Answers for T.B.D.

I love the blog thebingediary.blogspot.com, I mean I truly, really, madly love it. The humor and honesty just continually blows me away. Anyway the writer of the The Binge Diary asked me a few questions so I am going to answer them in a post because I think they are good ones.

1. It seems like you lost a lot of weight pretty fast. What did you do to do this?

I actually started blogging about a year into my weight loss. The weight loss has not gone that fast, about 2 years and I am over 100 pounds down. My weight loss accelerated about the time I started the blog when I had some breakthroughs and was able to truly do this for myself and not care about doing it for any other reason. It helped me get more honest and accountable and more weight started to come off.

2. How does your intuitive eating work? Can you explain it in a post? Do you and your dietitian just discuss it after the fact?

Intuitive eating sounds easy but takes time and patience. It is eating what you want when you want it mindfully in it's simplest form. This at first was AWESOME for me at helping me eliminate fear foods, diet mentality and all sorts of other negative behaviors but it took about a year before I was really able to grasp it. Then I ran into a problem where I was definitely giving myself too much permission. I want it, therefore must have it. Interestingly this was more about sweets and desserts....I had to learn there denying but not depriving. If I had a cookie after lunch I really didn't need dark chocolate after dinner regardless of being allowed it. For the first six months of working with Marisa she really monkey'ed with my food very little. It was so much more emotional, the whys, the triggers, what was food masking, and so on because even if I had had a food plan I would not have been able to stick to it because food was still an outlet and crutch. Once I became better at knowing what food meant to me I was able to eat more intuitively because the previous meanings had been removed. I was not a lot more free to find out what my body liked and craved. I also removed a lot of processed food. It really messes up your cravings and makes it infinitely harder to get on to track. Marisa and I still review my food journal most weeks and the dialogue has really changed, before it would be 3 servings of x what was going on there, or lots of cookies this day what was behind that, and now it's more rounding out and refining my nutrition and keeping me accountable. I eat a lot of roast veggies, am I having 1 cup, 3 cups or 1/2 cup. She doesn't care what the answer is but she wants me to be aware and accountable. Below are some resources about intuitive/mindful eating.

http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Mindfully-Mindless-Balanced-Relationship/dp/1572243503/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1294075810&sr=8-4


http://www.amazon.com/Intuitive-Eating-Revolutionary-Program-Works/dp/0312321236/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294075843&sr=1-1


Geneen Roth is a big intuitive eating guru, I think some of what she says is brills and other things a bit much, but she may resonate with you.

http://www.geneenroth.com/



3. How can you exercise SO much? I hate it and just can't make myself go to the gym at all. HELP!

I was not such a fan at the very beginning. I worked out with a trainer twice a week, and did cardio 4-5 times a week. I did 30 mins on the treadmill. It took several months before I started to feel less self conscious and got hooked. I really love exercising now. It makes me feel so much better about myself, it's something I do exclusively for myself, and it helps me be able to eat in a way which celebrates food and all that it has to offer in a healthy manner and not obsess about each and ever morsel. After about a year I was in much better shape, through strength training has seen significant improvements and changes in my body and was growing bored. I loved my comfort zone of hop on the treadmill and knock it out. I did not want to leave it. First I had to add another day, more time, and more incline. This was working really well for me and then I got shin splints. They got really painful and I was FREAKING out about not being able to work out and was working out with the shin splints which was a terrible idea. I met Melissa in the locker room at Clay she invited me to her spin class the next day, I decided to not be a wuss and go and I added spinning into my repertoire. She also got me to try yoga and I added that in. Now I run, spin, yoga, and a few other things that I L-O-V-E. If I don't love it I don't do it. I may not like it each and every work out, and not every work out is a good one, but I leave each one feeling better then before I started it. I work out mornings, and evenings depending on schedule. I prefer evening so I can really decompress and leave my day behind to reclaim my evening. It's my time, no phone, no email, just TV watching, or music and sweating. I also belong to a gym I love. There's no scene, it's a great group of healthy people who are sweet, kind, supportive, and it's little. I felt painfully self conscious when I started but you know what it was one of my first lessons in no one is looking at you or thinking about you. They were all focused on their fitness. What helped me as well was I didn't need to work out because I was overweight, I needed to work out in order to be healthy. Everyone does regardless of body, weight, age, unless you have been blessed with invincibility you have to work out. My advice would be to make a project out of it. Go to every gym in your area, see if you like the vibe at any, think about getting a trainer to have an ambassador of fitness, REALLY HELPED ME, or try classes in your area, invite friends to check out a class, see if there is a YMCA with classes in your area. The great thing about working out is it gives you a safe zone of healthy, it's a place to take feelings food can not soothe anymore and work them out without even trying. Just the act alone will do it. It also will give you a whole new community. I have made several friends through my gym and feel like Norm from Cheers when I go there, and it makes me feel good they have seen my hard work and noticed it and I am known by name not number. That alone is worth a lot of work outs I didn't want to do.