Intuitive Eating: Honor Your Hunger

Today I'm starting to focus on the second principle of Intuitive Eating: Honor Your Hunger.

2. Honor Your Hunger.  Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.

Over the long 3-day weekend, I became such a master of "reject the diet mentality" that I probably gained a bit.  Oh, well!  This is IE, and I love it. 

I figured that since I told myself that I would move on to each new principle as I master the previous one, it was time to move on to the second principle: Honor Your Hunger!

This is tricky for most recovering dieters.  ;-)

I've been on a "food schedule" for years.  Most recently on WW, my food schedule looked something like this:

8:00am- eat big bowl of oatmeal
12:00pm- eat big bowl of whole grains mixed with beans, veggies, and evoo
3:00pm (optional)- eat snack, usually a bar or some fruit
5:30pm- eat another big bowl of whole grains mixed with beans, veggies, and evoo
between 8-10pm- eat a Power Foods snack/4th meal- sometimes leftovers from lunch or dinner, sometimes a bowl of shredded wheat

This was on a perfectly on plan day, mind you.  I wasn't always so "perfect".

I ate at those times, almost always whether or not I was truly hungry.  Yes, even after switching to the Simply Filling Technique, I would still eat at those times if not truly hungry, because that was the only way that I knew to eat and still lose weight.  On a schedule. 

With Honor Your Hunger, I now have to stop keeping a food schedule.  Which will prove to be very tricky on work days, which is Monday through Friday for me. 

So far today, here's how I've honored my hunger-

I packed a banana and my usual big bowl of oatmeal made with almond milk and applesauce.  I ate the banana as soon as I got to work (7:45).  About an hour later, I ate about half of the oatmeal.  I ate another couple of bites a few minutes ago, and right now I'm still feeling quite satisfied.  I think that I'm probably done until lunch time.  And I've only eaten half of my usual breakfast!  Craziness.

I will let you know how lunch, dinner, and snacks go!  I think that I am finding that I'm more of a grazer/snacker than I am a big meal eater, if I'm truly listening to my hunger signals.  And that's fine with me!  I like to eat.

P.S. Don't forget to ENTER THE BOOK GIVEAWAY!  The last entries will be accepted tomorrow (June 1st).  Drawing is June 2nd!  The odds are still pretty good for everyone with about 20 entries so far.  Yay!  I'm so excited to give stuff away.  :-)