Posts Tagged: Intuitive Eating

Sex, Lawns and Body Image.

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sex outside

By Julia Gumm Coming to terms with human nature in the 21st century is no straightforward task. We are equipped with the most primitive of biologies, a physiology that compels us to do two things: Survive and spread our genes. But teetering o’er top that eatin’, sleepin’ and er, copulatin’ machine, there balances an extremely sophisticated control center. It’s complex enough to get us interested in things like algebra and ethics, and when surveying the two dimensional desires of the hulking load of anatomy it hauls around, is led to beg the question “Is this really all there is?” Consideration of the answer to that query can lead to attempts to complicate what otherwise appears to be far too mundane of a purpose for superior beings such as ourselves. When… Read more »

The Feedbag Method: How to Beat Food Cravings, Bingeing, and Emotional Eating

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Let your kids eat whatever they want

In line with the shift in focus in the new Diet Recovery, I thought it was worthy to post this insightful passage from Geneen Roth’s book, When Food is Love.  It’s about letting kids regulate their own eating, but certainly applies to making the same leap ourselves.  I had posted this in an old blog of mine that no longer exists, and it’s worth the reposting – especially for all the health-conscious moms out there who, despite really wanting the best for their kids, are disheartened by the fact that efforts to get junior to eat healthy have resulted in junior being a ravenous sugar fiend.  There is mounting evidence that the more a parent interferes with a child’s eating, the more harm is done.  The human body is fully equipped with a very sophisticated energy-regulating… Read more »

BMI Bulimia

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giulianarancic

By: Julia Gumm When I was but a wee lass, at the dewey age of sweet sixteen, I went to see my doctor. Nothing was the matter, I was perfectly healthy, I just needed to get a physical for my driver’s license. The exam was moving along just fine until I got onto the scale. At 5’4″, I weighed in at 136 pounds, a result that yielded an unsurprised yawn from me. With the exception of that one zany summer when I decided that subsisting on a single sleeve of Saltines per week was a good idea, my post-pubescent weight had hovered steadily around the 140 mark, and I was pretty sure I looked fine.* I was very active. My family was piss-poor so there was no computer or video… Read more »

The McXperiment

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cheeseburger-and-stethoscope

Today is the beginning of a brief but hilariously fun McDonald’s experiment – dubbed the “McXperiment (pronounced – ‘mickspeariment’)”  I can tell you right now, I shoulda started dating women with kids years ago.  This is awesome.  Why play with mice or guinea pigs when you can do it with a real, live human??!! My girlfriend’s daughter turned 7 yesterday. “Where do you want to eat for your birthday?” “McDonald’s!  Yay!” We’ve spent the last couple of weeks with her nonstop, and she loves that Mickey D’s – mostly for the lame toys.  This week it’s Spongebob playing basketball, which makes it even more fun as you will see in a minute. We both think that it’s important that a child has a balanced perspective about certain things.  My GF’s daughter… Read more »

Food Rewards and Punishments

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badcop

Don’t be turned off or bored by this title.  This is a monster of a topic that scratches the surface of some ideas so powerful and pervasive that if you were to follow the rabbit hole to their origin, you would be presented with a completely different template for life, love, self-esteem, parenting, business, and human interaction – not just a mended relationship with the things you put in your mouth.     We’re talking, at the core, about “intrinsic motivation” vs. the false presumptions made by the popular and foolishly-accepted psychological theory of “behaviorism.”  In the model of behaviorism, it is generally believed that people need some kind of incentive, reward, or form of praise to be motivated to do an activity.  And, on the other side of that coin, bad behavior… Read more »

Restrained Eating and Obesity

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In the book Intuitive Eating by Eveyln Tribole and Elyse Resch, a classic study on dieting psychology was highlighted (and reminded me of Napolean in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure).  In real life, I’ve been talking about this study a lot lately, because it is such an interesting example.  Here is the section in the book discussing the appetite dysregulation caused by dieting/restrained eating, with a quick video discussion on it.  Enjoy!  And if I don’t post again before the big day, have a great Thanksgiving!  I will probably not eat impressive amounts of food because I’m not on a diet, and overeating is not fun unless you are dieting – then it is orgasmic and food is so good you just can’t stop eating it! “One of the classic studies involved fifty-seven female college students at Northwestern University. … Read more »

John C. Parkin: F**k It

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Alas! I have returneth from the rugged wilderness of West Virginia where the work to reward ratio is probably the highest I’ve ever encountered. I was swarmed by insects, walked through miles of nasty bogs, got completely drenched by hard rain, bushwacked up the nastiest slope of all time ever, and got ripped to shreds by thorns only to see 50 miles of trees, shrubs, and rock. The Rocky Mountains have spoiled me (where even the crummiest 3-mile hike will take you to a vista of scenery that is incomprehensible). I did see one black bear. One glance at my intimidating presence from 70 yards away was enough to send him running for his life into the forest. 100% sheer intimidation. But I did get some good reading in (It’s… Read more »

The 180 Healthy Eating Guide Part I – Intuition

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It’s time to do a quick summary on what I’ve been thinking lately as it pertains to diet. Remember, this is just the eating component we’re talking about here, not the literally hundreds of other factors that go into achieving and maintaining good health. So don’t get overly wrapped up in it, or in eating in general. If anything, I look at eating as a tool to help combat the other stressors in life – a tool that can be used as an anti-stress, anti-inflammatory medication for the many other assaults placed upon us with modern life and mediocre heredity. For the moment, it seems most appropriate that our individual diets are influenced by three main factors – the “3 In’s”: 1) Intuition 2) Information 3) Investigation Today we’ll discuss… Read more »

Intuitive Eating

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Intuitive eating – which is best described as eating what you want, when you want, because you feel like eating it (with or without a “damnit!”) – is a great concept. Sure, it has limitations. One is that superstimuli such as artificial sweeteners, flavor enhancers, and pornographically-delightful foods like chocolate, cupcakes, Mountain Dew, and potato chips often induce us to eat, not for hunger’s sake, but out of an empty pleasure-seeking compulsion (sort of that “just one more” feeling you get when flipping through channels at the end of an unsatisfying day, or hopping around from site to site on the internet with that subtle whisper for gratification in the back of your mind). But it’s worth recognizing how much more intelligent our bodies are than our minds when it… Read more »

2011 Video Summary

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Starting the month of May off with a bit of a video summary of http://www.180degreehealth.com/to date… Coming up later this week we’ll hear a very interesting guest post from long-time follower Brock Cusick, which I browsed through this morning. Great stuff. As far as a preview for the upcoming month, I was thinking of really discussing the work of Ray Peat in the month of May in great detail – calling it “Ray May” or something queer like that. Let me know if anyone is interested in that or if you’d rather me just let people explore Ray’s work on their own without a translator. Anyway, enjoy the video summary over your favorite snack (and the sweet Julia Child quote on a t-shirt my sister gave me recently… thanks sis!)…

How to Feed Your Kids

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“Duke University psychologist Philip Costanzo, Ph.D., found that excess weight in school-age children was highly associated with the degree to which parents tried to restrain their children’s eating. Even well-meaning parents interfere with intuitive eating. When a parent tries to overrule a child’s natural eating cues, the problem gets worse, not better.” -Evelyn Tribole; Intuitive Eating “Research indicates that parents who restrict access to certain foods are actually more likely to have heavier kids! This fact makes sense: The kids lose their ability to self-regulate as a result of parents’ interference. Promising a child dessert if she eats her vegetables or encouraging a child to clean his plate can also contribute to developing unhealthy eating practices.” -Linda Bacon; Health at Every Size My goal in this post, first and foremost,… Read more »

Eating Order

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In a recent post I promised I would cease poking fun at various dietary cults out there (temporarily of course) and lay some firm ground rules in a post called “Eating Order.” I’ve spent an entire day laboriously chipping away at the idea, but unfortunately, my octopus-like mind has managed to outsmart itself. Originally I had grand ideas – ideas like having a healthy relationship with food means making food choices based on what you know nourishes you. Sounds good right? I mean, if you know a certain food causes your body to react in a negative way, then eating it due to some social pressure or something like that is an unhealthy relationship with food, people, and yourself. But how is one to really know such a thing? I… Read more »

2011 New Year’s Resolutions: Lose Weight!

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Along the same lines as the last blog post – a long-winded and passionate article on getting beyond the pathological fixation on weight, diet, and body image issues affecting modern humans to an unacceptable degree, here is an audio program encouraging you to not TRY to lose weight as a New Year’s Resolution. The focus of any New Year’s Resolution should be making a resolution to spend more time doing what you find to be the most fulfilling, satisfying, and enjoyable things in life – establishing a healthy relationship with food and exercise in a way that supports those endeavors instead of functioning as a major distraction, and just letting go and letting the pounds fall where they may.  Enjoy, and feel free to pass it along to anyone you know whose… Read more »