If your wish is to:
 
Eat what you want,
Enjoy every guiltless bite,
and Be happy with
whatever way your body looks,

Intuitive Eating works flawlessly,
… but it stops at that point.

Intuitive Eating is letting your body tell you What, When, and How Much to eat.
                             It is NOT a weight-loss tool. 

Intuitive eating means making decisions based on what your body wants, rather than what your mind thinks it should eat. 

The body has a survival mechanism that determines the weight it wants to be. 

When a person who is currently at the weight that their body naturally wants to be, begins to successfully eat intuitively, that body weight will be "effortlessly" maintained.

However, almost every person who is under a “normal” weight, or who is at a “reduced obese” weight, weighs less … sometimes far less … than the higher number that their body’s survival mechanism considers optimal or “normal” for them. 

This means that when those people begin to successfully follow their body signals, they are going to gain weight.  "Reduced obese" people will usually re-gain ALL of their lost weight.

The practice of Intuitive Eating is sometimes called the “hunger and fullness diet”.

When you believe that you can only eat when you are hungry, and that you have done something wrong if you have eaten when you were full, you are using Intuitive Eating as a diet.

When a person feels like...

                                          
As part of my Dieting Hobby, I've studied a great many diets, and experimented with some of them.  I enjoy learning about the different ways that people handle their food issues. 

Some of these ways appeal to me personally, and some of them do not, but what they've all taught me is that there is no One-Right-Way-To-Eat that will guarantee weight-loss or maintenance of weight-loss for everyone. I've found that "Every Diet works for Someone, but No Diet works for Everyone". 

Every diet was created by someone, usually these "someones" follow the diet themselves with personal weight-loss success, and then begin sharing their diet plan with others.  Often this diet guru is a nutritionist, or medical doctor, or psychologist, or trainer, or celebrity. They write a book about the diet they've created. It gets published, and then publicized … which is how we normally learn about that specific diet.

The creation of a diet usually involves the following process. 

• the Diet Creator begins by taking responsibility for his/her weight.
  
  
• the Diet Creator trusts him/herself and finds the solution within, rather than relying on another's "diet".
  
  
• the Diet Creator gives him/herself permission to do what is personally necessary, despite the opinions of others.
  
  
• As a result of these steps, the Diet Creator discovers his/her own unique way of eating and/or exercise that leads to successful weight-loss.

I'm always interested in what makes a diet work for its Creator, and for the others who follow it. Although the styles of eating vary between individual diets, each one of these involves EATING LESS in a way that keeps the Diet Creator from feeling deprived.

                         
The Dolly Diet is an example of this process. Dolly Parton was the Creator of The Dolly Diet, and she shared this diet inside her autobiography...

Sometimes I feel like writing an article, but I have nothing that I feel compelled to say.

The ARCHIVES here at DietHobby are full of long, and information filled, posts that cover almost every dieting subject that I can bring to mind.

Someday, I want to write more about the way that Diet ... (and "Non-Diet") ... Marketing Interests (including the medical profession) … have successfully labeled a large range of various eating behaviors with the term: "Eating Disorder".

 They are making millions of dollars with Ad Campaigns that are full of B.S., which serve to convince people to Hate themselves, in order to sell them "Help" to Change … or to use a more marketable term, "Recover".

There's an Eating Disorder Label for Every person of Every Size. If not an Anorexic, Bulimiac, or Binge Eater, fear not, there's a slot called EDNOS for those who don't fit elsewhere.

I could call this article: "You are Sick; Let us Change You; Your Insurance will pay."

Of course, Marketing is quick to take advantage of our Blame-happy, finger-pointing Culture, turning this into: "They are Sick, Help us Change Them." which, as is commonly seen in online diet forums, results in: … "I am SO concerned about YOU."

Ten Steps
to Eating Perfectly
          by Alden Wicker

1.  They said that fast food executives were turning fat profits by making us fat, so I stopped eating fast food.

2.  They said that killing animals was wrong, so I became a vegetarian.

3.  They said that fertilizer run-off from industrial farming is killing the Gulf of Mexico, the pesticides are killing honeybees, so I started only eating organic.

4.  They said that shipped food is too carbon intensive and not as fresh, so I started eating only local, in-season food.

5.  They said that it was wrong to punish a cow by milking it twice a day, or to steal a chicken’s eggs, so I became a vegan.

6.  They said that the paleo diet would restore my body and make my teeth healthy, so I stopped eating anything cultivated.

7.  They said that cooking food destroys its nutrients, so I starting eating only raw food.

8.  They said that following a macrobiotic regimen would prevent cancer, so I followed it.

9.  They said that I should follow a zero-waste diet, so I stopped buying anything with packaging.

10.  Then, when I showed up at the farmers market in December with my reusable bag looking for local, certified-organic, vegan, unprocessed, uncooked, uncultivated, whole foods, without packaging, that would fit into my macrobiotic diet, I realized that the best thing for the planet, the animals, and my health would be to just stop eating altogether.

No one in life gets away
with avoiding all problems.

Some problems are physical. 
Some problems are mental.
Some problems are the two combined.
If it’s my problem,
I’m the one who has to deal with it.


Defining a problem helps me understand it,
which helps give me
wisdom to know the difference
between what I can change,
and what cannot be changed.

What is a Binge?

The dictionary definition of bingeing is:

• to be immoderately self-indulgent and unrestrained;

  to engage in excessive or uncontrolled indulgence in food or drink.

Bingeing isn’t usually because of lack of self control and weakness.  We binge because of a complex interaction of habit, brain chemistry, and external cues that signal us to eat. This interaction can be overcome, but it's harder to do and takes longer to change than most of us realize.

Current scientific research indicates that bingeing has a physical (PHYSIOLOGICAL) cause, and that mental & emotional (PSYCHOLOGICAL) problems are a RESULT of the condition, not the CAUSE of the condition.

Neuroscientists say that Bingeing is a normal response to Dieting because:  

Metabolic suppression is one of several powerful tools that the brain uses to keep the body within a certain weight range, called the set point. The range, which varies from person to person, is determined by genes and life experience. When dieters’ weight drops below it, they not only burn fewer calories but also produce more hunger-inducing hormones and find eating more rewarding.



The brain’s weight-regulation system considers your set point to be the correct weight for you, whether or not your doctor agrees. If someone starts at 120 pounds and drops to 80, her brain rightfully declares a starvation state of emergency, using every method available to get that weight back up to normal. The same thing happens to someone who starts at 300 pounds and diets down to 200.

Our brains send signals to the rest of our body that it is starving when our weight is below its Set Point range.  A person’s Set Point is determined by a person’s genes and life experience. 

Life experience involves a person’s weight history, because when a person gains and holds “excess” weight, their Set Point...