If I am "building castles in the air"
I am dreaming grandiose dreams without any foundation.

Building castles in the air is NOT however to be confused with dreaming big dreams and then planning through the steps necessary to make those dreams a reality.

A member of a forum I frequent, recently asked:

“Just curious. What about No S vs. Intuitive Eating?”

Here is my take on these two concepts.

No S accepts that it is a diet, and gives specific and objective (although flexible) rules...such as:  "No snacks, no sweets, no seconds except ..sometimes..on days beginning with S".

Intuitive Eating is one of those diets that refuses to admit it is a diet, and gives vague and subjective rules...such as:  "Eat only when hungry, eat what you want, stop when you're full".

No S relies on the principle that: when a person who is interested in moderation, sees and actually realizes the amount of food they are eating, they will choose to reduce that amount,and through that behavior, they will achieve and maintain a more normal bodyweight.

Intutive Eating relies on the principle that: when a person gets rid of outside rules,....except for the Intuitive Eating rules about eating when hungry etc....and relies on their BODY to tell them what and how much to eat, that their own body signals will cause them to reduce the amounts they eat  and eventually acheive and maintain a normal bodyweight.

 (Note: "Intutive Eating"  is a diet (labeled non-diet) used by many "eating disorder experts", although it has absolutely zero scientific basis, as well a dismal success rate.)

No S is objective and primarily based on common sense.
Intutitive Eating is subjective and primarily based on magic.

Those of you who are unfamiliar with the No S Diet, and/or the diet-that-says-it-isn’t-a-diet concept known as “Intitutive Eating” can learn more about these from reading some of my past articles which are contained here in the ARCHIVES of DietHobby.

Some specific links are:

"The No S Diet” (2008), by Reinhard Engels is a book and diet plan that I’ve discussed and reviewed previously. Click here to see my review and viewer comments.

Here is one of my past articles about the Concepts of Intitutive Eating.

The two concepts together, were the basis of a previous article posted in December 2011. See:  Intuitive Eating and the No S Diet.

NOTE: Originally posted on 11/1/12. Reposted for new viewers.

Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater
....which means... 
Be careful not to discard something of value
with something that is of no value.

I see and share various thoughts and ideas here at DietHobby that come from many different sources.  If an idea or article is posted here, I’ve found some of its concepts interesting, enjoyable or valuable to me in some way.
 It does NOT mean that I agree with all of that author’s basic food beliefs or way-of-eating philosophies.

Here is the third of three articles about the basic Intutive Eating Concepts by UK addiction counselor, Gillain Riley, who appears to share my point of view about the general ineffectiveness of this Diet. Ms. Riley states her professional knowledge about these concepts in a thoughtful and precise manner, and I am sharing this series here at DietHobby.

Advocates of Intutitive Eating insist that this diet / manner-of-eating / way-of-eating / lifestyle is "not a diet". My belief is that EVERY diet works for someone, and this includes Intutive Eating.

The other two of the three articles can be found at:
"Does Our Body Tell Us WHAT to eat - Intutive Eating 1"
“Eat When You’re Hungry? – Intutive Eating 2”

HOW TO END A MEAL
         by Gillian Riley, Author of Ditching Diets (Revised edition of Eating Less)

A great many people do most (if not all) of their overeating at meals, especially their evening meal. You may be one of those who consistently buys, prepares and serves what you know is way too much food but finds it impossible to contemplate cutting back. Or maybe your meals aren't too huge to start with but you find it tough to stop, taking second helpings, finishing off what others have left, picking on things in the kitchen while you're clearing up and then finding things to snack on for much of the evening.

The third principle of Intuitive Eating, suggesting that you 'stop eating when you're full', attempts to address this problem. As with the two other principles we've looked at over the past two newsletters (eat whatever your body tells you it needs and eat when you're hungry), it ASSUMES a reliable, innate wisdom in our bodies. Those who promote Intuitive Eating argue that it's your ignorance of this wisdom that makes you overeat. If you simply pay attention to it, your body will let you know when you've had enough.

Of the 5,000 or so medical academic journals that are published every month, a good number of them, as you might expect, are dedicated to issues concerning food, obesity and appetite. Over the past ten years I've made it my business to spend time in the (absolutely fabulous) British Library in London, hunting down the latest research. I've not found anything to convince me about the theory of Intuitive Eating, and in fact have found quite a bit of research that very much calls it into question.

One paper I've come across that seeks to promote Intuitive Eating reports that in surveys, 'normal eaters' (those who describe themselves as not having a problem with eating and weight) state that they stop eating when they feel full. It's then suggested that this is ideal; the goal overeaters should aim for. (1)

First of all, I suggest that 'fullness' is vague and entirely subjective;. It's a personal evaluation, specific to each individual. Whatever physical sensations are interpreted as 'fullness' by one person will feel like 'just getting started' to another. Research has shown that how 'full' people report feeling before eating doesn't show much relationship to how much they actually consume. (2)

I suspect that many of those who overeat also think they stop eating when they're full. Isn't that what you do? Don't you think that if you tried to eat less at meals, you wouldn't feel full, and that is precisely the problem? Saying that 'normal eaters' stop when they're full doesn't say anything at all about the process of change, about how an overeater becomes a 'normal eater'.

YUMMY FAT
In terms of this process of change, there are both physical and psychological elements that need to be taken into consideration. As for the physical side of things, the kind of food eaten has an effect on the feelings of fullness, in particular the amount of fat contained in the food.

It has been well established in research that higher fat content inevitably leads to greater consumption of calories. This is thought to be because fat contains more than twice the amount of calories than protein or carbohydrate, gram for gram. (3)

But fat, more than anything else, is what makes food so delicious. Fat is the dressing on the salad, the gravy on the roast and the butter in the cookie. We often think of sugar addiction, but few people compulsively eat sugar directly out of the packet. Add fat to that sugar, though, and you've got something entirely moorish. It's no fun at all to completely eliminate fat, so our challenge is to eat enough to make our food enjoyable but not so much as to make us unwell.

HOW FULL IS 'FULL'?
In a rare example of solid research confirming urban myth, feelings of fullness are delayed, developing around 20 minutes after eating. There are two ways to use this information: to do whatever you can to slow down how fast you eat and, most importantly, to accept that it's best not to feel full when you finish your meal. The way to deal with that is to consider waiting to see how you're feeling in a few minutes, and if you still feel hungry you can have some more. This will work best if you've already got that second helping included in your Plan (see Eating Less, Chapter 6).

The notion of being 'full' seems to make sense because we know, for example, that when we fill a cup there's a point at which it will not accept any more filling. It becomes undeniably full and will begin to spill over. Even something elastic, such as a balloon, at some point gets so full that it bursts. But our stomachs don't work quite that way - which may be a good thing or a bad thing! That nauseous, bloated, sleepy, overstuffed feeling of fullness is WAY BEYOND the appropriate stopping point.

As you probably know, our stomachs expand over time to accommodate larger amounts of food. This is why one kind of weight-loss surgery simply reduces the size of the stomach so that larger amounts of food cannot easily fit into it.

Your stomach is supposed to be the size of your fist, but for many people it's become larger due to years of overconsumption. To correct this and to overcome overeating, your goal would be to decrease the size of your stomach, preferably without the use of surgery. Surely, if you consistently eat until you feel full, you will not be working towards that goal. The aim, I would think, is very much not to feel full at the end of your meals.

This, however, presents the problem that few people are talking about, especially of course those who advise Intuitive Eating. How can you finish your meals when you don't feel full - and continue to do that for long enough to make any real difference? To a great many people this seems impossible and unrealistic, which is why it's so often ignored as a viable solution.

This is what's different about the work I'm doing. It addresses this very question and leads you towards a workable resolution of this difficulty. This is one aspect of what I refer to as managing your addictive appetite, the aspect here being the excess appetite, the feeling of not being full at the end of meals.

The truth is that hunger and fullness are very difficult to define and usually only experienced at their extremes. When you give up thinking that you should rely on your body's signals, then you can see that there is an entirely different solution, and one that is both powerful and empowering.

NOTES
1. "Development and psychometric evaluation of a measure of Intuitive Eating." Tylka TL Journal of Counselling Psychology (2006) 53 (2), 226-240
2. "Reproducibility, power and validity of visual analogue scores in assessment of appetite sensations in single test meal studies." Flint A, Raben A, Blundell JE International Journal of Obesity (2000) 24 (1): 38-48
2. "The role of energy density in the overconsumption of fat." Rolls, BJ The Journal of Nutrition (2000) 130: 268S-271S
See Chapter 6 in EATING LESS: "What to do about Wanting More
 

Here's a link to my book review of Ditching Diets (2013) by Gillian Riley.

Ms. Riley is a Counselor on Addiction, not a medical professional or Nutritionist. Her own personal way-of-eating appears to Paleo based.  Here’s a link to my previous book review of the Perfect Health Diet (2010) by Paul Jaminet, which is on her short recommended reading list.

NOTE: Originally posted on 3/17/13. Reposted for new viewers.

Recently I ran across a series of three articles about the basic Intutive Eating Concepts by UK addiction counselor, Gillain Riley, who appears to share my point of view about the general ineffectiveness of this Diet. Ms. Riley states her professional knowledge about these concepts in a thoughtful and precise manner, and I am sharing this series here at DietHobby. 

Advocates of Intutitive Eating insist that this diet / manner-of-eating / way-of-eating / lifestyle is "not a diet". My belief is that every diet works for someone, and this includes Intutive Eating.

The first of the three articles can be found at: "Does Our Body Tell Us WHAT to eat - Intutive Eating 1"

Are You Hungry? 
      by Gillian Riley, Author of Ditching Diets (Revised edition of Eating Less)

The assumption behind this advice is that hunger means you are depleted of energy or nutrients, and therefore in need of food. But it's considerably more complicated than that. For example, when people fast or follow extremely low calorie diets, their hunger doesn't become increasingly more intense as time goes on and nutrient stores dwindle. Any anorexic will tell you that after a short time without food, their hunger fades away. If hunger accurately reflected nutritional status, this wouldn't happen. The reverse would happen, and hunger would intensify day by day.

To make the same point in a different way, if hunger expresses genuine nutritional need, it would begin to subside after the first few mouthfuls of a meal. But this doesn't necessarily happen either, and most people have at least some experience of the reverse occurring. Many people can begin a meal not feeling especially hungry, and then, after just a few bites of tasty food, feel a strong sense of hunger suddenly arrive. It doesn't make sense that your body would signal depletion after those bites but not before. (1)

We often think of those first few bites as a way to stimulate hunger, to awaken it. After all, the whole point of the 'starter' course is supposed to be to awaken our appetite and get our 'gastric juices flowing'. But how can we rely on this hunger signal if it needs to be stimulated to appear in the first place?

Rather than a signal of nutritional need, hunger is, to a great extent, a response to cues, at least some of which will be learned. The cue prompts an expectation of eating, and it's this expectation that sets off all those hungry sensations in our stomach. The cue could be the time of day, or the sudden availability of food along with the sights and smells of its arrival. There may well be no problem at all in responding to this by eating.

The problem arises for those who have overeaten so much that the cues triggering feelings of hunger happen much too frequently. It's okay for the expectation of eating to produce a sensation of hunger, unless you expect to eat every 15 minutes or so. Trying to follow the advice to eat when hungry isn't helpful if you feel hungry all the time.

Then there are those who tend not to feel hungry, even though it would be a very good idea for them to eat something. I've had a number of clients attend my seminars who have told me similar stories when they previously participated in a seminar promoting Intuitive Eating. They complete the seminar, quite excited by the prospect of looking out for hunger signals before eating. They go past breakfast time and don't feel hungry. They don't feel hungry at lunchtime, so they don't eat anything then either. Then, by the end of the afternoon, they feel weak, faint, irritable and shaky. They can't concentrate on their work and there's no food available except chocolate and sweets.

One factor here could be stress, which can have the effect of blocking hunger signals. When an animal is genuinely stressed, perhaps because they are about to be attacked, the last thing they are going want to do is eat. Part of the automatic stress response is to direct blood to the limbs in order to fight or take flight. The digestive system shuts down until it's needed again when the animal is safe and the stress has subsided.

Our present day human stress, though, is usually a more chronic state. Stress builds throughout the day and many people, not feeling hungry, go for many hours without eating. Typically they eat something when they get home and then overeat throughout the evening, probably on food that is not the most nourishing.

A paper published in the medical journal Physiology and Behavior proposes a phenomenon called 'hedonic hunger', which is hunger specifically for the more desirable (but less nourishing) kinds of food. (2) 'Hedonic hunger' is one manifestation of what I call the 'addictive desire to eat'. For example, if you feel hungry for toast and jam while completely uninterested in cucumber, you've probably got some hedonic hunger (addictive appetite or desire). The crucial point is that it feels like hunger, so it's very easy to assume you have an entirely appropriate need of food.

Again, it helps us to take into consideration the food environment in which our bodies evolved. A paper from the Journal of the American Dietetic Association makes this point: "...there is no clear adaptive advantage for an organism to consume just enough food to maintain energy balance. Such a system would fail to protect against future gaps in food availability. A strong hunger drive would act to encourage overconsumption and promote energy storage for use during intermittent food shortages." (3)

The question remains, if we have such an unreliable experience of hunger, why is Intuitive Eating so widely recommended?

The reason is that Intuitive Eating is presented as an alternative to prohibitive thinking (restrictive eating). It's well known - both in research and in many people's everyday experience - that it is counter-productive to think prohibitively about food. Trying to follow rules to restrict and deny yourself may work initially but creates stress, a miserable sense of deprivation and eventually a rebellious return to overeating. So the idea is to replace prohibitions around food with Intuitive Eating; to wait, for example, until you are hungry before you eat.

But these two ideas are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of people who will think prohibitively in order to prevent themselves from eating before they're hungry. 'I mustn't eat if I'm not hungry' is just another rule to obey - or not!

The alternative I teach is neither of these alternatives. I do encourage people not to think prohibitively because it certainly is destructive. And it's fine if you are hungry when you eat, so by all means make your best guess as to when you think you'll need food again. But the way that's done, I believe, is through intellectual evaluation. We can quite simply develop a fairly good idea of what, how much and how often to eat, put together by our grasp of our nutritional needs, our schedule and the availability of nutritious food throughout our day.

Of course you also need to be able to manoeuvre yourself around the addictive appetite you may well have for all that food you don't need. But don't trust your body to tell you what's addictive and what isn't. If your pattern of eating isn't producing weight loss (assuming you are overweight) it's likely that eating even less will deliver the result you're after.

NOTES
1. What can hunger teach us about drug craving? Kassel JD, Shiffman S Addictive Behaviors Research and Therapy (1992) 14: 141-167
2. Hedonic hunger: A new dimension of appetite? Lowe MR, Butryn ML Physiology & Behavior (2007) 91: 432-439
3. Appetite: Measurement and Manipulation Misgivings Mattes RD, Hollis J Journal of the American Dietetic Association (2005) 105 (5): S87-SS97
More on this topic in the chapter "The Trouble with Hunger" in EATING LESS.

Here's a link to my book review of Ditching Diets (2013) by Gillian Riley.

NOTE: Originally posted on 3/16/13. Reposted for new viewers.

 
Intuitive Eating is a Diet which claims it is not a diet.
I've shared about the IE concepts here on DietHobby before, and I personally believe they are ineffective for almost everyone. However, it is NOT a one-size-fits-all world, and I am certain, that ... just like every other diet ... Intuitive Eating works for someone.

One of the primary eating concepts of Intutive Eating is:

 "eat whatever you want - because your body has natural wisdom about what it needs, and it will provide you with that information."

Unfortunately, this is an Untrue Statement,... merely a crock of magical, wishful thinking with no basis in reality,... not through Basic Science, Research Studies, or documented Real Life Experiences of People. I find it amazing that Nutritionists and other Medical Professionals continue to adopt and broadly disperse that totally flawed concept.

Recently I ran across a series of articles about the basic Intutive Eating Concepts by UK addiction counselor, Gillain Riley, who appears to share my own point of view on this matter. She states her professional knowledge about these concepts in a thoughtful and precise manner.

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT TO EAT?
                  by Gillian Riley, Author of Ditching Diets (Revised edition of Eating Less)

'Intuitive Eating' promotes eating when hungry, stopping when full, and eating whatever you want. I've heard people say that this makes so much sense, they don't understand why they can't manage to do it. Well, this advice doesn't make any sense to me at all, so maybe you'll let me know what it is that I'm not understanding!

These ideas are widespread, having been promoted by Susie Orbach for years, among many others. Just google 'intuitive eating' and you'll see it's all over the place. This will take a while to cover, so I'll start with the suggestion to 'eat whatever you want' (because the innate wisdom of your body lets you know what it needs) and continue with the other aspects of this advice in my next newsletter.

The experience of 'wanting to eat' something is going to feel very different to each person, and even for each person from occasion to occasion. It's feeling attracted towards some food, certainly, and most likely thinking you would enjoy eating it, that you fancy it. This attraction could be barely conscious, but when we are aware of it, it often gets called a craving. (I think of attraction, desire, urge and craving as the same thing, with varying degrees of intensity, just as irritation is a less intense form of rage.)

I have heard people say that they crave greens sometimes, and perhaps that's true for you. But if you had some raw spinach leaves in a bowl in the kitchen and a slice of cake on a plate next to it, we surely know which one would be more likely to grab your attention and not let go. A 'craving for greens' may be no more than the awareness that you haven't had any for a while, a purely cognitive process rather than an expression of your body's need for B vitamins. The reason I say this is because what is craved by most people most of the time is food that contains various combinations of high-density, starchy carbohydrates (such as sugar, potatoes and processed grains) salt and fats.

A Tufts University study looked at the eating habits and self-reported food cravings in a group of overweight women over a period of six months. (1) They found that those foods that were craved were more than twice as high in energy density as other foods in their diet. Not only were they high in energy density, but the craved foods had higher fat content and lower fibre and protein content. The reason is simply that the starchy carbs and fat have greater reinforcing properties, biochemically speaking, and this has been well established in research.

Of course all food contains some reinforcing properties, but a natural food, such as broccoli, has those reinforcing properties in a natural balance. When a 'food product' is manufactured, it has a far greater proportion of these highly reinforcing elements. And that 'food product' might be manufactured outside your home, or it might be put together by yourself and called dinner!

I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to accept that this is always a matter of degree. Fat in particular is what makes our food enjoyable, and it's very important to enjoy what you eat. But for many who overeat, they enjoy too much. They satisfy an appropriate delight in food but on top of that they satisfy excessive, addictive desire too often. They do this because they have trained themselves to expect more of the more addictive elements more often. So they eat more fat and more starchy carbs at meals, often quite literally mixed up on the plate with the food that's really needed. Then more fat and sugar for dessert after the meal. And maybe some more fat, carbs and salt for snacks later on that evening.

They develop that habit and repeat it daily for years. And then, whenever they stop to listen to what their body 'needs', guess what? It 'needs' sugary fat! It's like a smoker asking her body if it needs a cigarette. Of course it seems to, but this is the twisted reasoning of addiction speaking.

There isn't a great deal of research on this aspect of 'intuitive eating', I suspect because the people who do the research on appetite don't take it seriously enough to study. One study, though, at the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania sums it all up for me. (2) They put the pharmacological elements of chocolate into capsules and gave them to self-confessed 'chocolate cravers' to see if the capsules would satisfy their cravings. They didn't. At all. As you might expect.

I could go along with this idea of tuning into my genuine needs if I lived in an environment where I had only ever encountered and eaten purely natural foods, and where sugar and fat were very occasionally on offer. But why would a reliable, natural system exist when it's only relatively recently that we have had access to such abundance and such an enormous variety of food available year round, and especially so much high-density, manufactured food? It makes no sense (to think) that my body has evolved with built-in intuition to help me manage my appetite for all this stuff.

I know I used to think that there were probably some nutrients I needed that were contained, for example, in ice cream. It's just not true, though. Ice cream is just more processed carbs and lots of fat. By all means eat it if that is your choice. It tastes good because anything with that much fat and sugar in it is going to taste good. But it's still not nutritious.

So how do I know that? I read books. I read the most thoroughly well researched books on nutrition I can find, such as The China Study (outstanding, although a hefty read) and Anti-Cancer. (3) I educate myself about what my body needs because both the quality and the quantity of my life depend on it.

If you don't have the time or inclination to read, remember the idea is not to cut this stuff out entirely, but clearly if you want to eat less, then it's most likely low-nutrient, high-density processed carbs and fat that you would do best to cut back on. Getting clear about the nature of your desire for them will help you to achieve that, so the first step is to let go of this idea that your body transmits its wisdom about what you need.

How you eat less of the food you crave - without feeling like you're missing out, being restricted or deprived, without becoming obsessed with the food you're not eating, and without becoming rebellious and eating even more - how to manage all that is contained in the technique I write about and teach. The end result is that you learn to enjoy food that has less fat and starchy carbs. You realise that the less you eat of it, the less you feel like you need it. As that happens, the more you will enjoy the food that doesn't have so much of those highly reinforcing, addictive elements.

Just one more point, and that is that my body does tell me what to eat but in a completely different way, and this is after eating, rather than before. When you tune in to the different effects eating various foods have on your body - in terms of energy, sleep, digestion, joint aches, head aches, mood, to name a few - you tune in to the most powerful and effective motivation there is to eat differently and to eat less.

NOTES
1. "Food cravings and energy regulation." Gilhooly CH, Das SK, Golden JK International Journal of Obesity (2007) 31(12): 1849-58.
2. "Pharmacological versus sensory factors in the satiation of chocolate craving." Michener W, Rozin P. Physiology and Behavior (1994) 56(3): 419-22.
2. The China Study (2006) is by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and AntiCancer (2007) is by Dr David Servan-Schreiber.
Also see pages 192-193 in EATING LESS by Gillian Riley

Here's a link to my book review of Ditching Diets (2013) by Gillian Riley.

NOTE: Originally posted on 3/15/13. Reposted for new viewers.