Hey hey, only five days between posts this time. I'm hanging in there. I have been so swamped with getting my new site up to make some money that between that, my real day job(which is begging people for overtime since it is the season for sales), looking for a new place to live, another new job in that city, christmas shopping, and organizing and packing to move, I almost forget what my name is.
I have the flu to boot so am feeling a little run down. This season always gets me sick. At least I will get it over and done with before Christmas this way though.
I am selling various ebooks on my new site and would love for you to drop by. We have some health and wealth related books that are a good buy. please drop by and tell all your friends.
kadebescatchofgoodiesThe following article I thought was a great read and made me think of weight management with a new perspective. Acceptance truly is the key I think.
Intuitive Eating: An 'Anti-Diet' That Works
Copyright 2005 Daily News Central
Stop hating your body, stop counting calories and stop
using food for purposes other than to satisfy hunger, and
you'll be healthier and slimmer. That, in a nutshell, is
the argument in favor of "intuitive eating," or letting
your body tell you when, what and how much to eat.
"The basic premise of intuitive eating is, rather than
manipulate what we eat in terms of prescribed diets -- how
many calories a food has, how many grams of fat, specific
food combinations or anything like that -- we should take
internal cues, try to recognize what our body wants and
then regulate how much we eat based on hunger and satiety,"
says professor of health science Steven Hawks, lead
researcher of an intuitive-eating study at Brigham Young
University.
The findings are reported in the American Journal of Health
Education.
Hawks, who adopted an intuitive-eating lifestyle himself
several years ago and lost 50 pounds as a result, says that
"normal" dieting in the United States doesn't result in
long-term weight loss and contributes to food anxiety and
unhealthy eating practices, and can even lead to eating
disorders.
All Diets Work Against Human Biology
Hawks and colleagues Hala Madanat, Jaylyn Hawks and Ashley
Harris identified a handful of college students who were
naturally intuitive eaters and compared them with other
students who were not. Participants then were tested to
evaluate their health.
As measured by the Intuitive Eating Scale, developed by
Hawks and others to measure the degree to which a person is
an intuitive eater, the researchers found that intuitive
eating correlated significantly with lower body mass index
(BMI), lower triglyceride levels, higher levels of high
density lipoproteins and decreased risk of cardiovascular
disease.
Approximately one-third of the variance in body mass index
was accounted for by intuitive eating scores, while 17 to
19 percent of the variance in blood lipid profiles and
cardiovascular risk was accounted for by intuitive eating.
"The findings provide support for intuitive eating as a
positive approach to healthy weight management," says
Hawks, who plans to do a large-scale study of intuitive
eating across several cultures.
"In less developed countries in Asia, people are primarily
intuitive eaters," notes Hawks.
"They haven't been conditioned to artificially structure
their relationship with food like we have in the United
States. They’ve been conditioned to believe that the
purpose of food is to enjoy, to nurture. You eat when
you're hungry, you stop when you're not hungry any more.
They have a much healthier relationship with food, far
fewer eating disorders, and interestingly, far less
obesity," he points out.
"What makes intuitive eating different from a diet, is that
all diets work against human biology, whereas intuitive
eating teaches people to work with their own biology, to
work with their bodies, to understand their bodies," Hawks
explains.
"Rather than a prescriptive diet, it's really about
increasing awareness and understanding of your body. It's a
nurturing approach to nutrition, health and fitness as
opposed to a regulated, coercive, restrictive approach.
That's why diets fail, and that's why intuitive eating has
a better chance of being successful in the long term," he
maintains.
Two Attitudes, Two Behaviors
To become an intuitive eater, a person has to adopt two
attitudes and two behaviors. The first attitude is body
acceptance.
"It’s an extremely difficult attitude adjustment for many
people to make, but they have to come to a conscious
decision that personal worth is not a function of body
size," says Hawks. "Rather than having an adversarial
relationship with my body, where I have to control it, and
force it to submit to my will so that I can make it thin,
I'm going to value my body because it allows me to
accomplish some higher good with my life."
The second attitude is that dieting is harmful.
"Dieting does not lead to the results that people think it
will lead to, and so I try to help people foster an
anti-dieting attitude," says Hawks. "You have to say to
yourself, 'I will not base my food intake on diet plans,
food-based rules, good and bad foods, all of that kind of
thing.' For people who are deep into dietary restraint and
dietary rules, again, that's a very difficult attitude
adjustment to make, to give up all those rules."
The first behavior is learning how to not eat for
emotional, environmental or social reasons.
"Socially we eat all the time in our culture. We go out to
eat ice cream if we break up with our boyfriend, we eat to
celebrate, we eat when we're lonely, we eat when we're sad,
we eat when we're stressed out," says Hawks. "Being able to
recognize all the emotional, environmental and cultural
relationships we have with food and finding better ways to
manage our emotions is part of the process."
The second behavior is learning how to interpret body
signals, cravings and hunger, and how to respond in a
healthy, positive, nurturing way.
Learning the body's signals can be difficult at first, but
Hawks suggests thinking about hunger and satiety on a
10-point scale, where "10" is eating until one is sick and
"1" is starving.
Intuitive eaters keep themselves at or around a "5." If
they feel they are getting hungry, they eat until they are
back at a "5" or "6." They stop eating when they're
satisfied, even if that means leaving food on the plate.
No Food Is Taboo
One part of intuitive eating that may be counterintuitive
to people conditioned to restrictive dieting is the concept
that with intuitive eating there is a place for every food.
In other words, there is no food that's ever taboo. There's
no food you can't ever have.
"Part of adopting an anti-dieting attitude is the
recognition that you have unconditional permission to eat
any kind of food that you want," says Hawks. "And that's
scary for people who say, 'If I abandon my diet rules, then
I'll fill a pillowcase full of M&M's, dive into it and
never come up again. That's what I crave, I know that's
what I crave, that's all I will always crave.' But that’s
not the reality. The reality is that our bodies crave good
nutrition."
It is dieting that creates psychological and physiological
urges to binge on taboo foods. While people may experience
some binges when they first start eating intuitively, they
eventually will learn to trust themselves and that behavior
will disappear, Hawks maintains.
One technique he suggests is having an abundance of
previously taboo foods on hand. Once the foods are no
longer forbidden, a person quickly loses interest in them.
"If people are committed to recognizing what their bodies
really want, the vast majority of people will say that they
very quickly overcame cravings," Hawks says, opening an
office desk drawer filled with untouched junk food. "It
certainly has worked for me."
----------------------------------------------------
Rita Jenkins is a health journalist for Daily News Central,
an online publication that delivers breaking news and
reliable health information to consumers, healthcare
providers and industry professionals:
http://www.dailynewscentral.com
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