Intuitive Eating - Rejecting the Diet Mentality (IE Day 1)

Around noon today I decided to JUST DO IT and start my Intuitive Eating program.  I've made another big decision, and that is to increase my goal weight to 144.

If I end up losing more weight as I switch from Weight Watchers (WW) to Intuitive Eating (IE), that is okay with me.  I just want to find my "happy weight", a weight that I can maintain easily and naturally.  I think that my body has just about found it for me, as I feel quite healthy and pretty at 144.2.

I know that you all will support my decision to start IE now rather than wait.  I also know that you will support me if I later change my mind and go crawling back to WW.  You guys are just cool like that.  :-)

I am going to practice one step of IE at a time.  I'm going to start with the first principle of IE: Reject the Diet Mentality.

I'm going to quote the book quite often, just so you know.  Here are my favorite quotes from Chapter 5 of the book, which discusses in detail the first principle.

REJECTING THE DIET MENTALITY:
"Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you the false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently.  Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight.  If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating." (p 40)

THE DIET VOID
"For many people, dieting has been a way to cope with life,  from filling up time, to exercising a semblance of control." (p 41)

"But when you say good-bye to the thrill and excitement of dieting, you'll also be letting go of the false hope and disappointments from dieting." (p. 41)

PSUEDO DIETING
Some examples of psuedo dieting:

"Eating only 'safe' foods"
"Paying penance for eating 'bad' foods"
"Pacifying hunger by drinking coffee or diet soda"



The Dieter's Dilemma (p47)

 In case you can't read the print in this picture: Desire to be thin--->Dieting--->Cravings/Reduced self-control--->Loss of control/Overeating--->Regain of lost weight--->Desire to be thin

HOW TO REJECT THE DIET MENTALITY
1. Recognize and acknowledge the damage that dieting causes.
      a. cause satiety cues to atrophy
      b. linked to eating disorders
2. Be aware of diet-mentality traits and thinking
     a. forget willpower- "While no doctor would expect a patient to "will" blood pressure to normal levels, physicians frequently expect their patients to "will" their weight loss by restricting their food."
     b. Forget being obedient.
     c. Forget about failure.
3. Get rid of the dieter's tools
     a. The scale!!! "Best bet - stop weighing yourself."

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Hmmmm.... I don't know if I'm ready to completely give up the scale yet.  Everything else, however, I'm putting into effect immediately, and will be focusing on rejecting the diet mentality.  I will discuss the second principle next week.  Meanwhile, I'll let you know how my experience with IE is going.