couple of months ago. It sounded interesting, but I didn’t really think any more about it until just before the Princess Half when I started researching it online. I then ended up buying the book “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works” on my iPad to keep me busy on my flight back from Disney. I read through about a third of the book on my flight and have been slowly working through the rest as I can.

Simply put, diets do not work for me in the long run. Over the years I have tried a few and they all had the same thing in common, either they had long lists food restrictions, or in some cases the diet is so restrictive that they give a list of foods you are allowed to eat instead since that list is much smaller, or they require you to “count” your food.

Whether it be points, macronutrient ratios, or calories I absolutely hate counting my food. I see how keeping a food log can help one realize just how much they have or  haven’t ate, but what happens when you have eaten your allotted calories for the day and are legitimately still hungry? Here is where intuitive eating just makes more since to me. 

Much like it sounds, intuitive eating is all about learning to trust your body to tell you what, when, and how much to eat. It sounds simple enough, but unlike all the diets out there you can’t just print out a shopping list and be on your way. Instead there is a lengthy road ahead of you as you work through the 10 principles of intuitive eating.

Principle 1 is to reject the diet mentality. For many, years of dieting and watching everything that they eat has been ingrained into their brains so this principle can be a huge first step to breaking free from their serial dieting.

I haven’t been a huge dieter, although I have always “watched what I ate” for as long as I can remember. Kicking the diet mentality has gone pretty well for me, but I do find myself trying to revert back to some dieting “tricks” I picked up along the way every once in awhile. On the bright side I am more aware of them now so they are not as much of a habit as they use to be, and I realize what I am doing.

Principle 2, honoring your hunger, is where I am currently at. I feel I will probably be stuck here for quite awhile. After suffering from an eating disorder in my younger teen years, being hungry doesn’t bother me all that much so I have to relearn my hunger cues. Not only do I need to learn what my cues are, but then I also need to honor them. I am notorious for not knowing what I want to eat, which is usually more of a battle between what I really want to eat and what I feel I *should* eat, which leads to me delaying my meal until I am starving and then I eat anything and everything I can get in my mouth fast enough to try and catch up to my hunger.

Yes, we can all see the flaw in this method, yet I do it over and over again and I really seem to be surprised each time it happens.   

I will be covering the other 8 principle in future posts, as I am working on them myself, but a few things you should know, and keep in mind, about intuitive eating is that it is not so much a weight loss program as it is a listening to your body thing. Also your body has a natural weight, which probably will not be the weight you want it to be, so you have to dump the scale and trust how you feel.

Through observations over the years I know that my body likes to hang around 145 lbs. That is a weight I can usually maintain easily and the weight my body tends to naturally fall back into time after time. For my 5’4” body that put me on the high end of normal, according to all the BMI charts, but about 10-15 pounds over what they feel my “ideal” weight is. I fully expect, that through intuitive eating, I will find myself right back at that weight but I am hoping to switch some of my fat weight over to muscle weight through exercise and weight training.    

Have you ever heard of or done intuitive eating before? What other “diets” or “lifestyle changes” have you tried in the past?

Focus T25, Take 4

This week I restarted Focus T25 for the forth time. The previous 3 times I made it about a week and a half and ended up quitting for various reasons, most of which were trips to Disney that interrupted my momentum. This time things are going to be different.

First of all I am done with my race season until the fall, and I have no trips planned, other then my move to Houston next month!! So really there is little to get in my way this time.

I’ve also decided to take a different approach. I’ve been reading about intuitive eating (more on that to come) and I really like the perspective they advocate. They tell you not to exercise to count your calorie burn or to try and make your body mimic that of a fitness model, but instead to move your body and exercise for how it makes you feel. Yes, exercise can make me sore and tired, but it also makes me feel alive! I love the hint of sore muscles to know that I pushed myself and I can feel “change” happening. It also helps me to sleep better at night (remember that is one of my March goals).

Since I have been struggling to exercise regularly for over a year now I figure T25 is a great place to start.

Sure, I use to do P90X yoga (an hour and a half) AFTER a 10 mile run when I was in my prime, but guess what. I’m not in my prime anymore so 25 minutes a day, 5 days a week seems like a pretty good place to start over at.

I fear one of my biggest struggles will be to drop the numbers. Today was day 1, and even though I took before pictures (so I can get my shirt for completing the program) I did not step on a scale or grab my tape measure. I’m hoping that by not having those starting numbers I will not be tempted down the road to get on a scale since I won’t have anything to compare it to anyway.

I know this goes against the norm, but if I am going to truly learn to enjoy and appreciate my body for all that it is I need to let go of the numbers. They don’t define my worth and they certainly shouldn’t define how I see myself. 

Project Me Update/ March Goals

I have not been posting much about Project Me lately and that is because I became a bit stuck with what to do next. Lucky for me while I was looking for a book to keep me occupied for my 4 hour flight to Orlando I came across “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin. As I read the subtitle “Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun” it reminded me very much of my own project currently underway. 

I will confesses I’ve only read about a chapter and a half so far, but just that little bit has helped me to get Project Me back on track. In the book she divided the things she wanted to work on into categories, and then assigned each category a month that she would devote to focusing on making the changes in that category before adding in the next category the next month.

With today being March 1st it felt like the perfect time to set up my own set of goals to help bring me closer to becoming the person I want to be. Since I’ve decided I really need more balance in my life I plan to choose 1 or 2 [non-weight related] physical goals as well as 1 or 2 emotional/mental goals to work on each month.

I tend to have a rather *focused* personality so I like to go all in and then I burn out or get discouraged quickly; so I am really going to make an effort to keep it simple this time.

For this month I think I really need to work on my discipline since I’ve been finding myself falling more and more into complacency. I have a long standing quote I like to throw around

and this is what I feel like I’ve been doing. Yes, life is a bit of a challenge for me right now, but choices have been made that have brought me to this point and I need to just suck it up and deal with it.  

So here are the things I want to focus on for the month of March:

1. SLEEP! I need to establish and stick with a decent sleep schedule to allow my body adequate rest.
2. Move My Body! I sit around on my bum most of the day. I need to get back to being more active, even if I don’t follow a certain workout routine.
3. Give myself a “time out” at least once a day to decompress and refocus my energy.
4. Stop comparing myself to everyone else!

Do you set time specific goals? What is something you want to work on about yourself in the coming month/months?

Time to Start Loving My Body

This post has been a long time coming. In fact I’ve been writing it in my head for at least a month or two. Although, in my head I kept wanting to add the word again. “Time to start loving my body AGAIN” but the truth is I’ve never really loved my body. Not as a size 5 in high school. Not as a size 12 after having the first couple of kids. Not as a size 6 a year and a half ago, and certainly not at the size 8 I currently am.

 

The thing about chasing these arbitrary numbers is that it’s never enough. I’M never enough. I set my sights on a number and once I get there it wasn’t what I thought it would be. I didn’t see myself any different than the day, the week, or even the month before. Only after I gained weight again would I look back and think I didn’t look so bad “back then.”  I never realize it in the now. Ever.

Take these pictures from September 2012 as an example. I was a 133 lbs, the smallest I have been since graduating high school, let alone after having 4 kids!! I was at my “ideal” body weight according to those fancy charts that tell you those kinds of things, but do you know what I saw? Not a 6 pack, not 125 pounds on the scale. All I saw was the “not good enoughs.”

 

I often read blog posts and articles about the realization that we are more than our dress sizes or the numbers on the scale and I would nod my head in agreement. . . for *them*. This logic was very enlightening and completely accurate; for everyone but me.

I’m number minded. I *need* the data in cold hard numbers to know that I am making progress. Numbers don’t lie, that’s why I like them. They are concrete, but do you know what else I do with those numbers? I compare them to the numbers of others. When I lost 6 pounds doing 60 days of Insanity to get down to that 133 lbs it didn’t mean much because “everyone” else lost 10-15 pounds or more. Even other women with my same stats. Once again I just didn’t measure up.

So as part of Project ME I am putting it out there that I AM good enough. I am going to take care of my body because I deserve it and I’m worthy of a healthy body. NOT because I need to lose 20 pounds. NOT because so-and-so is a size 4 while I’m a size 8 and NOT because those stupid charts tell me I’m overweight.

It’s time for me to prove to myself that I am more then all those numbers I’ve thrown out there.

Will you join me?

All Ways Are Not MY Way

Okay, a small confession here. I am a bit of a “Type A” personality. I like for things to be MY way and I can have controlling tendencies, especially when it comes to food or vacation planning. Of course if I am met with opposition I usually just fold (remember, I’m non-confrontational), but if no one is going to challenge me I run with it!

I don’t think this is always a bad thing, I mean it’s good to have opinions, right? But none the less I have decided to make a conscious choice to just “go with the flow” more.

I have discovered that I often create more stress for myself by trying to control situations that just can’t be controlled. A huge example of this right now is our relocation from California back to Houston. To sum it up simply, it’s a mess. I’m in California, officer P is in Georgia, our house is being built in Houston, and the lender is in Colorado, so needless to say coordination is pretty difficult and the timelines are ever changing. Basically we are looking at anytime between March and May.   

This is simply out of my control and since I can’t control the situation I am working on controlling my feelings and reactions to the situation instead. It has been, and will continue to be, full of ups and downs, but I have been working on letting it go.   

It’s not always easy, but I have found that by taking the time to decompress a bit and give up some of the control I have been able to defuse some issues that have came up, which at this point is the best I can ask for.

Although I do not necessarily like that all ways are not my way, I am finding that by embracing it my life is becoming a little bit easier.  

Do you find that there are certain things you feel the need to control? And others you simply can’t be bothered with?

Look For Kindness and You Will Find It!

As I have been working on cutting down the negativity in my life I have discovered that I often only see what I am looking for. If I am expecting people to be rude and uncaring, that is usually all that I see. This led to the decision to look for the small acts of kindness that surround me everyday, but often goes unnoticed.

On Thursday I took the kids on an outing to Costco (I know, I know, we are wild and crazy) not even thinking that it was the beginning of the month and that it was closed the day before for the holiday. It was much more crowded then I would have expected for a Thursday around 1 and I really try not to take the kids shopping in crowds because it stresses me out! I can not even count the times that they have been hit/ bumped by carts and criticized for being in the way of grumpy shoppers in crowded stores over the years.
Since we were already in the parking lot by the time I realized my mistake I figured we might as well brave the crowd and venture in. It was very crowded. There were at least 5-10 carts down every side isle in the store and many more in main ones, and although I am sure there were many a hurried shopper cursing everyone else for being in there way, I am happy to report I did not witness them.

Source

Instead I saw a women reaching for some cherries that were above her head and the container opening and spilling out all over the floor. I also saw one women, and then another, stop their shopping and bend over to help her pick them up. Even after the women had thanked them many times and insisted that she had it taken care of. I also saw a man unaware of what had happened walk past a run away cherry on the floor and then doubled back to pick it up and toss it into an empty box near by.

Sure these were very little acts, and took no more then a minute out of their day, but there were out of concern for someone other then themselves. They certainly didn’t HAVE to help at all, but they chose to anyway and that is pretty darn cool.

I am going to give you all another challenge this week. I want you to look for the small acts of kindness that surround you everyday, that you might have otherwise missed, and come back and share them with me! They can be anything! Big or small, I just want you to be out there looking for the good in each other! 

Project ME: Consider Your Motivation

Long before the clock struck midnight, and the New Year began I had been thinking about “project ME”. I tried to decide just what I wanted to gain from it, and how I would even begin to take it on. Thankfully the answers were quite simple, I want to have peace in my heart, and free my head from negativity. I want to be happy with who I am, and to be comfortable in my own skin. While the answers were easy the process to obtaining that is going to be the hard part. 

I figured if I started working on the negativity, my heart is sure to follow, so that is what I am doing. One of the ways I plan on doing that is by taking the time to stop and consider what my motivation is for saying or doing something I may not feel completely comfortable with. Am I not comfortable with it because I feel it is wrong? Or is it that I am afraid of what others might think?

A few days ago I practiced this for the first time, and honestly the outcome was somewhat surprising to me.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, which I do several times a day, and I saw 2 friends had both posted this:

Now reading my blog I am sure you are able to find many instances in which I have used incorrect grammar, or even the wrong word all together! I try not to make these mistakes, but I’ll be honest, my mind is much more math oriented. Grammar just does not come easy to me. I can not even tell you how many times I have read a sentence over several times trying to decide which word pairing was correct, so it’s not that I don’t care. That is why when I saw the first comment posted was this:

“ Wish people knew how to type! No idea how one cannot understand proper grammar anymore!”

I was annoyed, and even a little offended. I quickly typed up this response:

But I didn’t post it right away. Instead I read it over a few times. The first couple of times trying to insure that ever single word was used correctly, and then to consider how it might be received. This is where the old Summer would delete the comment because it quite possibly would offend the original poster. I even left the comment un-posted and scrolled down my feed a bit before coming back and hitting send.

I felt the person very well could have gotten offended and unfriended me, but after really thinking it over, and keeping “project ME” in mind I felt it was worth it to have my voice heard, and I am glad that I did. I woke up to a PM from the poster in the morning saying that they hoped that they did not upset me and that they would never intentionally make someone feel bad over grammar.

Is this going to change the world? Of course not. But might that poster think twice about posting things designed to belittle others in the future? I truly hope so. 

Now this is where I am going to give you the challenge to consider your own motivations. Are you coming from a place of true compassion, concern and/or caring? Or are your intentions mean spirited and fueled by fear, jealousy or insecurity?