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 they’ve “fallen off the wagon” after choosing to eat according to their desires, instead of their biological cues, they are using Intutive Eating as a diet. 

A person can ONLY “fall off a wagon” when there’s a wagon to fall off of.  The term, “wagon” is a metaphor for "diet": meaning a set of rules, ideals or beliefs around food that we let determine how we feel about ourselves. 

Resisting whatever weight that your body considers to be your natural weight, makes it impossible to get to a “neutral and intuitive” place with food. 

Any Intuitive Eating guru who teaches normal eating, but also promises-or-implies a weight-loss result, raises a big red flag. 🚩 Lessons on listening to your hunger will fall short if you are unwilling to gain weight. That’s a diet masked as “intuitive eating”.

                                          
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, Dolly, My Life and Other Unfinished Business, (1994) by Dolly Parton.

In this book, after sharing a bit about her struggles to get and keep her weight down, Dolly Parton talks about her creation of what she calls "the Dolly Diet."

She says: "The inescapable truth about any diet is:  If you're going to lose weight, you're going to have to eat less food." 

Dolly acknowledges that exercise is important, but says that "the hardest exercise for most of us is that one where we push or chair back from the dinner table."

                        

Dolly accomplishes eating less by using two tactics.

1. One, she eats any food she wants; but always eats a very small quantity; having only a bite or two of each food; leaving the rest of it for others to eat or throw away.
   
   
2. Two, she chooses to sometimes taste food without swallowing it.  Specifically, she engages in a practice commonly known as "Chew and Spit".

Dolly has this to say about "Chew and Spit": 
 

"Our taste buds are only in our mouths, after all, and we don't really taste the food when we swallow it. You can get a lot of the satisfaction from the taste of things you love by just chew, chew, chew, chew, Chattanooga chew-chewing and then not swallowing. 

'Wait a minute' you're thinking, 'If I don't swallow, won't I have to spit the food out?' 

You're right.  'That's disgusting,' you say. 

That may be, but what's more disgusting? Spitting out food or being a lardass?  I'm not suggesting for a minute that you spit UP food.  That's very dangerous, but it doesn't hurt to spit it OUT.  I know for a fact that a lot of stars and models chew and spit.  The first time somebody told me that, I was so shocked I dropped a whole Styrofoam cup of chewed donuts. "

Dolly Parton says that she doesn't recommend the Dolly Diet to anybody else.  She recommends:

"that you go on the (your name here) diet.  Find one that works for you, even if you have to make it up.  As long as it's not nutritionally detrimental to your health, and you can afford it, I say go for it."

Out of curiosity, I looked up Dolly Parton's stats, and found: her Height, 5' 0" and her Weight 114 lbs.  This means she's the same height as me, and her weight is about my own goal weight. 

However, that source says her weight is distributed Bust 40, Waist 20, and Hips 36 … which is FAR different than my own weight distribution.

Dolly's personal food behavior solutions fascinate me, and I admire her for coming up with them. 

I've researched the issue of "Chew and Spit", and don't personally judge that practice as morally reprehensible; nor do I judge it to be physically or psychologically damaging.

The technical term for "chew and spit" or "sham eating" is Oral Expulsion Syndrome (OES), which is defined as "the chewing but avoidance of swallowing food". 

For some people, this is a dieting technique, allowing them to enjoy the taste and texture of food without suffering the physical consequences of overindulging.  For other people it can be a symptom of an eating disorder that includes a serious psychological disturbance.
Eating Disorder Marketing Interests    have appropriated "chew and spit" behavior for themselves, and put it into their catch-all category called "Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified" (EDNOS).  Their rationale being that some of the people who have been labeled Anorexic, Bulimic, or Binge Eater by "Eating Disorder Professionals", also sometimes engage in "chew and spit" behavior.

  Googling  "chew and spit" will bring up a multitude of inquiries about this way-of-not-eating.

  The most common question seen is whether this eating behavior will cause weight gain.
Most online responses to such questions  are quite negative and appear to actually be based on moral issues, although those moral judgments are usually disguised as being "concerned" about the questioner's health. The most common answer seen is along the lines of "You are sick and disgusting, get professional help." 

Many online diet forums have a policy against "promoting eating disorders", and God help anyone who says they eat very little, throw-up, or chew and spit.  I say, "God help them", because it is certain that the other people in those online forums won't provide them with any encouragement or emotional support. 

I learned this years ago, while participating in various well-known diet forums.
I discovered that whenever I made an encouraging statement to anyone "who might be considered to be engaging in 'eating disorders'  behavior", my posts were removed by the moderators.


A few times, I even received e-mails warning me that if I posted anything they considered to be supportive of an eating disorder, I'd be banished from a site. 

Since that time, I've noticed that the Web is full of people who radically oppose ALL online communication that could be considered "supportive to eating disorders", even to the point of trying shut down various personal sites, which don't conform to their personal "anti-eating-disorder" values. 

On the issue of "chew and spit" online information, an old undocumented statement by an "Eating Disorder Specialist" which lists negative side-effects is frequently posted, reposted, and quoted at various sites throughout the web.  

However, upon review and reflection of that old "medical" statement, it seems to me that the alleged physical side-effects which MIGHT occur due to chew and spit could be avoided rather easily, and that such potential side-effects are relatively minor, especially when they are stacked up against the side-effects of other eating behaviors that are commonly referred to as eating disorders, such as:  Anorexia=Starvation;  Bulimia=Ruptured-Esophagus; and Bingeing=Morbid-Obesity.  

The true medical definition of an eating disorder is "abnormal feeding habits associated with specific psychological factors."  The APA says that Eating Disorders are illnesses in which the people experience severe disturbances in their eating behaviors and related thoughts and emotions.

In my recent DietHobby article, Eating Disorders Revisited,  I write about the way Marketing interests have blurred the line of distinction between: 

(1) a mental-health illness which INVOLVES specific eating behaviors, and

(2) those Specific and Individual Eating Behaviors themselves.

In truth, any specific eating behavior when UNACCOMPANIED by negative psychological factors and/or negative physical factors simply can't be ACCURATELY labeled as an "Eating Disorder".

The thing that strikes me about Dolly's chew and spit statements is that they are so free of moral judgment, guilt, shame, or self-loathing.  For her, it's simply a no-nonsense behavior choice she makes with food that she finds to be acceptable. 

I admire this tremendously, and I'm willing to go on record saying I think that she made a reasonable choice for herself.  I understand that my opinion might appear to be considered . . . by some . . . to promote eating disorders.  That issue is covered in DietHobby's Terms and Conditions section. Specifically:

This personal blog and website is created for my own recreational enjoyment, and to further my interest in Dieting as a Hobby.  I hope it will prove to be helpful to others who share my interests, but this is a secondary goal, and those who access my website, do so at their own risk.

Originally posted June 22, 2014. Bumped up for new viewers

Below is a video relevant to this subject, which I find amusing.

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."

This type of finger-pointing behavior makes ME wish I had more middle fingers.                      

Marketing has been quite successful in blurring the line which draws a distinction between:

(1) A mental-health illness which INVOLVES specific eating behaviors,  and

(2) those Specific and individual Eating Behaviors themselves. 

WHY?  Because something needs to be defined as an Illness, before health Insurance will pay for medical "treatment".   Call me cynical, but to the Marketing Interests in our culture, the more Sickness around to be "Treated", the more money there is to be made.

During my lifetime, I've had over 20 years of professional Therapy, much of it involving my food behaviors.  Therapy did nothing to resolve any of my specific behaviors with food, but it DID teach me to LIKE MYSELF no matter what I ate; what amount I ate; or how and why I ate; irrespective of my body size.   I am grateful for that result. Thanks to my past Therapists, when I choose to eat in response to my feelings, I can now say:  

NOTE: Originally posted on 6/13/2014.  Bumped up for new viewers.

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 can rachet up, and up and up.  (A rachet is a mechanical device consisting of a toothed wheel or rack engaged with a pawl that permits it to move in only one direction.)  

However,  thus far all of the evidence shows that this is a one-way-street survival issue. While Set Points can go up with weight-gain,  they don’t go back down with weight-loss. 

Many body functions are naturally one-way as we grow, age, and experience life.  When our life experience changes our Set Point, it’s like our scars, stretch marks, wrinkles, grey hair etc. in that there is no “natural” way our bodies will revert back to the way they once were.

Weight-loss and maintenance have less to do with motivation and will-power than most people think. In fact it has far more to do with how the individual body adjusts to, and is capable of, resisting a calorie deficit. Putting less fuel in the tank of one's car will always cause the car to drive a shorter distance.  However, the human body adapts to less fuel .... meaning eating fewer calories .... by becoming more ‘efficient’ and running the same distance on less fuel than before. That is the big difference between simple physics and biology.


Is Dieting a form of STARVATION?

The dictionary definition of STARVATION is defined as “to suffer or die from lack of food”. 

To “SUFFER” is defined as “to experience something unpleasant”.  Although we might not be in any danger of dying from lack of food, most Dieting does involve “suffering… from lack of food”.  Therefore, the term “starvation” isn’t completely inaccurate, but, of course, there are a great many different degrees of suffering.

However, most Diet Guru’s, including medical doctors, say that a Dieter is not experiencing “starvation” as long as there is any excess fat left on that person’s body. Excess fat defined as: there is “less than an inch of fat to pinch”, and the body weight is near the bottom border of its 18 BMI “underweight” category. 

This is true for some people, but not ALL people.  Although all human bodies operate in a similar fashion,  there are differences in the ways that they function. The regulatory mechanisms which allow our cells to deal effectively with fluctuations in nutrient supply can vary from person to person, and there is a still a great deal that science has not yet discovered about the body’s inner workings.

Research studies involving lab rodents have demonstrated genetic differences. Certain genetically obese mice will fatten excessively regardless of how little or how much they eat. Some of them, … while dieting, … will consumed their own muscles and organs and die before all of their “excess” fat is gone.

Researcher Jean Mayer reported: “These mice will make fat out of their food under the most unlikely circumstances, even when half starved”.  If starved sufficiently, these animals can be reduced to the same weight as lean mice, but they’ll still be fatter.  They will consume the protein in their muscles and organs rather than surrender the fat in their fat cells. 

When these fat mice are starved, they do not become lean mice…, they become emaciated versions of fat mice.

In 1936 Francis Benedict reported this after fasting a strain of obese mice.  They lost 60 percent of their body fat before they died of starvation, but when they died, they still had five times as much body fat as lean mice that were allowed to eat as much as they desired.

In 1981, M.R.C. Greenwood reported that restricting the diet of an obese strain of rats known as Zucker rats from birth onward, caused those rats to grow fatter by adulthood than their littermates who were allowed to eat to their heart’s content.  These semi-starved Zucker rats had 50% less muscle mass than genetically lean rats, and 30% less muscle mass than the Zucker rats that ate as much as they wanted.  The calorie restricted rats were sacrificing their muscles and organs to make fat.

DietHobby’s BOLG CATEGORIES Research - Science contains additional articles relevant to Set Point and its relationship to weight-gain and maintenance.


If Bingeing is a natural response to Starvation,
why is it considered to be an Eating Disorder?

In the 1960s the medical profession began attributing psychological reasons, rather than physiological reasons to people who overeat to the point of obesity. 

Since that time, there has been a tendency on the part of health professionals to classify every kind of eating outside “moderate eating” as an “eating disorder”.

Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) includes a wide variety of disordered eating patterns. It's often used for people who meet many of the symptoms of anorexia or bulimia but not all. For example, a woman who meets all of the symptoms for anorexia, but still menstruates regularly -- a criteria for an anorexia diagnosis -- would be diagnosed with an “eating disorder not otherwise specified”.

Binge eating disorder (B.E.D.) first appeared in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, in 1994. Until recent times, “Binge Eating Disorder” was categorized under the umbrella term 'eating disorders not otherwise specified”, or EDNOS for short.  However, in 2013 it was added to the DSM-V as B.E.D., a specified eating disorder.

There are many reasons for this…and one of them is Financial Motivation. Unless a behavior is labeled a “disorder” or an illness, health insurance won’t pay for treatment.

You may call me cynical, but since “Binge Eating Disorder” is far more common than anorexia and bulimia, it has a much larger population base. This means MORE PATIENTS to treat with Therapy, and/or Eating Disorder programs;  MORE MONEY and more profit for that specific health industry field.

Health professionals admit that a Binge Eating Disorder is more than simply eating too much food, and that many obese patients don't have it.  However these medical “experts” still they claim that up to 5 percent of obese patients and 30 percent of patients participating in weight loss programs meet the criteria for binge eating disorder.

In May 2013 the DSM-V, added Binge Eating Disorder to its list of specified eating disorders.  All of the following must be met to meet the diagnostic criteria of B.E.D. 

1.  Recurrent and persistent episodes of binge eating
2.  Binge eating episodes are associated with three (or more) of the following:

•     Eating much more rapidly than normal
  
•     Eating until feeling uncomfortably full
  
•     Eating large amounts of food when not feeling physically hungry
  
•     Eating alone because of being embarrassed by how much one is eating
  
•     Feeling disgusted with oneself, depressed, or very guilty after overeating
  

3.   Marked distress regarding binge eating
4.    Absence of regular compensatory behaviors (such as purging).


Think about it.

Such a diagnosis would fit almost every fat person that I’ve even known.  I’ve been super fat myself, and I’ve known many, many others.  Almost every fat person … and some of those who are not fat … experiences eating occasions where they sense that they have lost control of their eating behavior, AND have strong feelings of embarrassment and guilt after eating an unusually large amount of food when they aren’t physically hungry.

Weekends come every week, vacations and holidays come frequently, other celebrations and special events happen frequently as well.  Plus, most of us experience times of sadness, anxiety, or crisis more frequently than we like.

It is common for almost any person, whether fat or thin,  to engage in excess overeating on these occasions. It is also a very common occurrence for a fat person to “binge out” at least one time a week for months at a time.

The disgust and aversion that modern Society has for fat people pretty much guarantees that fat people will feel embarrassment and guilt because they’ve “failed” to keep from engaging in behavior that contributes to their fat condition.

It is my opinion that, despite the “conditions” that psychologists attach to the “Binge Eating Disorder”, by their proposed definition, almost everyone who engages in excessive or uncontrolled indulgence in food, which is the dictionary definition of Bingeing, could easily fall into the current medical classification of having an “eating disorder”.

I find something really wrong with this reasoning.

For those who are obese, (and normal-weight-dieting-people) bingeing is normal, and not abnormal, eating behavior.

My own experience together with my observation of the dismal long-term success rate 
of “eating disorder” treatments, … especially those that include the use of “Intuitive Eating” as a tool of recovery …  supports my belief that while Therapy is helpful to gain self-understanding of one’s behaviors, and can help one learn alternative behaviors, the underlying conditions causing obesity are not cured through that process.

I see Society’s current label of “Eating Disorder”, and suggested “Treatment”, as simply another attempt to shame fat people into believing that they should eat “normally” and that their body should be a “normal” weight.  It’s one more indoctrination to misinform fat people. It's another way to reinforce the Cultural Lie that only those who are greedy, lazy, or mentally ill are fat, and that if anyone would just “eat healthy” instead of "overeating" or "dieting", they would meet our Culture’s standards of what is a “healthy”, or a  “normal”, or even a “thin” weight.

This is a misplaced effort, because an obese body wants to maintain itself.  It doesn’t want to maintain itself as a Thin body.  It wants to stay Obese.  Bingeing is a natural physiological response to our Culture’s demand that fat people become thin. It is based upon a survival instinct that will never disappear, no matter how thin one becomes, or how much therapy one has.