Well Shanshan, why don’t you just eat less and exercise more?

Kidding.

I know EXACTLY how you feel!!  I’m right where you are!  OK, I’m above you at 5’7”, but everything else is the same.  UNCOMFORTABLE and horrified.  You are not alone.  I wrote almost exactly this same post a few months ago - you can find it just a couple of posts down the list:  “Struggling” and lists Naturally Thin as the author.  Jean changed the name because I had written “How to Be Naturally OBESE by Eating More!” and she thought that might mislead people.  And I was definitely spewing out of my frustration, so she was right to do so.  I gotta tell you, that thread was unbelievably helpful to me in correcting some of my behaviors.  Take a look at it and see if anything helps.

OMG Annual!!!  “How to become Naturally OBESE by eating more”!  That was the biggest laugh I’ve had in weeks!  Seriously, there are tears streaming down my face!!!!

I’m here for ya.  : )

Annual, you definitely make this site a lot of fun!  I get such a charge out of your sense of humor!

Gosh, thanks!

This chain made me laugh!  thanks!!!!

I go back and forth between worrying/panicking about my weight gain, and being excited about my recovery symptoms at whatever cost!  Ride the wave and know that it will pass!

I just stumbled across a wonderful book called “Feed Me”, a collection of upbeat essays on food, eating, and american body image.  The first essay completely expresses the NT life, from a “non dieting” point of view.  One of the other essays points out that the word fat is not just a neutral statement like “butter is 98% fat”, but carries much more weight (hee hee).  A “fat person” is not only overweight, but lazy, sloppy, gluttonous, self-indulgent, weak willed and too dim to understand something even as simple as “eat less exercise more”.  She promotes herself as “fat positive” — being fat is not ideal, but she’s still a good person.

It made me want to get a t-shirt that says “Yes, I am Fat!  But I am not stupid, lazy or DEAF!”  (us jersey girls are big on t-shirts :-)

by the way, I found a link to the first part of the book online: http://www.scribd.com/doc/8384013/Feed-Me-Edited-by-Harriet-Brown-3-Stories

A great tidbit from the above-mentioned book:

“Words have so much power—the ones we say to ourselves and theones we share with other people. A therapist once suggested that if a friend followed me around saying half the things I say to myself all the time, I’d ditch her in a heartbeat.”

Annual,

Glad someone knows what I’m talking about! 

I know it’s in here somewhere, but will you briefly tell your story?  When you started, how much you’ve gained, do you feel like you’re doing NT the “right” way?

Thanks for the advice on checking out the “Struggling” thread, I’m going there right now!

I guess we need to keep a sense of humor and positive attitude about all this…....Right? Right!

:)

After having the same dream repeatedly about not knowing how the cafeteria in college worked, I picked up an old copy of Food Jail and said, I’m doing this.  (Then I had a dream where I aced my really hard college class!)  That was July 2009.  I gained about 30 pounds and felt REALLY frustrated by October of 2010 when Jean gave me some things to consider.  Things I wasn’t understanding about eating a MEAL when I get hungry.  And eating what I wanted to eat.  I had been mostly eating things I thought I “should” eat, or things other people who had succeeded at NT said they were eating.  I gained another 8 pounds after that, but I think I’m at the peak.

The real progress has been in my eating.  I was still eating too many borderline and pleasure foods, because I just wasn’t filling myself up enough when I ate.  I discovered that I really need animal flesh several times a day and that I don’t feel full without it.  I discovered that bagels and muffins and nuts aren’t enough to make me feel satisfied when I’m hungry, and that frosting actually tastes really gross eaten by itself.

I’ve learned to recognize hunger when it first peeks over the horizon and to start doing something about it right away.  I’ve learned that it’s ok to eat half my meal and put the rest back in the fridge; or eat 3/4 of it and toss the rest in the garbage.  I’ve learned that I have to REALLY crave a green vegetable before putting it on my plate or it won’t get eaten.  And I’ve learned that my husband suffers from the Thin Ideal more than I ever did.  And as challenging as this process is for me, it’s excruciating for him.

Sorry, dear.  Suck it up.

Once I started eating meals every time I got hungry, I felt like I really understood the NT concept.  I had been reading and rereading the books and old forum posts, but now I feel like I get it and I just need to go eat and get on with life.  I feel like I mastered a certain level, which is encouraging.

From Food Jail, page 146:

“Complete recovery usually takes years.  Eating patterns always normalize first, sometimes within weeks, but weight shifts always take longer, often years to complete.”

I can say with total confidence that the eating shift has taken place, so I must “steady as she goes” while waiting for the weight shift. 

I definitely feel freedom from the tyranny of food and diets and hunger, and what a thrill THAT is.  Every time I read or hear about someone on a diet, I feel sorry for them.  And grateful to not still be struggling with that mindset.

So great things have been accomplished, equally if not more important than the weight loss itself.  And that’s a good thing.

Thanks Annual, your posts are always enlightening. 

And was that “suck it up” for me or your husband!?  haha I think it was for your husband, but it should apply to me too!  I’m going to suck it up, quite complaining about the weight gain, which someone said on here; (Swan?) that the weight gain is a side effect to getting “better.” 

It’s funny, I don’t even know where I got my book, BOOFJ, I just know it has been on my book shelf for YEARS.  I wish I had started the NT way of eating when I got it…...

One question…(for anyone) I sometimes am hungry in the morning before I have to get up.  Should I eat as soon as I DO get up or wait until I’m hungry again?  Jean had said it’s not necessary to get up out of bed if you are hungry…

Thanks again Annual for your continuing posts.

:)

The “suck it up” was for hub, but as they say, if the shoe fits…wear it!

Sometimes one of my children will get up before I’m ready, so I’ll turn on something for him to watch, get him a juice and eat maybe half a banana and then go back to bed.  It depends how hungry I am.  If I’m soooo hungry I won’t be able to get back to sleep, I’ll eat something small.  Then I eat a real meal when I get up, or as soon as I’m hungry.

I had my book on the shelf for years, too.  HOW I WISH I had done this back when I was pregnant!  I had no problem eating when I was hungry then.  Oh well.  I guess we have to do it when we’re ready.

Hi Girls,

Shanshan, I totally 100% identify.  I said over on another post I keep wondering if I’m the great exception to this.  It works for everybody else, but it won’t work for me.  I have a few, quite a few pounds, on you both, so HA.  Not that it matters.  It either works or it doesn’t.  I’m willing to wait years, but I need to know…it works.  The weight gain has been FAST.  Like…20 pounds I’d say in about two-ish months.  I don’t even remember when I really started.  Is that not pitiful?  Sometime in March.  And I don’t think I’m eating THAT differently from what I was doing before.  Just more often.  And probably more carbs.  I was restricting carbs if anything.

Okay, I am really, really trying not to think in terms of rules here, but I do have a question.  i know we’re *supposed* to eat three meals before 1 PM.  But here’s the thing.  If I eat enough breakfast to be satisfied, really satisfied (not painfully full either, but feeling really well fed), then I’m not hungry for 3 or even 4 hours sometimes.  And then if I eat lunch in the same manner (or meal #2), ditto.  So no way do I get three meals in before 1.  Am I doing something wrong?  Am I eating too much at meals?  On a normal day, eating real food until satisfied, I probably only eat 3 or 4 meals a day, and maybe some cereal or toast at bedtime (when I am generally hungry again).  I am not getting hungry in between, either.  But it just takes a LOT to fill me.  I am trying to figure out if I’m doing something wrong, or if I’m doing something right by actually listening to my body…I don’t THINK I’m overfilling.  There always comes a point when i know definitely, that’s enough.  Course, when you just gained 20 pounds in 2 months, “I don’t think I’m overfilling” sounds pretty ludicrous. :)

Beth

Beth, it also depends on the time you awake, and how much morning activity you have.  On days I swim, I get up at 5 AM, and I have quite an appetite after swimming, so yes, I get 3 meals in by 1 PM.  On other days, maybe I’ll sleep in till 8!  And if I don’t swim, and just putter around the house, I’m not going to get 3 meals in by 1, I might only have 3 meals the whole day.  I didn’t feel the need for the 3 meals before 1 for a very long time on my NT journey.  But I kept it in the back of my mind that this is what my eating pattern might evolve to, and it helped me not be so worried about consuming too much food early in the day, because I know this is the time of day where my body will demand the most fuel.

I had the same problem, and I worked like mad to cram a 10am meal into place.  I finally decided that the most important thing was to learning to trust my body (still working on that one - we’re at the “sitting down together” stage, but the divorce papers are still in plain view ...) so now I don’t bother looking at the clock.  Some days I’m really hungry late morning, so I eat then, and have a later lunch.  Some days I’m just not hungry mid-am, but that day I’m ready for an early lunch.

As for the “will this work for me” question - I’m still hanging on like everyone else, reading the threads, trying to keep the faith, hoping that one day the great famine will be over ...  I like knowing that there are people out there who have indeed safely crossed to the other side of the alligator pond :-)