BINGEING support group

Hi everyone.

I'm a very healthy eater from day to day. VERY healthy. And I'm quite proud of my diet and my will power. I eat whole grains, lean meats, fruits and vegetables and low fat dairy products. I also eat portions of nuts and drink lots of water.

But I have a problem. I'm in university, and tend to go out to the bars on the weekends every now and then. Now, I can deal with a night of drinking, because I can control how much I drink and I dont drink really hefty sugary drinks. My problem is my loss of will power to junk food when I drink. I eat so much... SO MUCH chocolate when I'm drunk! So much that sometimes I feel ill the next day, but of course, I get back on track and dont drop my calories the next day because I know it's unhealthy recoil.

After this rant, I propose creating this group to support and track / log how many days myself and any others interested in joining can go binge free. I still dont mind having small portions of chocolate throughout the day because they might be just 5g portions. I just want to be able to motivate myself to stay on track and not destroy my healthy diet every weekend.

So, I'm going to start out. Since I went all out last night, today is...

Days without bingeing: 1 (I know the whole day hasnt gone by, but I know I'll control it today haha)

Thanks! 

jerseyjen, your trainer has given you sage advice. sounds like a keeper.

risabelle, I am really intrigued by the information you've shared. Is it fair to ask how much weight you have lost using the Naturally-Thin approach?

im looking for some advice. my mum has just come back from the supermarket, and has bought loads of different cereal bars/snack bars. if you're from the UK you'll know what i mean - Eat Natural bars, Go Ahead bars, granola bars, Geo bars... i think the US equivalent would probably be something like Luna bars?

anyway i have a hard time snacking on these foods. they are totally a binge trigger for me, i can easily eat 5 or 6 in a row especially when we have so many different varieties. for this reason, i asked my mum if she would be able to stop buying so many to support me, which she did for a long time and i really appreciate it. (she still kept buying the ones that my dad likes to eat, understandably.) anyway, today she has bought them all again.

i appreciate everything she has done for me so much, to support me, and i also appreciate that i live in this house with 3 other people so i can't be selfish about what food we have around the place. for these reasons i do not want to ask her to get rid of them, i want to find the strength within me to avoid eating them even though they are there. 

the thing is i'm only on day 11ish and i still feel very vulnerable. i find it hard to resist overeating when i am surrounded by all my favourite, tempting foods.. really, i am looking for tips and advice.. what can i do to avoid them (and ultimately avoid a binge)? the first piece of advice people usually offer is "get rid of all the foods you binge on!!!" which is what i've always done - but now it seems it's not an option.

advice would be much appreciated :) thanks.

Of course it's fair to ask, sharonclaire.  As per Jean, I do not weigh.  With her advice to get yourself out of "food jail" by throwing away your calorie charts, food journals, and your food scales, she also advises to throw away your bathroom scales.  This really helps with the obsessing and the urge to try to manipulate things.  You really need to start trusting in your body to do the work it was designed to do.  This was another freeing moment for me, since I could never start my day without hopping on the scales before I started NT.  So I do not weigh.  But I can tell you on Dec. 14 of 2007, I had dieted (the good ol' starvation way) down to 124, from 140's, and was in size 2-4, at 5'7"--but not for long, only about a day, because I was starving, so of course that led to bingeing. So I immediately gained from bingeing.  The NT method has you start eating good quality food immediately, according to body hunger signals--so you do put on weight, especially if you have just lost by traditional dieting methods--that's just what your body is designed to do.  While dieting, your body thought you were in a famine, so it is trying to recover from that.  Jean says you will put on at least the amount you just lost by dieting.  She also said if you have been eating fairly regularly (I was not) you may only put on 5 pounds.  She does say heavier and obese people start to lose faster than not so heavy people, so my weight will probably take longer to drop since I'm not that heavy to begin with.  I'm sure initially I gained pretty fast, since I had been starving ridiculously.  I am currently in a size 8-10, and I'm pretty certain I'm still within BMI range.  I'm thinking by the time my weight normalizes, I will be somewhere in a size 6, and weigh around 135.  Jean says people tend to end up at the mid to lower end of their BMI range. The hardest part for most people?  The wait of the plateau.  But since I now have the knowledge I didn't have before, and I have great faith in this program,  I'm just sitting back and enjoying the eating.  I have been doing this program 4 months, and I know absolutely that weight cannot be lost both fast and permanently.  And since I'm wanting it lost permanently,  I have to deal with the slowness of it, because I definitely want the permanence.  Jean says everyone is different.  She says she's seen people lose weight much quicker than others, while others plateau for 18 months before starting to lose.  I'm definitely at the plateau stage now, as my clothing size is stable.  Since Jean was the guinea pig in her own program many years ago, and she was still figuring everything out, it took her 5 years total to get down to her naturally thin size.  I believe she was as high as the 170's and is now 138-140, at 5'8".  But the wonderful thing is she's stayed this size and weight all these years, and never has to worry about her weight again, always wears the same size, and can eat whenever hungry!  I personally don't care if this takes 10 years for me as long as I know it will be permanent. (but I'm thinking it will be more like 1-1 1/2 years total) The thing that would have really raised a red flag in my eyes would be if Jean promised "quick" weight loss with this program, since I know that  would indicate it was just another diet like all the others.  It is far from it, that is why it is called the  "Anti-Diet."   So, I imagine when I'm done plateauing  and start losing, I  will  end up in the neighborhood of  135 or so.  It really doesn't matter, because I know whatever the number, it will be the perfect size for my body, in which my body can run most efficiently.  Who could ask for more than that?   I have another friend who went through anorexia and almost died.  She got on Jean's program as a last resort and went from 90 pounds up to 145 initially, then plateaued, and finally leveled off at 120, at 5'5".  So you really do level off at a good weight for your height.  This friend has been a great encouragement for me, because she's even more proof that this program works, and she had much more extreme weight issues than I did.   You just have to get into the frame of mind that the wait for your perfect weight, and no more weight issues, is SO WORTH THE WAIT!  I'm almost 48, and I cannot put my body through the torture of diets anymore, I'm just running out of time and want to get to my perfect weight the right way, the natural way, and stay there!

days without binge = 2

good job, flakester.

Thanks for sharing, risabelle!

bugsylover, as long as you continue to eat below what your body requires, you will have to face these granola bar temptations.  When I tried to be in control of what my body needed, it didn't even matter if I had it in my house or not--I WOULD drive to the store and get it!  The fact is, if you have mind-controlled eating; meaning you try to eat below what your body needs & wants in order to lose weight, you will always be at war with your body in this way.  Can you try to up your calories earlier in the day?  People can often suppress hunger easily early in the day, but they really shouldn't.  Hunger is there for a reason.  If hunger is ignored, then there is a snowball effect as the day goes on.  By nighttime, the combination of hunger and tiredness can easily overwhelm the most dedicated dieter.

keep it coming, risabelle! I think I'm getting more from reading what YOU are writing than any of the books I've found. lol I guess this is because you are putting it into practical terms. Thanks!

thanks sharonclaire.  Sometimes I think the  posts I write (especially the really long ones) cause people to turn away and not bother reading, so I never really know if they're worth my writing them.  Just let me know when you've heard enough, and I'll shut up!  I know some people aren't quite to the point where they actually want help to stop  binging once and for all, they just kind of want to be in the company of other fellow bingers, and just want to sporadically post "day 4, yay!, or "back to day 0" or whatever...I know, I used to be in that place too.  I always thought there would come a day when "Poof!  No more bingeing!"  Well I realized after many years that "Poof" will never come as long as you are restricting your food intake below what your body needs, so if you really want to stop the binges, you need to take some proactive steps.  Like I've said before, you have to get to that point, and by that I mean rock-bottom.

well, really great to run into hard-core/let's get it done attitude. The attitude PLUS COMMUNICATION...what a helpful combo! Yes, you may have alienated some but they will find their roost somewhere...there is so much opportunity on the web! 

This is really a process...learning what it means to eat only when hungry...and not too hungry. I can tell that the weight is going to come off really, really, slowly. I have somewhere @ 20 pounds to lose (at least?) I don't really know. I have become so active that my figure is changing and don't know how trim I will get from activity but I know that I've wanted to make this lifestyle change forever and am now in it. Changing to more active lifestyle took a while...I know that this diet change will take time too.

All I know is that I seem to be eating all across my days now...sometimes hungry when I get up sometimes putting off breakfast until a few hours. But, I keep healthy foods around so my diet is essentially good...oh, except for the handful of malted milk balls I ran across today. That kind of thing has become more for taste rather than for filling up on.

It would be really cool if you would post a day of your diet (eating times included) so that all us novices could get into the head of an expert. :  ) Possible?

oh, p.s. risabelle...I refer back to your 'wordy' posts as reference material! much appreciated.

Original Post by risabelle:

bugsylover, as long as you continue to eat below what your body requires, you will have to face these granola bar temptations.  When I tried to be in control of what my body needed, it didn't even matter if I had it in my house or not--I WOULD drive to the store and get it!  The fact is, if you have mind-controlled eating; meaning you try to eat below what your body needs & wants in order to lose weight, you will always be at war with your body in this way.  Can you try to up your calories earlier in the day?  People can often suppress hunger easily early in the day, but they really shouldn't.  Hunger is there for a reason.  If hunger is ignored, then there is a snowball effect as the day goes on.  By nighttime, the combination of hunger and tiredness can easily overwhelm the most dedicated dieter.

hey risabelle :) i know i'll end up bingeing if i starve myself - i think that's how i got here in the first place! as a result i've started eating a larger lunch than i did before, and if i get hungry before dinner, i always allow myself to snack (healthily) - so i don't feel deprived or anything.. i've been reading all of your posts and i find them very interesting, however i don't feel right now that i'm ready to take on that way of life. i do believe in myself and believe that i can overcome my bingeing - i've already made a lot of progress! :) i hope you don't think that this is naive of me. (also i'll admit that i find the fact that you gain weight to start with particularly scary - i'm only 17, and i don't want to gain back the 50lbs i lost and have them stuck on me for another two years, because i think it would REALLY damage my confidence. even though i DO understand why this happens, i think i might find it quite upsetting to see all that weight go back on!)

i do have a question for you though. i think that your way of living is all about balance, eating the right foods and maintaining an active lifestyle. it's been drilled into us forever - eat right a exercise for a healthy and slim life - and i totally believe that is true! however, i have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, so i can't really be active at all right now. i'm recovering, and recently tried to incorporate exercise into my life gradually, but it's become too much recently and i've gotten iller again. so for me currently, im sedentary, or lightly active at most on days when i feel quite well. for someone like me, would your approach still work? even though i am pretty much inactive? i feel as though because i move a whole lot less than most people, i can't eat as much either. i'd also be interested to see a sample day of what you eat as sharonclaire suggested, if thats ok? :)

I'll try to address all the questions, but perhaps in several separate posts, so this one won't go on f-o-r-e-v-e-r.  I totally understand why the Naturally Thin (NT) approach does not appeal to everyone, mainly because of that initial weight gain.  It's the fear of fat, and a lot of people are afraid of fat.  I was too.  When I first read the book last summer, everything in it made total sense to me, and I actually began following the principles around July, but the fear of weight gain paralyzed me and I had to discontinue eating the NT way around September.  I wanted to be skinny for the holidays and wear the size 6 black cocktail dress I had bought for my husband's Christmas work party.  So I went back to traditional dieting.  By February, I was firmly back on the diet/binge cycle and I felt trapped on it.  I was frightened when I would go from eating no sugar for a few days, then eat boatloads of it in the form of cookies, cakes, icing, chocolate.  I was afraid that my body couldn't handle the wild variations in my sugar intake, not to mention the heavy fat intake.  If I really had to figure out what my calories were on those  binge days, I'm sure it would be alarming, and much, much  more than I'm eating daily now.  I was feeling really tired, apathetic, and depressed.  This is what I mean by feeling rock bottom.  I knew that to continue in this way just wasn't going to work for me, but I was scared to eat when hungry, because I thought I would go for all the bad binge foods again.   Jean  (author)has 3 sections of foods listed in her book, so the way to handle your eating is try to eat from the real foods list.  She is not trying to label foods, or say you can never have birthday cake, but the lists are just guidelines so you'll know what kinds of foods she is referring to when she says "pleasure foods" or "borderline foods." She advocates listening to your body in regard to fat, and eating healthy fat is encouraged--nuts, nut butters, olive oil, even butter.  So this is what I've been doing since February.  I also dieted when I was younger; at 26 I lost 30 pounds by traditional dieting and strenuous exercising.  I know very well that the NT approach to eating would not have appealed to me then.  I would not have been able to bear the  initial weight gain by practicing NT back then.  It was just too hard losing that weight in the first place.  I maintained the weight loss for several years, then the bingeing got out of control again, so I gained the weight back anyway.  So maybe if I had known then that I would have gained it all back eventually, things would have been different and I wouldn't have been so reluctant to try NT.  I think that's another thing that finally clicked with me this year.  Every single time I had lost weight by dieting, I always gained it back eventually.  But I had to try many times before I figured this out.  Then I realized it didn't really matter how long it took for me to lose weight the NT way, because it would be permanent this time.

The thing that has begun to bother me about traditional dieting is all the rules.  Experts will say carbs are bad, or fat is bad, or over 1400 calories is bad, and don't combine this food with that food.  And here we are, living in countries where food is abundant, not scarce, but yet we have so many rules that we are afraid to eat real, good food whenever we are hungry.  And we even have to create artificial foods.  (Splenda, olestra?)  I think we are making things way more complicated than they need to be.  And I think all of these rules are actually making people fat because they have to go against their bodies' natural urges.  Think about all the urges your body has, and how you really need to just stay out of your body's way and let it do what it needs to do.  If you have to pee, you pee.  If you have to sneeze, you sneeze.  If you get something in your eye, your eye will tear up to wash the particle out.  We know not to interfere with these urges, or we will get ourselves into trouble.  But the one urge we feel we can "tinker" with, or manipulate, is our hunger.  Why can't we just listen to our body's hunger and feed it good food whenever it wants fed?  If we have to have a bodily function, like going to the bathroom, do we say, "I really need to hold it in, because I just went an hour ago---maybe I should wait for a few more hours."  No, we would never do that, but that is certainly what we do with our eating and that is what messes everyone up, their trying to manipulate when, what, and how much they should eat, when what your body is trying to do is let you know what it really wants.  It doesn't need your help, it already knows what to do.  That is what is meant by body-controlled eating.  When you go against your body's urges and natural hunger cues you are using mind-controlled eating.

Concerning exercise.  Yes, it has been drilled into our heads that eating less and exercising more results in weight loss.  I disagree.  If that theory were true, we would all be skinny and we would not be heading into an obesity epidemic.  Everyone wants to be thin, I've never met anyone who wants to be fat, so this is a simple enough formula to thinness, right?  Wrong.  Undereating eventually results in overeating, so eating less is definitely not part of the solution.  Eating less than your body needs is putting your body through a self imposed famine.  It would be a lot different if our bodies actually knew we were TRYING to lose weight, then maybe they would be more cooperative with us.  But they do not know we are trying to lose weight when we undereat; all they know is they sense a famine environment, so they react accordingly, just as they were designed to adapt to a famine in a true famine environment.  It is an artificial environment if there is indeed an abundant food supply, but the dieter is actually the one who's imposing the famine on her body.  Exercise--I used to be obsessive myself.  Not anymore.  Jean's book has this to say about exercise:  If you are dieting in the traditional way, an exercise program can make a famine even more stressful to the body.  She say "The poor-quality, traditional weight-loss diet plus exercise creates a physiological catastrophe--a severe famine."   It is extremely stressful to the body.  I recognized this first hand, and therefore made the decision to cancel my "Y" membership so I could concentrate on overcoming my severe famine, due to dieting and exercise.  This is why I totally disagree with the billion dollar diet industry's approach.  Jean does not go on to bash exercising.  She knows there are many beneficial qualities to exercising.  But we need to know that fat does not burn off during exercising.  The things that exercise does burn is calories, from ready glucose and glycogen stores--but not fat.  And although calories are burned, relatively few calories are burned even during strenuous periods of exercise.  She says this reflects the efficiency of our bodies, and is a really good thing, like it or not.  She advocates exercising to feel good, increase stamina, improve muscle tone, promote good sleeping, and many other healthy attributes, just not fat burning.  I have come to enjoy exercising more when I feel it is something I really want to do, like take a brisk walk.  But if I don't feel like it, I'm not going to fight my body and do it anyway.  This 2-hours at the gym, 6 days a week regimen has got to be killing people.  Do you really think this is what is necessary for a thin body?  Not me.  Don't let fear stand in your way.  Let yourself have a life outside the gym!!!

To those who asked for a sample menu of how a day might look for me while eating the Naturally Thin way:

Since one of the main principles of NT is to eat according to your own body cues, I must say that everyone has a different body, and no one should try to eat according to the exact diet of someone else.  That is why Jean Antonello advocates "Owning Your Own Diet."  That means, listen to your own body, it will tell you its need for fat and everything else.  Someone following NT may be a recovering anorectic of many years, and another person may just want to get off the feast or famine cycle (diet/binge) that they have only been on for a few months.  These two different people will have drastically different needs, that is why Jean is careful not to list any sample diet plans or outlines.  Why would she say to eat "X" at 7:00 a.m. when perhaps the person has a night job,  and is just getting home and going to sleep at that hour?   You have to really work within your own lifestyle to eat the Naturally Thin way. 

In the beginning, if you have serious make-up eating to do as a result of being in a serious famine situation, you will eat A LOT.  Jean says many people will go through a lot of bread--sometimes a loaf a day!  Personally, I can remember having 6 bagels a day, with peanut butter and honey, back in the beginning.  And you won't immediately be able to stop your bingeing, especially if it was a severe case.  During the first and second weeks I had to have cake icing on two days (not a lot, in a very small dish), but after that--no more craving that kind of stuff.  I honestly never think about chocolate, cake, pie, cookies, icing, desserts, chips, or fast food anymore.  They  are the least of my problems, when they used to be my MAIN problem in life.

Now it has been 4, almost 5 months for me eating the NT way.  I should say my 17 year old daughter is doing this with me.  She had lost 20 pounds several years ago, gained it all back, and now is enjoying eating this way with me.  There are days of despair, even though she is never hungry nor binges anymore, she wishes she didn't have to wait so long to see the thinness.  I told her how beautiful she'll be when she starts her life, fresh out of college.  She won't have to diet like crazy to lose weight for her wedding (then gain it all back the first year of her marriage) but rather she'll have her weight issues kicked for life!  She'll be able to enjoy eating.  It does become virtually impossible to overeat this way, and it's amazing to see that your body does not tolerate going hungry for very long.  You learn to plan your day and to have good quality food available at all times, whenever hunger may strike.  I've noticed a much better outlook in my daughter, she is not as moody, and has great hope for a diet-free future. 

So, today I got up and had a large Thomas's whole wheat bagel, toasted, with real butter,  one large glass of orange juice, a banana, and a small orange.  It doesn't really matter if the orange was 4 ounces, 5, ounces, or 6 ounces--I used to weigh everything, now it just doesn't matter--I eat whatever size fruit just happens to be in the fruit bowl.  Now sometimes, I will think I want something specific, and walk into the kitchen and smell whatever my daughter is making, and I immediately change my mind, because I have to follow my body, not my mind.  (it is so much fun to do this!)  By the way, I was up really late last night, so slept in till 9 am)  But even if I had gotten up at 6 am, I may have still wanted the exact same foods.  About 11:30 am I felt a little hungry again and had a dish of King Ranch Chicken, from last night's supper, and a packet of 2 whole wheat goldfish crackers--they are kind of gingerbread flavored.  Jean also says you can have last night's leftovers for breakfast, if that is what your body wants.  The shift you will see will be greater eating in the morning, and early part of the day.  Often this will be a good time for those higher fat meals, eggs, cheese, peanut butter, that will keep you well-fueled for the day.  You need to think about fueling up in the morning for your day, like you would putting fuel in your car for a long trip--not good to be running on empty.  Hunger will tend to taper off toward evening, and you will no longer be tempted to eat after supper, or binge, or mindlessly munch snacks in front of the TV.  This allows you to be satisfied, yet relatively empty when you go to sleep, so your body can slowly start working on burning off fat while you sleep.  Remember, PERMANENT weight loss must be pain free, that is why it is so slow.  But you may lose fat before you even realize it, since you fluid levels need to adapt with your fat loss, and it takes time for this adjustment too.  Slow, pain free, natural, and PERMANENT.  You may not like the SLOW, but you've got to love the PERMANENT.  It is now 2:00 pm and I'm not at all hungry.  Some things I might consider eating later on if I do get hungry is a spinach or romaine salad with homemade vinaigrette dressing (made with olive oil) topped with grilled chunks of  chicken that I already have made in the fridge, some feta cheese, maybe a hardboiled egg or an apple diced on top, and some pecans on top.  My daughter likes the hardboiled eggs on her salads, but sometimes I like the sweetness of apple chunks on my salad better.  If I feel the need for more fat, I would likely spead peanut butter on a cracker, and maybe a squirt of honey on top if I want it sweet (as I use natural, no sugar added, peanut butter).  Other favorite meals I've had in the past two weeks are spaghetti with homemade meatballs, and oatmeal, made with whole milk, a little bit of brown sugar, and walnut pieces.  The important thing is to listen to your body and keep the food real, and as unprocessed as your tastes will allow.  Jean always says to try to eat whole grains and brown rice, but if you just don't like the taste, stick to the white versions.  I've let go of a lot of my rules.  I would never eat butter before, and no brown sugar----but then whenever a binge overcame me all of my rules would go right out the window.  So this way of eating seems like the way humans were intended to eat.  We've just messed it up so badly.  I'm just trying to un-bungle the mess, little by little,  by posting on here.  So just because I'm eating these meals this week, my body may be asking for something different in the next couple weeks.  You have to expect that, as your need for fat will start to become less, as your body adapts to having an abundant supply of food and being fed on time.  My daughter and I eat at totally different times, and mostly different food items.  Some days I may eat 6 times, some days 3.  No rules; following your body's hunger cues is the only rule you need to adhere to.  But you will realize patterns. For instance, I cannot go past 5 hours during the day without getting hungry and having to eat.  Usually it's 3-4, but it is not always predictable.  You just can't be caught in a situation without food for that long because it will be hard to tolerate.  After your last meal you can tolerate not eating for a longer time, because you have kept up with your body's demands all through the day and have met all it's needs.  If you stay well fed all through the day, your body won't require you to do make-up eating in the evening, once you are off the diet/binge cycle.  I'm sometimes full by 3 pm and won't eat anymore, maybe a piece of fruit if hunger gets uncomfortable.  You do not always want a big meal each time you get hungry, especially toward the end of the day, if you have eaten well earlier.  Sometimes a glass of orange juice will be enough.  Jean also advocates water drinking for fat metabolism.

I'm finding your posts really interesting risabelle and i think i might get the book(s) to read to think about eating this way in the future. i still don't think it's right for me at the moment but one day i'd like to think i'll be ready to trust my own instincts as much as you do. thank you for answering my questions in such depth. are you currently maintaining your weight, have you started losing yet, or are you still in the gaining stage? (you may have said this earlier but i can't remember).. also if you're not comfortable answering then don't worry, i understand it's quite a personal question :)

I'm adding my thanks, risabelle! I am fortunate in that I was not on a reduced calorie diet and so, have begun to lose, very slowly.  I have always admired the determination of folks on reduced calorie diets...I never had the stuff to stick to it.

I love working out and do it w/enthusiasm. When I am at Curves, I am meeting new friends, when I am cycling, I am between clients I have come to know and love and when I am hiking, I am w/my son, my dog or Mother Nature, a total win-win!

Risabelle, this IS so freeing. I am sure that I have weight to lose but somehow the process seems so pressure-free now. It makes sense to follow my morning urge to eat. Your sharing all of this is definitely the coolest thing! I'm looking forward to hearing more from bugsylover after she does some JA reading!

Take care and hope you post again soon! :  ) we sure put you to work, didn't we? 

I don't think I'm losing yet. I have been in the same clothing size for awhile, so I do not think I'm gaining either. I have definitely seen a normalization of my appetite over the months since I first started eating this way. I don't eat nearly as much as I did in the beginning when I had a lot of make-up eating to do. I try not to fixate on how long it will take to lose--I actually do feel thin already, since I never have that gorged feeling anymore as bingeing no longer occurs. Jean says you may plateau for months, and then lose a little, plateau a little more, lose a little more, etc. It may not be a steady, rapid decline in weight loss. She always reminds us that everyone is different, so I cannot compare myself to anyone else's weight loss pattern. There is one of the case studies in her book of a girl with a similar eating history to mine, and she plateaued for 18 months before losing. So I have to realize I could plateau for that long too, but I really shouldn't even make a comparison. I just try to look at the bottom line, and that is the girl in the case study eventually lost the weight and is enjoying being Naturally Thin now. I have to let the timing all up to my body, as my body knows exactly what to do. (I'd be sure to botch it up if I tried to get in its way.) A friend of mine who was eating the Naturally Thin way said it didn't even occur to her when she started finally losing; she said a co-worker mentioned to her that it looked like she was losing weight. I thought it was neat that she got so wrapped up in the other things in her life she didn't notice till someone else pointed it out to her.

bugsylover, excellent move to get the book in advance. I almost suggested that to you. I got the cheapest used copy I could find, 1 cent, plus 3.99 shipping, total 4 dollars, on amazon. I had to read mine through several times. The first time through I "got it" but my head was still filled with all the dieting junk I had collected in it over thirty years, that it took several readings to sort my head out and completely know the difference between traditional dieting, and Naturally Thin eating. It was like a deprogramming. You have to throw out a lot of myths you firmly believed in for years, which doesn't happen instantaneously.

sharonclaire--pressure-free is the right way to describe it. It's great to feel like I'm eating like a human again, and not have the temptation of a binge always lurking close by, ready to strike at an inopportune moment. How great it is not to have to always be on guard to fight off a binge and then deal with the self-hatred when I lose the fight. Then, to become Naturally Thin in the process is like the biggest bonus ever. And to think this is how we were designed to eat to eat in the first place. Look how badly eating has gotten messed up, and how it makes people feel. I have a whole new outlook on overweight people now. They are trying the best they know how, and are trying not to eat most of the time, completely unaware that it takes good eating to get thin. By not eating, they are later overwhelmed by a binge and will store all of the binge food as fat, since their bodies have adapted to the self-imposed famine. They are trapped and are in a cycle that keeps perpetuating itself.

risabelle which book do you think i should get? "How to become naturally thin by eating more" or "breaking out of food jail" ...? im on the website and can see that the second book is more related to eating disorders, do you think the first one would explain the approach to me a bit better than the second? 

haha i think i might just get both..

If you are able to, get both.  I got both, and was glad I got both.  They compliment each other very well, and each offer such valuable information it would be really hard for me to chose one over the other.  I refer back to both ALL the time.

risabelle, I know what you mean about sympathising w/people who are overweight. My weight actually came from overeating...during a stressful marriage and then again during an extended grieving cycle. I am sure that I developed this pattern early on but this is when it caught up with me. I have watched other mothers yoyo dieting...WOW! the frustration and triumph over and over.  

I only want to lose weight once!

I am working on mindfulness exercises in everything that I do now, to beat the anxiety related to eating and everything else I encounter in life.

It is SUCH a relief when you write that eating should be as natural as breathing...now there is a thought I can wrap my mind around!

I will look for you risabelle and bugsylover, you, too, for support and connecting in the coming months...I feel so fortunate that you share, risabelle! bugsylover, I hope you will feel free to share as you experience JA yourself.

Take care!