Some possibly helpful epiphanies...

The last few weeks I have had several little epiphanies about my EDNOS/Diet Addiction Recovery Plan.

I thought that I would share some of those first, and then end this post with a vent about how scared and excited I am for this weekend's half marathon.

Okay, so here are some of the epiphanies, in no special order:

1) In my dieting days, I always thought "Exercise more to eat more!" and I'm realizing exactly how backwards I had it.  That approach motivated me to exercise using food as a reward.  For me, that did not help me gain a healthy relationship with either food or exercise.

the ole' "twinkie on a plunger" trick...

 I realized recently that I've stopped thinking that way since stopping tracking those things.

Now I exercise because I want to, not to earn food rewards.  Also, when training for a race, sometimes the opposite of that rule is true, and I need to "Eat more to exercise more!"  That isn't the new rule, because if I made that a rule then this would be too diet-y, but it definitely has been a pattern, and helpful.  For example, if I try to run 10 miles at 2 in the afternoon when my relatively small breakfast was at 9 in the morning, for example, I'm going to crash and burn around mile 3.

It improves my exercise greatly when I eat more.  Of course, it improves even more when I eat more healthy foods, but my performance is improved with ANY food, even if that food is a leftover slice of pizza and a poptart.  The point here is that I'm finally understanding that age old adage about how food is fuel.

Any fuel will work, of course premium is best, but energy is energy.

2) I was hanging out with my 11 year old cousin, and he lied about having already ate dinner so that he could continue playing video games with his friends.

I'm not condoning the lie, but just to imagine a life where food was so unimportant that I would rather play with my friends than eat dinner was liberating.  I used to see eating that way, too.  Sure I had favorite foods, and enjoyed eating sometimes, but eating was not my top priority when I was a kid.  It didn't even make the top ten list.

Sometimes I need to remember to listen to my inner child.  This is especially true for me when it comes to recovery, because that was the only time in my life when I didn't have a messed up relationship with food.  My inner child can remind me that there are so many things in my life that are more important than food.

(Of course, obviously food and eating are very important things, but I'm sick of focusing on them so much!)

Hmmm...  okay, I guess that is only two.  I know that there is a third, but I can't remember it for the life of me.  So, I will go on to the second part of this post.

I'm so freaking excited and terrified about the half marathon that is happening in three days!!!!!!!

I became a runner in January.  I had noble intentions to be able to run most of this half marathon.  At this point, however...  I'm running a mile at a time.  I take a walk break every mile.  I'm cool with this for my first half.

My new running mantra:  Finishing is winning.

I'm super excited for the beginning of the race.  I imagine that the crowd will be exciting, and Chattanooga looks really pretty in pictures.  My first time there, and I chose to go running on  their bridges.  :-)

Please send me strength on Sunday morning!  I can't believe that the half is finally here.

the medal that I'm going to get!!!

So I'm excited but scared.  I know that I can do this, but I also know that it won't be easy.  I'm mostly looking forward to it being over!  That finish line is going to look GOOD.

I have a new audio book that I plan to listen to during the race.  I love listening to music while I run, but lately I've found that when I'm going a long distance, I'd rather listen to podcasts or audio books.

I need new shoes, but I have been warned to not get anything new right before a race, so I will keep these guys around for a bit longer.  It's amazing how quickly shoes lose their support when you run a lot...

Anyway, my next post will be after the race, so I will be a new woman.  Seriously, I do expect to be a new person after this race is over.  What an accomplishment!  I am proud of myself for signing up.  I can't imagine how proud I will be when I finish.

Three Steps towards recovery...

Remember the first two steps of my EDNOS/diet addiction recovery plan?  They were No More Guilt and Total Body Acceptance.  (Please check out the links for the posts regarding these two steps, if you missed them!)

I'm happy to say that I'm doing fantastic with both of these things now.  They are actually just my new normal at this point.  I (almost) never feel guilty about food or exercise decisions, and I (almost) always love and appreciate my body exactly as it is.  I say "almost" because I'm not perfect yet, but seriously it's rare when I feel food/exercise guilt or have negative self-talk about my body.

What progress that is for me!  When I wrote those posts, I was still engaging in both of those behaviors all of the time.  Practically every time I made a food or exercise decision, I would regret it, and beat myself up over it.  Every time I looked in the mirror at my body, I cringed, and dreamed of a day when my body would be smaller and therefore better.

I'm  super happy to say that this is no longer the case.

It really did just take practice to master these two steps.  

For "No More Guilt", just a constant reminder whenever I started to feel guilty about food or exercise to step back and remember that those decisions are MORALLY NEUTRAL and that they should elicit NO GUILT and to in fact feel guilt about those things is DISORDERED THINKING. 

 Eventually, I believed those things, and now I don't assign moral values to food or exercise.  Food is food, exercise is exercise, and no amounts or types of either define me as a person.  Really, they don't!  I'm so much happier without that constant guilt hanging over my head.

Some random self-love at Walmart!

For "Total Body Acceptance" I just started to love my body more.  In order to do that, I spent more time with it.  I did things like take baths without bubbles, walk around the house naked sometimes, pamper my body by always keeping it clean and moisturized, and being in more full body pictures.  I stopped avoiding mirrors and cameras.  I really learned my body.  After spending years avoiding body acceptance, this has been extremely enlightening.  

I also bought plenty of new clothes to fit my body.  Cute stuff from my new favorite clothing store: Torrid.  (sidenote: If you are a plus size woman who does not like her body and has refused to believe in the possiblity of cute plus size clothes, please do yourself a favor and check our your local Torrid!  I hope that you have one.  I adore mine.)  Cute clothes that fit my body really helped me in this step.

Just stopping avoiding the reality of my body's appearance and feel has made me love it.  Seriously, I used to be disgusted with my body when it was this size.  Disgusted.  Like, I would cry when I thought about it, and get angry when I saw pictures of it.  It was really messed up, how much hate I had towards my plus-size body.  Really.  Messed. Up.

I accept my body now.  And it feels great!

Now, all that being said...  Even though I'm no longer guilty or body-hating, I still recognize the need to change my eating habits and to lose some excess weight.  But these needs do not need to be met with guilt or body-hate.  Really, they don't!  Those two things have NEVER helped me to eat healthier, exercise more, or lose weight for the long term.  So I gave them up, and I won't be getting them back.  

The third step in my recovery is Intuitive Eating.  And I already told you guys a couple of weeks ago that I'm working on it again, so step 3 is on its way.  This third step will be broken down into several tiny steps.  So let's say that my EDNOS/Diet Addiction Recovery Plan is an outline, it would look like this:

I) No More Guilt.

II) Total Body Acceptance.

III) Intuitive Eating

        a) Eat only when hungry

        b) Stop eating when satisfied

               i) Stop eating when full

               

I'm at IIIai right now.  It's always been very difficult for me to stop eating when satisfied, so for now I'm going to do baby steps and stop eating when full.  To me, these are two different things. Once I'm "full", I know that I've gone past "satisfied" a bit.  But it's an easier sensation to recognize.  So I will start there. 

My next entry will be about the half marathon training!  

               

Let's try this again!

By "this", I mean intuitive eating.  I'm ready to give it another go.

The difference this time is that I am not going to be strict about it, and also that I am officially using it as a technique to get beyond my EDNOS.

I have always known that the day would come when I would need to go back to intuitive eating.

Since I have gone back and forth so many times, and shared pretty much every experience with my eating behaviors right here on this blog, I'm not too embarassed to let you all in on my return to IE.

I have tried and failed at Intuitive Eating several times.  Why have I failed?  Hmmm.  For many reasons, but I'm going to talk about the biggest reason for now.

I was looking at IE as another diet plan.  The "Eat When I'm Hungry, Stop Eating When I'm Satisfied Diet".  When I got sick of doing those things, or when I wasn't losing weight (or even when I was gaining it!), I would either give up on the IE "Diet" completely and lose myself in the world of binge eating again, or I would go back to tracking regularly so that I could eat until stuffed so long as I tracked it, and could still lose weight if I stayed under a specific calories or Points number.

Intuitive Eating should not be looked at in this way.  It is not a diet.  It is not a "lifestyle change" (which is really another word for diet in my opinion).  It is just listening to my body.  Giving it what it wants: no more, no less.  It is asking myself these questions before I eat:  "Am I hungry?" and "Is this what I want?" and giving myself  unconditional permission to eat when the answer to those two questions is "Yes!".  And of course, asking myself those same questions every few bites in order to figure out when to stop eating.

But even that ONE rule is enough to send me spiraling into a diet mentality sometimes.  

Like "Fuck you, Intuitive Eating.  No, I'm not hungry, and no this is not what I really want, but it's here and I want it, so I'm going to fucking eat it.  Stupid IE, making me only eat when I'm hungry and only eat what I really want, and then WTF making me have to stop every few bites and ask myself those same questions again?! Ridiculous."

Because I know this about myself and my past attempts at Intuitive Eating, I'm going to be gentle with myself regarding this rule.  I am going to think of it as a  healthy guideline, not a do-or-die absolute must RULE.

And I'm going to assume that if I practice this skill for long enough, eventually I won't have to be all "Okay, Self.  Are you still hungry?  No?  Okay then, pack it up until you're hungry again."  Eventually it will come naturally.  And that's when I will have fully recovered from my weirdo dieting behaviors once and for all.  But this will be a process.

There will be times when I binge.  There will be days when I wake up after a night of binge eating when I decide to track on My Fitness Pal for the week, the day, or even just for breakfast.  There will be times when my pants feel tight, and times when my pants feel loose.  As long as I can accept these things, then I truly believe that I will be okay with continuing on the path of becoming an intuitive eater who is recovered from EDNOS.

It may take years.  I can accept that.  I'm done with quick fixes.  All of the quick fixes that I have tried have exactly one thing in common with each other:  They didn't work long term.

Meanwhile, I still have many other way more important things going on.  One of which I have to get back to right now!  Time for class.  :-)

I hope that my random midday rambling about Intuitive Eating made sense to you guys.

Have you ever tried intuitive eating?  Why or why not?  

Did you like it?  

Are you still an intuitive eater?  

Please let me know in the comments, or on my FB page. 

Cravings...

All I want to eat these days is junk food.  And I'm conflicted about whether or not that's okay...

I know that I'm trying to not feel any guilt about food or exercise (or lack thereof).  So I'm not really feeling guilty about my days that begin with toaster pastries and end with ice cream.

But...  when am I going to start craving healthy stuff?  I am in that beginning phase of intuitive eating where I'm eating whatever I want without worrying about nutrition, so long as it's only when I'm hungry...  but...  but...  my desires for junk food are not getting any smaller.  (And I know all about the addicting chemicals within my processed garbage frankenfoods; that is not what this post is about.)

I'm wondering if I am truly giving myself permission to eat.  Perhaps I'm scared that some day soon I will go back on another diet and have to stop eating chips for lunch and pizza for dinner forever.  That's how diets work:  they suck me in, I truly believe that I will eat that way FOREVER, and I mourn the loss of eating my favorites of pizza and chips.

Then again, why choose?

So perhaps the reason that I am not craving healthy food at all these days is that I'm scared that some day soon, I will ONLY be allowed to eat healthy food FOREVER.  Like when I did the New Sonoma Diet.  Or maybe I'm scared that one day I will only be allowed to eat so many calories or fat grams or carbs every day, and that when I look at my food diary I will realize that chips and pizza aren't worth the calories/Points, like with My Fitness Pal or Weight Watchers...

Anyway...  I am just that by writing out what's going on with my eating, I will be able to identify and fix the problem.  I'm pretty sure that I have hit the nail on the head.  The problem is:

I'm not giving myself permission to eat.  

I'm not entirely convinced that I will never diet again.  

I know that dieting isn't the answer for me. However, I've been on so many that it's hard to believe that some day I won't realize once again that I hate my body and that the only answer is to restrict by monitoring my food and exercise with another diet.

I don't know how to fix this problem.  It's definitely not a quick fix.  If it were, then I would have done it already.  I suppose that I will continue on my path, and will hope that eventually I will trust myself around food, and truly give myself permission to eat, knowing that there is not another diet around the corner.

another bathroom selfie!

Meanwhile, I'm still working on total body acceptance.  Today I feel pretty cute.  And I know that I don't look thin.  I know that I look like a cute plus size woman.  And for the first time in awhile, I'm okay with that.  So that's a start there.

Taking a My Fitness Pal Break...

I remember a time when I was hooked on the Weight Watchers message boards.  I spent hours a day on there, getting tips, talking with "friends" (and a couple of actual friends), giving advice, and reading posts about anything and everything.

I realized that it wasn't healthy to spend so much time on a site, especially once I drifted away from Weight Watchers yet again.  But instead of quitting altogether, I found a new addiction:  My Fitness Pal.

Don't get me wrong, now, I love MFP. 

It's a fantastic tool for weight loss and calorie counting. Also, the friends that I made on there have really helped to get me through some difficult times, including this entire past year.  They helped me with my grief and validated my emotions when I felt especially crazy.  I am more honest and revealing on my MFP page than I am with anyone in "real life".  They know the REAL me. 

...But. 

But, I was spending way too much time on there.  It has become an addiction, just like the Weight Watchers boards were. 

Because I don't want to feed ANY of my addictions, I am taking a break from MFP.  It will not be a permanent one, because like I said, I have made some true friends on there, and they have helped me so much.  I want to continue to be there for them as well, and MFP is a great forum to do that.

I am once again taking the plunge into intuitive eating.  This time, I am going to be truly kind to myself, and will be focusing on it from a different perspective, incorporating ideas from several different successful intuitive eaters and taking baby steps. 

In order to do this, I need to eliminate the temptation to track calories.  This is another reason that I am stepping away from MFP.  It is too tempting to track my food when I am on a site that is meant for... tracking food. 

I don't want to focus on weight loss or calories right now, and that is MFP's main purpose. 

The main reason that I am stepping away from tracking is that I truly believe that it is the next step for my EDNOS recovery, as well as eliminating emotional eating as much as possible. 

One IE tip that is helping me today is to ask myself every time I eat:  "Would I still want to eat this if I were not allowed to watch TV / play on the internet / read while eating it?"  If the answer is "yes" then I must be truly hungry.  And sometimes I do step away and eat without the distractions, but most of the time I am still eating with some distractions.  Baby steps and self-love.  I will get there.

One of my goals is to enjoy biking for the
sake of biking, not for the calories burned. 

One final reason that I'm stepping away from MFP for a bit is the LSAT!!!  I have fallen behind in my studying, and the most important test that I will ever take (until the bar, I suppose...) is only five weeks away!!!  Yikes.

Also, if you guys want to read more about intuitive eating from another blogger's perspective, you should check out my friend Marie's blog The Dancing Paralegal.  She has recently taken the IE plunge, too, and is doing really great.

Have you ever been addicted to a website? 

If so, how did you get over it?

Intuitive Eating as a diet?? (book review, too!)

I have blogged about intuitive eating before.  Several times, in fact.

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time, you likely know that I have a strong desire to be rid of my food obsession, and also that I have thought for years that the best way to do that is to become an intuitive eater.

I have read several books on the subject, and have tried it several times.  I have failed every time.  Sometimes, I have failed miserably, gaining several pounds in just a few weeks of intuitive eating.

What was my problem?  Why can I not be an intuitive eater?  Why do I continue to go back to dieting, tracking, etc.?

Well... because.

No, seriously, there are reasons for this.

I thought that the reason was that I still wanted junk food in my life, and because junk food is so super nutritionally void and also addictive, and therefore hard to stop eating when satisfied, that I could not stop tracking my calories until I eliminated my desire for junk food.

After reading yet another book on the subject of Intuitive Eating, I have realized that this thinking is false for me.  Also, the reason that I have failed so many times may be because I was looking at it as a diet, which really flies in the face of what intuitive eating is all about.

The book that I'm talking about is not a popular one yet.  It's a book written by someone who started out recording her intuitive eating experiences on a YouTube channel.  Jose Spinardi is not a doctor or nutritionist, but is someone who has been where I'm at, so the book was very easy to read.

Since I am practically an expert on the subject (hahaha), a lot of the beginning of this book was repetitive for me.  Lots of good background intuitive eating information is covered in the first couple of chapters.

Then came some stuff that was almost the same as Intuitive Eating by Tribole and Resch, but a little bit different.  Instead of calling it "intuitive eating", Spinardi calls it "Hunger Directed Eating" or HDE. 

She talks about eating without distractions, but gives really specific and fun tips about it, which made me hate the thought slightly less.  One tip that she gives to accomplish this is to look at whatever you usually do while eating as a reward for finishing eating.  Like "no Buffy until dinner is done", which may sound like you should rush through eating to get to Buffy, but that is not how I interpreted it.  It's more like if you separate these activities, you will soon start to think of TV as something that you do after a meal, not during. 

She also hit on something that is not really said in the IE book:  This is NOT the "Eat When Hungry, Stop Eating When Satisfied" diet.  WHAT?!?!?!?!  It's NOT?!?!?!?!

She says that looking at intuitive eating as a "food rule" is just another way to keep on dieting, and by constantly berating myself for breaking the rule, by obsessing about whether or not I am truly hungry or truly satisfied every time I eat, I have been treating IE as a diet.

Instead, a newbie to HDE should be gentle with oneself, and kind and loving.  Every step is part of the process, and no one is perfect.  It's okay to not be perfect with this, because it is NOT a diet. 

WOW.  For me, this was an eye-opener. 

Another great point that she makes later in the book is that to truly break the dieting cycle, you must break the exercise cycle, too.  No more associating exercise with weight loss.  WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Exercise should be used for so many beneficial reasons, but one of them that should not make that list is weight loss.  Stop counting exercise calories, stop exercising just to eat more, stop making up for overeating with exercise, etc.... that is one of her points.  And I am starting to agree! 

The thing that I loved most about this book is that the author doesn't make any real rules about intuitive eating.  She says that when you see things as rules, you start thinking like a dieter again.  She talked about how one should treat oneself as one would treat a toddler learning to walk.

"If the child wobbled off balance and fell after a successful couple of days of walking, would you attack her with the venemous words you're about to unleash on yourself?  Not in a million years!  No, if it was a minor fall you'd probably give her a warm smile and make a fun acknowledging comment like "Oopsie" and laugh together about it as you encouraged her back to her feet.  If it was a bad fall, you'd drop everything and rush to clutch her up into your tender, soothing arms, cradling her with soft, loving words as you gently tended to her pain."

This was a great book for me.  If you enjoy books about intuitive eating, or if you, like me, have tried to eat intuitively and "failed", this may be a good choice for you.

***EDITED TO ADD the bad stuff.  This book was not perfect!  It's not very professional, because I don't think it was every really published by a big firm or anything.  There were a couple of typos, but I have found typos in almost everything I have ever read.  Another annoying thing is that she kept mentioning a 2nd book, which is not published yet, which will supposedly cure emotional eating.  I will definitely keep you guys updated on that second book, because I will be getting it.

Finding my own style... my "eating personalities"

I have issues with aspiring to eat like other people.  Not necessarily real people, either.  This probably comes from reading so many food blogs and watching way too much TV. 

I struggle between wanting to eat like the Gilmore Girls and wanting to eat like Angela from Oh She Glows.

Two extremely different eating styles. 

On the one hand, if I could eat like Lorelai or Rory Gilmore, I could eat copious amounts of fast, frozen, and/or junk food any time I was hungry for it and stay healthy and beautiful.

On the other hand, if I could eat like Angela Liddon, I could cook all of my meals and snacks from scratch and eat it any time I was hungry for it and stay healthy and beautiful.

These are my two different eating personalities.  And yes, I do think that when it comes to eating, I have multiple personalities.  And my eating personalities can change a few times a day sometimes.

Mostly though, I want to be able to eat whatever I want and still stay healthy and beautiful.  That seems to be the only simularity between the two styles.

I still love eating junk food.  I eat chips, snack cakes, and pizza often.  "Food".

But I also LOVE eating healthy food!  I love to cook!  I love to experiment in the kitchen!  I love it when I discover new healthy and whole foods that I enjoy.

It is my belief that the only way that I can continue on this combined path (junk food PLUS healthy home-cooked food) without gaining weight is to track my calorie intake. 

The only problem with this scenario is that I want to some day be an intuitive eater, meaning that I eat ONLY when actually hungry and stop when satisfied and never track my calories.

Which means that one day I will no longer eat junk food regularly, thus saying goodbye to my Gilmore Girls eating personality entirely. 

For now, the eating style that I choose is all my own.  I am eating junk food daily, plus cooking healthy meals regularly and eating it daily.  I track my calories on My Fitness Pal.  I try to only eat when actually hungry, but still have issues stopping when satisfied.

And I'm healthy!  And I'm happy with myself.  And I'm strong.  And I'm losing weight and inches (weighing in monthly or less, because it's not about the scale anymore).  And this is working for me.

I hope that I can stop trying to eat like someone who I am not...  I'm Leah, and I eat like Leah, and that's a pretty cool person to eat like.

Diet soda and gum

DIET SODA AND GUM- Let me first say that I am in no way against either of these things.  I will not preach about the evils that artificial sweetners do to us, or about how these are not "real" things, but fake franken-food stuffs.  That is soooo not the point of this post.

What is the point, you ask?

Well.  It's just another post about my newfound status as an non-emotional eater.

Since I stopped eating for reasons other than hunger a few weeks ago, I've noticed something else that felt blog-worthy. 

I used to almost constantly be drinking a diet soda or chewing a piece of sugar free gum.  Seriously.  Almost constantly.  Some days actually constantly.

I would wake up, drink diet coke until I could get breakfast, then immediately pop a piece of gum in my mouth after my meal was gone.  After the gum went bad, I would either pop in a new piece, eat a snack, or drink another diet soda.  Seriously.  From the time that I woke up in the morning until right before bedtime, my mouth was either chewing or swallowing.

Last week I chewed only 4 pieces of gum and drank about 4 diet sodas a day.  For me, this is a huge decrease. 

This was not a consious move.  It was just an observation that I didn't have to buy my usual three pack of gum and three 12-packs of diet soda for the week.  Because I still have plenty left from the week before.

And it hit me:  I was not just an emotional eater.  I was an emotional drinker and chewer, too.  I was using diet soda and sugar free gum as tools to get me through those non-eating hours.  I wanted to constantly be eating.  But because that caused weight gain, I was contantly chewing gum or drinking diet soda between meals and snacks.

I also think that this was leftover EDNOS behavior.  Back in my severe ED days (about 8 years ago), I was all about the diet soda and sugar free gum.  Even though I "recovered" (I put that word in quotes because my food obsession didn't actually end until recently), I kept the diet soda and sugar free gum addictions as a safety net.

Why I drank diet soda before:
(1) to fill me up between meals
(2) to enjoy as a beverage between with my food
(3) to wake up!

Why I drink diet soda now:
(1) to enjoy as a beverage with my food
(2) to wake up...

Why I chewed sugar free gum before:
(1) to keep my mouth busy between meals

Why I chew sugar free gum now:
(1) when my mouth tastes bad and I suspect bad breath.

I'm not planning to give either up.  I enjoy my diet sodas and gum a lot.  And now that I'm consuming them in moderation (hey - four cans a day is low for some of us!)  I see no reason to be concerned about it.  If I naturally continue to consume less and less of each over time until they are just occassional treats or I just no longer want them, then fine.  Otherwise, they are in my life to stay.  :-)



Mom with her token Diet Coke in hand

Plus, Mom was a Diet Coke fan and I will always think of her when I drink that specific diet soda. 

What are your thoughts on diet soda and sugar free gum?  Do you consume them more than you would like; are you anti- or pro-?  Let me know!  :-)

JUNK FOOD (the chip clip people)

I will start this post by admitting (once again) that I am eating junk food every day. 

But for me, this is actually a victory.

Let me explain.

For years, ever since age 11 or so, I have had an unhealthy relationship with food.  I've considered myself addicted to some foods, and to be an emotional eater, a closet eater, an anorexic, a binge-eater, and a chronic dieter, to name a few...

I would always be amazed when I went into someone's house and saw a bag of chips with a CHIP CLIP on it, as if the idea of not eating the entire bag in one sitting was impossible for me.  I didn't know what these people who could keep junk food in the house without obsessing about it.

Some examples of my obsessive thoughts about junk food in my house:

"When will I be alone so that I can eat it?" 

"Why was I so stupid to buy this junk food?"

"WTF is wrong with me?"

"It's okay, I can eat them later..." 

"When can I eat the whole thing???" 

"Why did I eat the whole thing???"

"DON'T eat it.  Just keep it as a reminder of the fat pig that you used to be."

"Why am I torturing myself?"

"Just eat it, then start over tomorrow!"

"And never buy these again." 

"Bad girl for buying these!"

"Good girl for not eating these yet!"

"Bad girl for eating all of these!"

"Good girl for only eating a couple!"

"Bad girl for buying them in the first place.  Seriously, NEVER AGAIN."

"If they weren't here, I wouldn't have eaten them.  STUPID."

And on and on and on.

Whenever I tried Intuitive Eating, I would end up eating mostly junk food.  This was probably because I was still looking at IE as a diet, and I knew that some day it would be over, and that I wouldn't be allowed to eat chips and cookies every day anymore.  Because no one can eat those daily and  be healthy, right?!

Now that I have truly let go of emotional eating, and am allowing myself to truly eat whatever I want without restriction (besides staying within a very generous calorie range and trying to listen to my hunger signals), I am able to enjoy a moderate amount of junk food every day.

I'm finally one of the chip clip people.  I have a box of cookies in the pantry, and a couple of bags of chips.  I enjoy some every evening that I want to, and that has been most evenings these days.  They fit effortlessly into my daily calories, and I am able to stop after a serving or two EVERY TIME.

No longer do I experience true cravings for junk food.  There is no need to crave it, because I can have it today, and again tomorrow, and again the day after that, indefintely. 

That part of Intuitive Eating that I was missing, the part about unconditional permission to eat...  I'm finally there.  And I'm enjoying copious amounts of healthy meals, alongside some junk food every day (see yesterday's Tasty Tuesday).  And I'm 100% okay with this.

Forbidden fruit?  Not any more!  Goodbye, chip fantasies.

One side effect of this is that it's no longer exciting to go down the chips aisle at the grocery store, because I'm no longer thinking "this may be the last time that I will buy this, because I may decide to do a no-junk-food-challenge again soon".  Having chips always available to me has really taken away some of their allure.  Which is  HUGE victory for me.

I think that eventually, if I continue along this path, I will no longer want junk food every day.  But for now, I do.  And that's okay.  My food diary is a judgement-free zone.

Reject the Diet Mentality (Take 2)

 

Reject the Diet Mentality

Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you 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.

~Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole and ElyseResch

I have tried in the past to learn this first principle of inutuitive eating, but I never quite got there. 

There was always still a part of me that was looking at IE as a diet.  I never truly rejected the diet mentality.

And I'm still working hard on this priciple of IE.

Every day is a challenge and an opportunity to learn.

Failure is not a part of Intuitive Eating, and I'm glad that I'm finally embracing that fact.  As long as I'm trying to learn this, I am not failing at it.

I'm not tracking my food.  I'm allowing myself to eat ANYTHING (besides meat, but that's because I don't want to eat meat).  I'm working steadily on my "all or nothing" approach to eating.

For now, what this means for me besides not tracking, is not caring about nutrition.  The authors of this book openly admit that during the first stage of IE, you will probably be nutritionly unbalanced, and this is not the way that you will want to eat forever.

I'm not eating a lot of healthy options right now.  I just don't really want many whole foods right now.  I'm working on truly rejecting the diet mentality and letting my food preferences make my decisions.

Surprisingly (or not, according the the book), I'm not overeating as much as I did when I was counting calories and PointsPlus. 

I think that I may be finally learning to trust myself around food.

The food, whatever it may be, will always be an option for me to eat.  Even in an hour, if I get hungry again.  Therefore, there is no need to overeat it.

I have found that there is an online community for Intuitive Eating, found here which is really great.  It's full of supportive intuitive eaters, many of them IE-in-training, like me.  :-)

Anyway... that's how I'm working with the first principle of Intuitive Eating: Reject the Diet Mentality.

Personal Update:

School started back up today, and with it came a whole slew of mixed emotions.  Happy to be back into a routine, happy to be learning again, happy to be progressing towards my degree... but devestated that I cannot call Mom to tell her how my first day went. 

However, I am not going to dive head-first into a bag of chips in an effort to suppress my emotions.  Instead, I'm going to embrace the emotions for what they are.  Emotions are normal, and are a wonderful thing.  I am learning to feel them instead of supress them, and this will be a key part to furthering my recovery from EDNOS.

Blog posts in the works and coming soon:

• book review: Eating in the Light of the Moon: How Women can Transform their Relationships with Food through Myths, Metaphors, and Storytelling
• IE Principle #2: Honor Your Hunger
• IE Principle #3: Make Peace with Food
• My Thoughts on Health At Every Size

P.S. Please be sure to check out my latest sidebar addition over there and help fund my super-talented brother's latest project!

Fickle Me... Back to Intuitive Eating!!!

...Yep.  You read the title correctly.  I'm switching plans AGAIN.

This is not "giving up" on Weight Watchers.  This is just me, finally having reached dieting rock bottom (a phrase from the book!). 

I still stand behind every single plan (and plan within a plan) that I have tried since starting this blog.  Every single one of them are wonderful in their own ways.  Some of them are better than others.  They all  have the potential to be life-long plans.  There are probably many people out there who have truly been able to make lifestyles out of each and every one of them.

Just for fun, I think that I will take a walk down memory lane... Also, my friend and fellow blogger Kate said that she didn't know if she would love to know how many times I've changed plans.  ;-)

Here are the plans that I have tried since the beginning of this blogging adventure:

1) The Kind Diet - my first "kind" grocery list (April 5, 2010)
2) Weight Watchers Momentum - back to WW (June 28, 2010)
3) confusion/not really following anything 100% - fickle (July 9, 2010)
4) decision to combine TKD with WW - blog name change (July 13, 2010)
5) Weight Watchers PointsPlus - PointsPlus summary (November 30, 2010)
6) WW Simply Filling Technique - SFT (February 20, 2011)
7) "Leah's WW Plan" (modifications to WW) - My Plan (March 15, 2011)
8) Sparkpeople - Taking a WW break (March 28, 2011)
9) ...and back to WW as written - Hello, WW! (April 14, 2011)
10) Intuitive Eating - goal weight crisis/IE thoughts (May 23, 2011)
11)  My Fitness Pal - Calorie Counting Confession (June 27, 2011)
12) Another Leah Original Diet Plan - Experimental New Plan (August 17, 2011)
13) ...and back to WW again! - The WWer Returns (September 12, 2011)
14) Intuitive Eating, Take 2 - EDNOS recovery (December 2, 2011)
15) ALODP - Back to School Plan (January 12, 2012)
16) MFP/IE combo... - Reject the Diet Mentality (February 10, 2012)
17) Eat to Live - ETL (February 21, 2012)
18) The Emotional Diet - Working on things... (May 17, 2012)
19) Back to WW again - Week One Back (July 2, 2012)
20) Simply Filling Technique again - SFT (August 13, 2012)

Woah...

Okay, so I've tried a lot of different things to lose weight.  I always end up going back to Weight Watchers it seems.  I think that is because WW is comfortable for me, because I  understand that plan.  Not because I actually enjoy eating that way, but I get it.  It's a really good plan!

Like I said, I stand by all of these decisions.  They are all good plans, but...  I'm ready to be on the non-plan plan again.

I'm going to start out slow and easy with the intuitive eating thing this time around.  I'm in no rush to get it.

Sure, I would still love to make my "Lose 25 Pounds by Valentines Day" challenge.  But I may not, and that is okay.

I'm going to start IE with focusing on the first parts, and not move into the rest of the book until I master the first ideas.

For me, that is rejecting the diet mentality, giving myself truly unlimited permission to eat, honoring my hunger, and learning to trust myself to choose my own foods and exercises.

I hope that all of you support my decision to give Intuitive Eating another go, since this is what I truly want, after LOTS of soul-searching.

And yes, I realize that I may switch back to WW or something else again, because that does seem to be my pattern. But for now, I'm really going to commit to IE.

Recovering from EDNOS

Time for another reflective and honest post about my history with disordered eating.

Only, I'm going to be talking in the present tense a bit...

...because lately I've been thinking that despite being "recovered" from anorexia/EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) for years, I still have a bit of it inside me.

And it is that I'm pretty much obsessed with tracking my food.  Or with following a food plan.  Or both.

When I tried to break myself from this obsession with Intuitive Eating, I failed because I was still being obsessive.  I was trying to follow Intuitive Eating to a T.  I was on the non-plan plan (isn't that a quote from a movie?).

Anyway, my point here is that I am still (slightly) suffering from EDNOS.  It's not life-threatening like it was seven years ago, because I don't under-eat and I don't over-exercise.. 

But my mind is still overly cluttered with thoughts of food and exercise. 

I am proud that I've been able to make diet and exercise less of a priority for me lately, but it's not enough.

I think that for me to truly recover from my EDNOS once and for all, I need to stop tracking my food and exercise completely.

Not by following the Intuitive Eating book, but simply by just learning more.

This blog may change a bit as I try to release myself from these obsessive thoughts and the preoccupation with numbers (weight, size, calories/PointsPlus, calories burned, etc.).

I hope that you still enjoy my blog when it's no longer about how much I've eaten, how much I've exercised, or how much weight and inches I've lost or gained.

There will still be entries with vegan recipes, and also entries that will touch on the following themes (which are all goals of mine):

1. Learning to love the body that I have.

2. Not dieting. (no tracking my food or avoiding any foods because they are "bad")

3. Eat when hungry, don't eat when not hungry.

4. Exercise when I want to, and do fun exercises for the sake of feeling good, not for the sake of burning calories.

5. Get stronger, faster, and healthier.

But I am also going to be posting on topics of mental health and well being.  How I'm doing, if (when) I slip up, and of course there is the very real possibility that I will change my mind and go back to Weight Watchers, My Fitness Pal, or any other number of tracking sites. 
 
This is the beginning of a new journey, one that will focus on my letting go of the diet industry and the pressure to be thin, and learning to love myself and my body. 
 
If I lose more weight, I'm fine with that.  If I don't, I'm... learning to be fine with that.  If I GAIN... ?  Still hoping that doesn't happen, but as long as I'm healthy and happy, that's what the focus will be from here on out.
 
Thanks for reading.  :-)  I love you guys.

Confession: I'm going back to calorie-counting (for now)

Well...  as much as I really wanted to be an Intuitive Eater, I've come to (once again!) accept that I'm just not ready for it.

I gained again.  It's almost too depressing for me to even admit to you how much, after a week of pure IE, but okay- it was 2.2 pounds.  So in the last two weeks of Intuitive Eating, I have managed to regain 5 entire pounds.

I got a new scale, and it said that I was back up to 153!!!!!!!!!!!!  So that's what I'm tracking my weight as now.  A gain of almost 10 pounds since I hit my goal of 144. 

And that is just too scary for me to continue. 

I have to go back to tracking.  I have decided to not go back to Weight Watchers, simply because that's just too diet-y for me right now, and I'd like to do a combination of IE and dieting...  If that's possible!

So I signed up for My Fitness Pal and have been basically doing IE but with tracking for the last few days.

So I'm still listening to my hunger signals and choosing foods that I like (about 80% really ridiculously healthy options, with 20% processed/junk foods right now... yes I'd like to increase the former to 90% at some point) but with limits.

I feel bad about giving up on Intuitive Eating again.  However, for me, it just wasn't working!  A reader of mine, Kate from This is Not  Diet, said something to me that really made me think:  "I think the only way to "eat whatever you want" and not gain weight is if you don't "want" to overeat or eat a lot of junk."

And I do still want to eat junk and I still want to overeat.  I don't know why I still want to do those things, but I do.  So I need the accountabity of calorie-counting for now.  I'm going to give My Fitness Pal three months of commitment, that is my plan.  My birthday is October 7, and according to MFP, I will have reached my weight loss goal by then, and will be working towards maintenance again, which is where I want to be!  :-)

So I hope that you all understand, my dear readers.  I didn't want to give up on IE, but I've just discovered that I am not yet ready to be a true IE-er.  IE just wasn't good for me at this point in my life.

With that in mind, I must remember one of the affirmations from my box of affirmations: 

"Walking away from something that is bad for you is not giving up."

I still 100% believe in Intuitive Eating, and will go back to it eventually, but for now...  I need to work some stuff out.  And part of that journey will include counting calories for the food that I eat and the exercise that I do.  And I'm okay with that.

still on a journey...

STRUGGLING. But working on it...

Just a quick post to let you all know that I've been struggling with Intuitive Eating! 

It's definately not as easy as it sounds... 

Eat when hungry.  Stop eating when satisfied.

Seems simple, doesn't it?

Nope...

Weight Watchers was easier.  I'm almost 100% sure that the reason that WW was easier for me than IE has been is that I have been dieting since I was 11, so that's fifteen years.  Fifteen years of doing anything regularly will not be easy to give up.

I do still believe that Intuitive Eating will be worth it in the end. 

I don't want to track my food forever.  I don't want to worry about food and exercise forever. 

I just want to be one of those lucky people who gets to eat whatever they want and not gain weight!

Is that too much to ask for?

IE says "No, it's not too much to ask for.  In fact, if you follow the guidelines in this book, you will be one of those lucky people eventually."

So...  I'm working on it.

It's a struggle, but I'm going to power through!

Tonight, I'm going out to eat with some family.  And we're going to On The Border, which has some outstanding vegan options, as most Mexican places do. 

I'm planning to order the vegetable fajita with avocado!  Then we're going to see Bad Teacher, which looks hilarious to me.  Should be a fun night.

My plan for eating out:  Enjoy it.  Focus on the conversation more than the food.  Savor each bite, there is no reason to overeat on the tortilla chips just because the others do...  I don't go out to eat often, this is very rare, so I am going to enjoy it.  :-)

Some Comparisons...

Just for fun (and YES, this was actually fun for me, I'm a nerd), I decided to compare three tracking methods of what I ate yesterday. 

And just in case any of you are as nerdy as I am when it comes to this stuff (and chances are if you follow/read my blog, you are), I thought that I would share my findings on here.  :-)

Here's my hunger journal with Intuitive Eating for a day-
time- (hunger level before eating) food (hunger level after eating)

8:00am- (3) 1 Lara bar, 1 banana (5)

10:00am- (3) 1 Lara bar, 1 packet of craisins (5) -YES, I ate 2 Lara Bars in one morning!  I was in a hurry and didn't have time to make the oatmeal that I usually eat for breakfast. 

12:30pm- (3) refried beans mixed with salsa, with Wasa flatbread crackers (5)

3:30pm- (2) apple (5)

5:30pm- (3) beans, rice, steamed veggies, EVOO (6)

8:00pm- (3) peanut butter with karo (5)

10:00pm- (4) boca burger (6)

Okay, so there you have it- one random day of Intuitive Eating for me.  Lots of healthy stuff, some sweetness (If you haven't tried PB & karo, do it!  It's creamy deliciousness!), and tons of satisfaction.

I went to plug in all this good food on both Sparkpeople and Weight Watchers.

According to Sparkpeople, here are the stats for the day:

Daily Goals- 1720-2070 calories, no carb goal (I took that away), 44-77 grams of fat, and 60-172 grams of protein.

Daily Totals- 1804 calories, 291 carbs, 52 grams of fat, and 68 grams of protein.

Pretty good stats, if I do say so myself!


According to Weight Watchers, here are the stats for the day:

Daily Goals- 35 Daily PointsPlus, 49 Weekly PoinstPlus

Daily Totals- 39 PointsPlus used (all 35 daily plus 4 weeklies)

Again, NOT BAD.

***************

This isn't something that I'm planning to do often, as it pretty much would be detrimental to my progress with Intuitive Eating.

However, I'm glad that I did this.  It proves that IE can be a healthy and balanced way to eat that does not have to cause weight gain.

If I plugged in any days from last week, the numbers on both SP and WW would probably be laughable.  I was going through a food rebellion phase last week, eating lots of junk foods "because I could". 

Now, I'm approaching IE in a more balanced way.  There is no need to overeat on cookies and chips every day, because they will always be there as an option for me.

I simply choose to eat more filling foods the majority of the time.

A BIG GAIN

What do you do when you have a really big gain???

Here's what I'm planning to do:  Look back at the last week, see what I ate and how I exercised.  Figure out what, if anything, went wrong.  Move on immediately into a GREAT week.  Oh, and NOT FREAK OUT.

Well folks, I gained a whopping 2.8 pounds this week.  The ironic thing is that is exactly how much my first loss at Weight Watchers was.  :-)  I remember looking at that little stamp at the meeting and being in a state happy wonderment when the receptionish wrote "-2.8".  In one week?  I had lost 2.8 in one week of eating less?!

In the same (but opposite) fashion, I have gained 2.8 pounds in one week of eating more.  Lots more.

And I do know that in the beginning of Intuitive Eating, weight gain is common.  Heck, it's the first time in years that I've rejected the diet mentality and allowed myself to enjoy any and all foods in whatever quantities I see fit.

The way that I gained this week is simple:  I slacked a bit (okay, a lot) on listening to my hunger signals.  I didn't even keep my food hunger journal.  I thought that I had "mastered" it.  Nope, I was wrong.

So to remedy this, I'm planning on going back to a pretty ancient concept this week: 

Food is fuel.

I'm going to attempt to go back to eating the same kinds of things that I ate while on the Simply Filling Technique, with little to no "junk" food.  Mostly whole, nutritious foods. 

Kind of like how Angie over at Oh She Glows eats:  Intuitively, but with a strong focus toward healthy and whole food choices.  That will be me this week!

I have added another page to the top of my blog for pictures of my foods.  You don't have to look at it throughout the week if you don't want to, but I'm planning to take pictures of all of my meals and snacks for a week and see if that helps me make healthier choices.

Here's a picture of me taken just a couple of days ago (that I like, of me in a swimsuit, sitting down no less), to make myself feel better:

happy and confident in my own skin!  Imagine that.

By the way,  I'm still in my goal weight range, just barely.  So I'm not beating myself up, I just cannot afford to have another week like this. 

Okay, rant over.  Moving on.

Good news/Bad news and Intuitive Exercise

First of all, some good news and bad news.  Since I pride myself in my blogging honesty, particularly in all things food and exercise, I felt the need to share a couple of things with you. 

Good news:  I was down 1.2 at my Saturday WI!  This means that last week's .6 gain was really just normal maintenance stuff.  I am planning to stick in the Weight Watchers maintenance range because I like it: 142-146.  Having this range gives me  sense of peace about my weight, instead of being so focused on staying at 144.0 forever.  (Of course, since I'm working on finding my happy/healthy weight with IE, the number may eventually go above or below that number).

Bad news: I binged.  A real binge, not a cutesy mini-binge.  I ate an entire pizza and two bowls of cereal, all while not hungry at all.  And this, after all of my progress with IE, while KNOWING that I am always allowed to eat anything.  I know that it was an emotional binge (bored, lonely, helpless).  It was stupid.  I don't like calling myself stupid, but that is what my actions indicated on Saturday night: stupidity. 

However- I learned my lesson.  My stomach was KILLING me after this binge.  I decided right then and there that it was over.  That I was going to move on immediately with my IE journey, and not let one binge destroy my efforts.  I could have easily restricted my eating the next day to "make up" for the binge, but I didn't.  I got right back on track.

I haven't gotten to this part of the book yet, but I remember there being a part in it about how even naturally intuitive eaters will sometimes overeat for emotional reasons, and that the difference between an IE-er and a dieter is that the IE-er doesn't see it as a big deal, and after the overeating, they immediately go right back to naturally listening to their hunger signals.

So in that way, I guess I am still on the right track towards becoming an intuitive eater. 

Okay, now for the other reason of this post: Intuitive Exercise!

I realized that I almost never follow my workout plan.  I have decided to stop making them.  Instead, I will just work to get in some sort of workout every day, taking one or two days off a week if I need to.  Instead of writing the plan over there (I don't know if anyone noticed, but I've been writing my workout plan to the right for a while now), I will write what I did that day after I do it.  That way, there is an accurate tracking of my workouts every week.  No plan.  Just do what I feel like doing that day.

Okay, now that I got all of that off my chest, I want to close with a couple of great quotes that I picked up from one of my new favorite blogs, The Begin Within Blog:

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity. ~St. Augustine

Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables. ~Spanish Proverb

Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow. ~Yiddish Proverb

Coming up: Principle 3 of Intuitive Eating- Make Peace with Food; and Tasty Tuesday!

Tasty Tuesday!

Tasty Tuesday is back, people!  Woo-hoo!  This is the first Tasty Tuesday entry of mine as an Intuitive Eater.  There are definately some differences between my Simply Filling Technique Tasty Tuesdays and my Intuitive Eating one.  The most obvious is that I'm not really 100% following the GHGs anymore, although I do still try to eat mostly healthy foods.

I forgot my camera for breakfast, so just believe me when I tell you that I had a banana around 8 and my regular oatmeal (oats, almond milk, applesauce) between 9 and 11 (eaten a bite at a time, here and there, as hungry). 

Lunch, around 12:30, was a fabulous mixture of leftovers.  Chickpeas, barley, tomatoes, some hummus, and a teaspoon of EVOO made up this delicious bowl, of which I ate a few bites (until satisfied).

I have plenty leftover for tomorrow's lunch, and maybe even some for Thursday.  Alongside my bowl, I had some carrots and a liter of water with a packet of pink lemonade Crystal Lite.

Around 3, I enjoyed a large Fuji apple, which was very delicious!  It's my favorite type of apple.  Yes, with a Diet Coke!  And yes, I desperately need to tidy up my desk.

After work (around 5:30), I was hungry and wanted some chips and salsa, so I had some of these yummy Red Hot Blues (my current obsession) with a side of refried beans and salsa.

About an hour later, I was a little hungry again and ate a Lara Bar.

From 8 to 9, I exercised!  First I did The Firm Weight Loss System DVD followed by 20 minutes on the recumbant bike.  Just to let you know how brutal that DVD is for me, I decided to post a gross sweaty post-workout picture of myself.  I'm sorry.

LOL, I didn't realize how hilarious my face looks here.  Exhausted but energized!  Great workout.
At 9, I had an ice cream sandwich.  Don't worry, it's vegan!  :-)  It's by Tofutti and it's delicious.

After eating this, I'm not gonna lie.  I had cravings and thoughts of eating more.  Eating the rest of the box of ice cream sandwiches, or some of the oreos, or some potato chips...

Then I remembered one of the basics of IE: I can eat that stuff any time I want it.  So there is no need to binge on it tonight and "start over" tomorrow.  Nope, it's there for if/when I want it.  So, I came on to blog my Tasty Tuesday post, and then I'm off to bed. 

I didn't count calories or PointsPlus, and I am not going to worry about the nutritional value of today's choices.  I have figured out that when I listen to my body, I generally make pretty healthy choices these days.  Could I have skipped the post-workout ice cream?  Absolutely.  But I was hungry and it was what I wanted.  :-)

Intuitive Eating Food Journal

Today I decided to keep a food journal for awhile.  I'm doing this to learn to master "Honor Your Hunger".  I'm still learning my hunger signals, and I really think that this will benefit me to learn Intuitive Eating, even if keeping a food journal may seem counterproductive to my ultimate IE goal.  It really isn't!

This journal is 100% different from my old WW journal.  I will not be judging the quality of my food choices or anything about my food choices at all; All I will be tracking is my hunger level.  I will be using the hunger scale from the last entry, and will be trying to stay between a 3 and a 7.  The only reason that I even am writing down the food instead of just my hunger is that I want to learn which foods keep me satisfied the longest.

Here's how I did today:

Intuitive Eating Food/Hunger Log, June 1st 2011
time (pre-eating hunger level)- food (post-eating hunger level)

8:30am (3)- oatmeal w/ almond milk, applesauce, and peanut butter (5)

10:30am (5)
10:45am (4)

11:00am (3)- Lara Bar (5)

12:45pm (3.5)- watermelon, leftover beans and rice (5)

2:15pm (4)
2:30pm (3)- watermelon and craisins (5)

4:00pm (5)
4:30pm (4)

4:45 (2)- banana (4)

5:30 (3)- chocolate protein bar (5)

6:45 (4)- kale and bean salad, beets, carrots, tortilla chips (7)

8:30 (3)- saltines (5)

10:30pm (3)- wasa and salsa (5)

I really loved tracking my hunger today!  I've definately noticed that if I really listen to my hunger signals 100%, I am a grazer.  I get a little hungry every couple of hours.  So I'm eating a little bit every couple of hours.  I'm sure that you noticed there are no measurements or ammounts in my journal.  That's because I'm really focusing on listening to my hunger, so it's not important to me how much, only that I don't eat too much or too little. 

I'm planning to keep on tracking my hunger in this way until I've fully mastered honoring my hunger.

Entries will close for the 100 Followers Book Giveaway tomorrow (June 2nd) at 5:00pm central time.  This is because I will be at work until that time and won't have time to do the drawing until then.  So if you have not entered the drawing yet, there is still a chance for you!  :-)  I look forward to my first giveaway- Look for the winner tomorrow night!