Posts by risabelle

summer72, what helps me is staying "fed up" during the morning & daytime.  Sometimes it's easy to say we are not hungry in the morning, and we might drink coffee or diet coke, or chew gum, or just pick at some small amount of food instead of having a meal, and we can distract ourselves from eating more easily during the day.  If your body doesn't get properly satisfied then hunger will build all day long then after a night of drinking your guard is down and your body wants some fuel.  If you listen to your hunger signals and eat good quality food all day long, beginning in the morning, the night time binges will stop.  Bingeing is common among dieters.  If you diet long enough, sooner or later your survival instinct will stronghold you into a binge, no matter how strong your willpower is.

False.

TPBM has read a Nancy Drew book.

amjam-good for you.  Although my "purging" was through obsessive exercise, I let the dieting lifestyle control me and it was tough to stop, but I felt I had to in order to get my life back to normal, the way it was before dieting.

infiniteheart, yours is a very common story to all dedicated dieters.  Sooner or later when on a restrictive diet, your survival instinct will kick in and inspire you to eat when you are not even hungry. Your body stores your hunger in biochemical form until it unleashes at a time that you wished it wouldn't--at a party, picnic, special occasion, after drinking, late at night, on the weekends, at Grandma's house....etc.  Your survival instinct is stronger than your will-power, and your survival instinct will win in the end, leaving your frustrated and confused because you binged when you didn't want to, and after you've been eating so healthily, and exercising just like everyone says is the right way to lose weight.  I would go into this more here, but I've done it so many times on this forum already that my fingers are cramped from all of the typing, so forgive me, but Jean Antonello's website Naturally-Thin.com can answers all of these binging questions for you.  She has 3 books that explain it and the books offer help to stop it once and for all.  You may read about her program, and chose to ignore it, but I'm here to say that if you keep dieting, you will keep binging, and likely you will start to GAIN weight from the binges.  Maybe you won't binge everyday, maybe not every week, but you will continue to binge.  If you don't believe me, just keep checking in on this board to see if anyone has uncovered the secret cure for binging, while trying to continue dieting.  I dare you to read through every one of these posts to try and find the secret anti-binge remedy.  Dieters are not new to us in the 21st century, and neither is binging, although it is getting a lot more prevalent.  People from your mom's generation, your grandma's and your great-grandma's generation have dieted.  Has it worked?  I mean has it REALLY worked, so that the lost weight stays off, never to return and torment the person again, and never cause the person to binge?  I was looking for a secret way to stop binging for 22 years, and I'm almost 48.  Then I decided it was insanity for me to think I could  keep doing the same thing over and over, diet after diet,  and expect to have a different outcome, an outcome that didn't include bingeing.    The sad part about it is the diet/fitness industry is perpetuating the whole problem.  They offer the diet to you, you lose weight, things are looking great!  Then, wait a minute, you start binging!  Better UP the exercising to burn off the extra calories, then wow, you finally reach your goal, hurray, until you realize you are still binging, so you diet even more restrictively,and  exercise more often, but the binging continues and pretty soon you realize how lucky it is that Weight Watchers offers a Lifetime Program because you realize you are going to need it your whole life.  Does anyone else see what is happening here?

sharonclaire, thanks for asking!  I'm doing great!  And you?  Are you continuing to sleep well?  I'm 6 months into NT, and I believe the first 6 months are the most difficult.   You can't believe that "eating" will actually help you get to your NT weight.  It's very hard to let go and trust your body.  You have so much fear of gaining, not knowing where your weight will end up.  But I've gotten a couple "You look so much healthier!" comments from people I know and trust, and I believe them.  Somehow I thought I looked fantastic when I was skin and bones, but now I'm realizing it looked just as horrible on me as it does on everyone else.  So I feel confident to continue, and it'll be great to see what transformations happen in the NEXT 6 months. I keep reading Jean's books all the time, as they still speak to me, and I still need to hear it.  NT continues to make more sense to me every time I read them.  I don't think humans were meant to struggle with diets.  Gosh, they are time consuming, painful, frustrating, and disappointing. (Thank goodness you didn't succumb to this lifestyle, sharonclaire )Bodies are capable of regulating a naturally thin weight, if people would only respond to hunger cues on time and not ignore them.  Ignoring hunger (dieting) puts your body in starvation mode in which it stores up fat for future famines, and the next day's diet is a famine!  Eating, according to hunger cues from the body, stabilizes metabolism and will make your body more efficient at burning fat!   It was designed to work perfectly, but when people diet, this messes everything up.  A diet will condition your body to store fat.

I don't mean to push any of this down anyone's throat, as it may seem like I am.  i just want the info to be available to anyone who is ready to hear it.  If you aren't ready, please carry-on as usual.

Jenny8484--hi, it's Risabelle.  Yes, I've been following Jean Antonello's diet (which she calls the anti-diet) since February of this year.  It has been going great.  I've noticed my thoughts are more normal (not as depressed as when dieting) I'm not freezing anymore, and I actually feel like having sex more (probably more than you needed to know) but just overall BETTER.  You better believe I was afraid of the initial weight gain too, but somehow all of Jean's principles just make too much sense to ignore.  Somehow I have faith that it'll all work and if I keep applying the NT principles, my weight will normalize to a thin weight.  I thought I'd balloon up to 200 pounds, but I didn't.  I'm currently in a size 10/12 (12 cause a little baggier makes me feel thinner in this size) and I am waiting out the plateau period.  It's difficult, don't get me wrong, because a few times I've thought about returning to dieting because I'd love to be back in my size 2's and 4's.  But I have too much time invested in this, and I feel this is right.  I've done too many diets and now I know what they do to me and I can't take the bingeing anymore.  I want natural thinness and be able to eat like naturally thin people do.  I want to be there once and for all and never have to think about dieting, fitting into clothes, bingeing, and all that other stuff that I've decided I don't have time for anymore.  Good Luck to you!

sharonclaire: I just realized you can view free chapters from JA's books on her Naturally-Thin website.  Click on "Free Chapters" on the left-hand side of the home page.  In her book "Breaking Out Of Food Jail," the chapter you receive for free is chapter one, in which she does explain her view of emotional eating, and while she does indeed recognize that people do this, it is not what is at the very root of the problem.  If you can, try to read this chapter (and any other chapters, because it seems you can get the first chapter of all three of her books for free this way)  Then if you still have questions, I can take it from there.

Jenny: I know where you're coming from, as I never had the purge aspect either.  I've been advising anyone who is interested in stopping their bingeing (like if you don't feel you can take it any longer)  to check out an author who has written 3 books on the subject.  Her name is Jean Antonello and you can read about her on her Naturally-Thin (use the hyphen) website.  As I just explained to sharonclaire, you can read the first chapters of each of her books for free, right on her website.  Her program is a lot for a strict dieter to take in, because as a former strict dieter/binger myself, it goes against practically everything I've ever read about dieting.  I had to read her books twice to actually let it all sink in, because we are so indoctrinated with the eat less/exercise more mantra of the dieting industry.  Jean's main theory is that all of this dieting (she ofter refers to it as "undereating") is the main cause of every single eating disorder she has ever encountered.  Of course this includes binge eating. I might add that she did her research many years ago, and interviewed people with all different sorts of eating backgrounds in order to formulate her conclusions.  She also did extensive studies on the theory of adaption, and how you body adapts to the amount of food you give it.  She wrote her first book in 1986, but it took her until 1989 to get it published, because most publishers were not interested as her book was so inconsistent with the dieting views among the masses.  She has since written her second book in 1996, and her third, a book for raising kids free from eating problems, in 2005.  She is a nurse who runs the Naturally-Thin Clinic in Minnesota.  Personally, Jean has had 2 distinct episodes of anorexia and then she had periods of dieting and bingeing, before she decided to look for a cure for her own eating struggles.  I recommend her program, outlined in her books, to anyone who is looking for answers to their own diet/binge problem.  I have spoken a lot about her on this forum, mainly because I was here as a dieter about a year ago, looking for answers myself, when another poster mentioned Jean's books as a source that helped her.  So I came back to see if i could help others, the same way I was helped.  If you want to read some of my previous posts about this way of eating to overcome bingeing once and for all, click on my name, but I warn you, they are L-O-N-G!

sharonclaire, I will try to answer you JA style.  I believe what you're saying is that with your family around, you think that for psychological reasons, you will overeat and not be able to keep up your good record.  JA may say that you are not completely off what she refers to as the Feast or Famine cycle.  Just by the fact that you try to consistently stay close to 2000 calories, you are still trying to maintain some control over your eating.  That amount, coupled with the calorie deficit from your exercising, may be less than what your body ideally needs. But I know this is how you like it to be.  But JA doesn't advocate that low of a calorie intake.  She says that a World Hunger Organization determined that the minimum requirement of an average adult to be 2100 calories per day; therefore any diet under 2100 a day signals potential starvation to the body.  I know, you probably don't feel like you are actually starving, in fact this actually seems preposterous as we do not live in underdeveloped countries, but the way this starvation manifests itself is by causing the person to binge or overeat. Undereating from any cause, is interpreted by the body as a famine, and so the Cycle continues (or perhaps in some cases it begins).  As I was getting off the Cycle, I know I ate huge amounts--I let my body eat good foods until satisfaction, whenever I got hungry.  I never said--wow, this is way too much, I better stop before I'm sorry--But rather I listened to my body and not my head.  I knew this is what Jean said to do to get off cycle, and I knew I'd be sorry later down the road, if I didn't do this now.  For months I ate what I used to consider ridiculous amounts, but this was all necessary, as I was a former very strict dieter.  I needed to send the message to my body that "Food is Now Available" so that it will eventually stop storing food as fat, like it is programmed to do in a famine situation.  Jean says if you do not eat until satisfaction, nothing will work like it should.  I still eat a lot, probably closer to 3,000, and over on some days if I had to guess, but I don't try to figure it out.  So Jean would say that if you are still on the cycle, meaning you've never taken the steps she outlines in her book to get off, you are probably still eating too little some time, so the body  has to inspire you to take in bigger quantities of make-up food when it can--this is when undereaters "lose control."  So what I see the difference is between how you eat and how a NT eater eats is that you still maintain a certain amount of control over your eating.  This control has to fly out the window if you are ever going to eat NT.   JA also maintains that the starting point of the Feast or Famine Cycle does not have to be a diet, as I know you've said before you have not succumbed to dieting.  JA says that many factors can interfere with our body's ability to get enough food through the day; busy schedules, subconscious food avoidance, not getting a break at work to eat when hungry, or if breaks are allowed we don't eat enough.  She says even if we could eat anytime, so many of us our programmed to avoid food that we wouldn't eat enough good food if we actually could.  So what JA would probably say is that although you believe you are eating enough calories, it probably isn't enough to get you off cycle, so your body is still craving some make-up food here and there.  If there is still a degree of mind-controlled eating, then you are not eating totally body-controlled yet.  It is at this point that you are eating what your body is telling you to eat, and stopping when you are full.  (That's FULL--not stuffed--and  not a mere level 7 on the hunger scale either.)  What I do is I eat until the food no longer looks appealing.  It is always a feeling of satisfaction, but doing this initially takes some practice.  There are times in the beginning I didn't eat enough, so what happens is you realize that and go and eat some more.  There are times I overate, but this is just what you have to do to get your hunger signals straightened out.  It will all come together with practice.  There are other things beside dieting that can mimic a famine, such as illness, surgery, medications, divorce, career and financial problems: things like this can suppress the appetite and mimic a diet (famine) to the body.  The rebound effect to these will be overeating just like what happens after a period of traditional dieting.  I used to be so afraid of eating at holidays, any picnics, and even at restaurants (you know, the bread basket)  but now I don't have to worry.  The same NT principles apply wherever I eat.  If I'm not hungry, I don't eat, and if I am, I eat good quality food until I'm satisfied.  The only thing that you do have to maintain some control over is to eat the best quality food that you can.  I have been to 2 birthday parties recently, and ate so well that the cake had no appeal to me.  However, if there ever comes a time when I really want ice cream for instance, and I know that's what my body is telling me it wants, I'll go ahead and enjoy it.  But this should happen only after you know you are completely off the feast or famine cycle, because this is how real naturally thin people eat.  Sweets aren't a main part of their lives, because they are always kept fed-up with good high quality foods.    But that's not to say they never eat sweets, it's just on much rarer occasions, and they can always stop after one serving.  

JA reminds that any movement is exercise.  If you do things like take the stairs instead of elevator/escalator, park in a distant parking space in the parking lot, or live in a 2-or 3 story house, and go up and down stairs a lot (if laundry area is in basement) you are getting exercise.  i feel that when I have a large grocery order, just hauling it all into the house and putting it away feels like a workout to me! Some people feel the need to train for a triathlon in order to feel as though they are getting enough, but that just isn't necessary or practical.  If you are having fun and it feels good, then enjoy it!  Take cues from your body and listen to them.

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.

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!!!

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.

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!

Different people have different levels of famine sensitivity. You probably know people who whine the moment they feel hungry and just have to eat right then. They have a low level of famine sensitivity. Others can tolerate hunger longer. They have a higher level of famine sensitivity. I was in this category, and I ate low calories for 3 years with no bad effects. Then boom! I didn't know what hit me, I started eating like there was no tomorrow, and gained weight at an alarming rate (from 114 pounds to 161!) So my survival instinct did step in to save me from starving to death, but it took that long, because my body could tolerate a famine for longer than others, due to my lower level of sensitivity to famines/restrictive diets.

There are lots of people dieting right now (bad news, in my view) and they are eating very low calorie amounts. Some people will binge after a few days of dieting, others weeks, others months, others years. It all depends on you famine sensitivity level. But your survival instinct will step in to save you--unless you become anorectic, and in that case it can be fatal--sad but true, as we know.

flakester, glad you're here.  Look at your eating habits and see if you are restricting calories.  My guess is that you are, because a body that has been famining (dieting) stores that hunger in the body in biochemical form, then when think you've got things under control, that pent-up hunger comes out in the form of a binge.  Binges are scary, people don't understand them, and they make you feel totally out of control, like a crazed beast.  Oftentimes when this happens, people claim they weren't even hungry to begin with when they started eating, thinking they'd just have a bite or two.  Then before you know it, it becomes a full-blown binge.  I know, raw cookie dough used to have the upper hand over me.  You see, the body is a lot smarter than we give it credit for.  It knows how to run smoothly and efficiently without our help, trying to tweak things.  Your body knows how to adjust your metabolism on its own so that your weight adapts to a naturally thin weight.  But you cannot interfere.  Dieting IS interfering.  As long as you diet, (and also if you exercise like a fiend,) your body is in a famine mode and is trying to adapt to a famine.  In times when eating is plentiful and healthy, your body adapts to the quantity you give it, based on your hunger signals.  We all know that REAL FAT is NOT lost quickly and permanently. But somehow we cannot accept that and we keep trying to do it our way, and not our body's way.  It's all about adaption.  Your body prefers to adapt to a bountiful, healthy food supply.  If you diet, it adapts to the famine, and that means slowing metabolism way down, and having your hunger overpower you to cause you to binge.  This is a physiological fact.  Then the food you binged on will just get stored as fat, because that's how your body reacts to a famine.  It needs to store that binge food as fat, because it doesn't know when you are going to feed it again.  I hope you'll respond and keep in touch.  You need to be here where people understand.

Don't we all know by now that there's no such thing as a successful diet?  When 95% of all dieters regain lost weight (plus even more) within 5 years, how is that a "successful diet?" 

This article perpetuates the myth that somewhere out there, there's a magical weight loss diet plan, that will work permanently.  What a crock.  These experts are delusional. It will be gained back, in 5 years, if not sooner, so stop fooling yourself.  Google Jean Antonello, or her Naturally-Thin website (with the hyphen) and learn the truth.  It's "dieting" that is leading this nation straight into the Obesity/Eating Disorder Epidemic of all times.  It is the root of all eating disorders.