intuitive eating

I abandoned dieting a week or so before we went to Padre Island, around the first of April. My abandonment of my constant companion was the result of being so completely weary of the obsession with food, dieting, not dieting, eating, not eating, restricting, how to restrict even more, shall I get rid of what I just ate? or no, I'll start tomorrow, have I gained weight, lost weight, what can I do to get rid of this madness that's consuming my life. It all seemed so hopeless and I was losing the same 10 pounds over and over and over ad nauseum.

I am not sure where the idea came from; I've heard of it over the years, but never imagined that it would work for me. I'm a food addict. I can't allow myself to eat anything at all any time I want, I'd weigh 1000 pounds if I did that. But the sense of there being nothing at all left to try made me willing and so I just quit dieting. I told myself I'd be fine if I could stay where I was, though the IE folks tell you to expect a weight gain. That was difficult, and it was difficult to give up weighing every day and writing down every molecule of food that went in my mouth.

When I went to the gym last night for the first time since my toenails were yanked off (hallelujah!!), I wasn't going to weigh because I've been sitting around for 11 days, haven't worked out at all, have walked very little because of the pain. Before that I spent a week tending to my daddy and his health concerns, stuck in a hospital much of the time, where there's no access to anything decent to eat.

But can I ever stay off a scale?? Nope. Between the treadmill and the elliptical, I had to run out there and the miracle is that I was just the same as a month ago. Just. The. Same. Stunning, for all of the aforementioned reasons that I should have gained 10 pounds, plus the fact that in that month I have eaten lasagna and chocolate and strawberry shortcake and roast chicken and salad and vegetables and a hamburger and lots of healthy food and lots of not healthy food and chocolate. And chocolate. And I've not gained any weight.

This is incredible. It's unprecedented. I didn't think it was possible. IE theory suggests that after the initial mad scramble to eat everything you've been deprived of for years, there will be a rebalancing of the internal want-to-eat switch. I've experienced some of that in finding myself hungry for good food, healthy food. In allowing myself to eat absolutely anything, I find that I don't want to eat only crap. When I tell myself I'll never eat chocolate again, it's all I can think about. I am so grateful and I feel so relieved. It's as if I have my head back after too many years being lost in the insanity of an eating disorder.

and food?

There's that food thing. My lifelong addiction craving insane bingeing purging starving over-exercising just giving up and giving in eat everything in sight take pills and don't eat dance all night and drink and fuck around a lot so I don't have to eat eating thing.

That food thing is just fine. It seems impossible. It is peaceful beyond anything I could have hoped for. There's no obsession to get on a diet, no punishment. I'm not hunting down the next insanely restrictive plan to follow. Just working out at the gym regularly, walking every day, eating only when I'm hungry, quitting when I'm full and I haven't gained any weight and am slowly losing a pound or two here and there.

The thing that is so fine and magnificent I really can't even put it into words is that I am at peace. Whole days go by that I don't even think about eating except when I'm hungry. If I eat a cupcake, it doesn't trigger a binge because the cupcake's not a relapse and there's no diet to start in the morning. Peace. Sanity. It's unlike anything I've ever experienced with food and very much like the relief I found in AA with alcohol. I am so grateful.