Intuitive Eating Part II: Taking on the Challenge

As you probably know, in a year and a half, I succeeded in reclaiming myself. I finally shed the weight that was holding me back from many activities. I gained new confidence because, finally, people could meet the real Katie, not the Katie that was obscured by 90 extra pounds. And I naively thought that at 150 pounds (finally a healthy weight) all of my problems would be solved.

But they weren't. In order to reach my goal weight, I was eating very light. Some days, for instance, I'd eat less than 1100 calories. I started feeling oddly guilty about my love for mangoes. I "tricked" my body into thinking it was full by eating many volume-heavy stir fries and salads. I started to like the feeling of being slightly hungry because I knew that I was getting skinny.

In hindsight, my body wasn't so thrilled about being food deprived. I fainted twice at the end of August to early September. My body was constantly covered in bruises. I was too tired to exercise. My Weight Watcher leader commented, when during the last two months of August I lost over 6 pounds: 'Are you eating?' she said.

(Just as an FYI, I went to my doctor during that time and mentioned all my issues and she suggested I go on a 1000 calorie diet to get to 140, which she deemed a better weight for me. Just goes to show, there are some less than awesome medical professionals out there.)

Anyway, I met Nathan around that time. We started eating all our meals together and I no longer felt the urge to eat gigantic stir fries loaded with veggies and beans. I wanted to enjoy my food rather than just stuff myself to feel full. And that meant returning to a more natural place with food: I started to eat what I liked. Banana pancakes. Blue cheese. Oatmeal with peanut butter. Mangoes. Asparagus with olive oil. Pizza. And of course, we can't forget, chocolate chip cookies. Suddenly, no food was off limits.

I started to feel comfortable with food. In a way, I felt like I was reverting to 4-year-old Katie, eating what I liked without any thought to the food police that have ruled my brain for so long. But every so often I'd feel the urge to go on a strict diet again. Every so often I'd look down at my thighs and think, 'If I could just diet for 4 months, I could lose X amount of weight.' And then what? Like the child I was at 12, I foolishly believed all my dreams would come true.

And this is where I am now. The healthiest I've felt towards food in a long time. Not dieting and not bingeing. No scale in the house, but my clothes fit the same as they did last month. And this is why I think it's the ideal time to start a new goal. Not to lose 90 pounds. And not to run a marathon. But rather to take on the Intuitive Eating challenge.

"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”

The NEW plan:

I will read Intuitive Eating, and I will go through all the steps, while documenting my progress right here on this blog. I hope that this journey is helpful to others in the same shoes as me. Next week, I will begin with Step One: Rejecting the Diet Mentality.