Eating what I want...

I've had a bit of a revelation with intuitive eating lately.

I had taken IE as to mean I should include "naughty" foods into my life and eat them regularly. But now I see that it isn't that at all. Now that the "naughty" foods are part of my everyday life, they are just everyday things, which means I am equally as satisfied by an orange. If I want chocolate, I have chocolate, but if I want an orange, I don't eat chocolate because its "naughty" and therefore fun, I eat an orange, because that is what I want.

I find this tuning in thing quite hard. Tuning in to my hunger is hard enough because my signal seems really quite weak. I seem to be neutral most of the time and then very suddenly reach ravenous. But the next step for me is tuning in to what the food I want is. My mind is often shouting "chocolate! cookies! cream!" when my body says "I'll just take an orange, thanks". I like eating vegetables, lot of them, and fruit. It sits better in my stomach than chocolate does, so I am gradually starting to naturally gravitate towards them.

I like getting the hang of this. Now I want to learn how to be kind to myself when my natural reaction is to shout "No, greedy pig, if you eat that you'll be a real fatty!". I'm still reading Geneen Roth's "Breaking Free from Emotional Eating" and I'm picking up more and more tips.

I'm so glad I chose this path. It's blooming hard work but for once I understand the meaning of delayed gratification :)