Coffee with cream and never margarine

If you have been practising intuitive eating for some time, it can occasionally hit you with just how, um, intuitive it has all become!

I haven't bought any kind of low-fat spread for over 2 and a half years now, and though I don't drink coffee an awful lot, whenever I do I have it, I have it with cream. It occurred to me that I no longer question this, whereas I used to feel guilty if I had a spread of butter even in once in a month!

I pile my shopping trolley without ever thinking about fat content. After trying full-fat milk for a while, I reverted back to semi as I hate overly milky-tasting tea, but that was purely about taste and not about fat content and that to me says it all!

I've spent the last 2 and a half years eating what I want (within reason, as I do have health problems with some foods and I need to take care with them), and yet I haven't gained weight - in the LONG-TERM! I could have been dieting those last couple of years and the chances are I'd have been the same, but with the mental torture added to it.

Honestly - please give up the ghost of dieting and take a new approach to your life. It will be worth it in the end.

Comments

[Charlie]

I would definitely give up the diet if I thought I'd lose any weight - with no disrespect intended to the site owner, she has also stated that she hasn't lost any weight as well as not putting any on. I know people who have tried Beyond Chocolate and Paul McKenna and all are at much the same weight as they were when they stopped dieting. I'm still pretty overweight (about 3st off a HEALTHY weight, let alone a skinny one) and soon to relocate to China, where both the locals and expats love to sneer at how fat "western" women are compared to Chinese ones. I'll continue to slog it out on the Cambridge Diet, but not without a bit of regret. Actually, this website is making me hungry!

[Andrea Wren]

Hi Charlie,

Thanks so much for your comment, it's always good to hear other people's views.

In response, I didn't really begin this journey to lose weight, more to get off the diet treadmill. It isn't a 'quick fix' route like a diet is and also, it isn't necessarily about losing weight first and foremost.

Intuitive eating is about breaking the mental torture that a diet can bring and reclaiming your sanity! If you keep dieting and putting the weight back on - why stay in that trap forever? Why not take a different approach that might take longer, but be more successful in the LONG-TERM?

But I'm only a size 12 and I am a healthy weight - so the fact of the matter is, I might not even need to lose weight at all! Granted - I still have a little voice in my head (I'm working on it though) which says 'just lose half a stone!' but what I'm really focusing on is getting my sanity back after years of dieting and deprivation.

Diets are quick-fix and tend not to work in the long-term - people who try Beyond Chocolate and Paul McKenna could take much longer 'getting there' but the point is, when they do they have likely resolved many issues around eating, changed a lifetime of unhelpful habits, and are more likely to continue to be healthy and happy.

The goal is happiness, health and to be a natural weight that feels right.

Kind regards,

Andrea

[Charlie]

As someone still firmly stuck in the diet mentality I have a lot of respect for wanting to just be a healthy weight (whether or not it's a "skinny" weight) and learn to rely on your own intuition. Most of my life has been spent on a diet and I can't imagine it any other way. One of the "diet-dumping blogs" you linked to had this article: http://www.lindamoran.net/blog_archives/2008/11/when-our-bodies.html and I've heard other things like it about the body "insisting on staying overweight." This is what worries me and I can't allow mine to do that - it's not worth it, people seem to hate fat people so much. You seem to be doing a fine job with your personal goals, and from reading other comments your website has inspired a lot of people who also want to "regain their sanity" and are eating intuitively. I wish you all the best.