I am 3 months and a week out from my Sleeve surgery. As I mentioned before, I am in counseling for help with an eating disorder and am luck enough to have a Nutricionist that is specialized in eating disorders AND bariatric nutricion. Both my Counselor and NUT preach and teach Intuitive eating which is the notion that babies are born knowing when to eat and what to eat, and follow the needs of their bodies. They eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full - they intuitively know what they need. They hold no relationship to food other than the need to sustain their bodies.

Unfortunetely over time they are taught rules that many times conflict with what they actually need - social rules. They are given food as reward, or told to finish their meals or else, they are forced to eat when they are not hungry or sometimes not allowed to eat because it's not time.. Over the years, these children - us - stop listenting to what our bodies really need, to what it's telling us.

This line of teaching/therapy is meant to help us learn to listen to our body again - mindfully pay attention to what our bodies need. That goes agains any type of restrictive diet - They do not believe in diets at all, which are doomed to fail, because by restricting foods we consider "bad" in any way we are setting us up for failure. It creates in many folks the "binge" behavior, the "well, now that I fell off the wagon let me eat the whole box!" attitude - We binge, we feel guilty, then we feel anxiety and sadness and we beat ourselves up because we failed at something that never had much of a chance for long term success.

In my case, we were quite poor - not that we knew that, we were so happy - but we did not have access to a lot of food. We ate mostly pasta, potatoes and eggs, or any vegetables we would grow, but rarely ate meat. Because we were on a very tight budget, we were taught not to waste any food, so leaving food on our plate was absolutely unnaceptable. if we didn't finish our dinners we would not eat anything else until we finished our leftovers... Honestly it made total sense to me and I raised my daughters that way.. My older daughter also has an eating disorder.

Despite the tough times my mom always tried to have something sweet, some chocolate stashed - super special treat - and surprised my sister and I whenever we finished our homework, or if we were sad or sick. it was so loving and sweet of her, but it taught us to use food as comfort and reward from very young age.

Anyway, I have been listening to the tapes (I got the audio book) and trying to be truly mindful. I started to add more variety to my diet, still high in protein, and decided that I would fight back anytime I thought any food as "bad". I stopped restricting myself. Whenever I feel hungry I sit and close my eyes and relax for a moment - what do I want to eat. Sure I have my go-tos. I always have tuna or tilapia readily available, or chicken. And my body doesn't always communicate clearly what it wants (This is so new to me), so I default to my usual. But whenever I feel an urge, I do not deny myself. What I do is really be mindful and try to identify - is this my body asking for it, or is this my hormones, anxiety, etc?

Do I get it right every time? No, I don't. But I get it right more often than not. And I stick to my 3-4 oz serving! I still am terrified to eat some foods, but I know in my mind that is not the path I need to follow - so I work it out during session!

Yesterday out of nowhere I had a craving for pistachios. I dont necessarily love pistachios - but I had a handful of it and it satisfied a body need - I know it did. And I am so excited that I was able to listen to my body and do what it wanted. There is so much peace in that.

So I am doing all this and thinking in the back of my mind - heck I will stop losing weight.. Well, that was not the case!! I have lost 6 lbs in the last two weeks and have not denied myself once.

Today I was able to sit and cross my legs comfortably, like a lady. I missed that so much!

I have been wearing a very cute skinny jeans that are a size 14 - loose...

Today I also ran for half an hour with my Labs. Girl, I could not WALK them 3 1/2 months ago!

I would encourage you to do some research on Intuitive Eating - http://www.intuitiveeating.com/

Because losing weight is just a small (although HUGE) part of the journey. We want to be healthy and happy and keep it off for the rest of our lives. We want to stop thinking about food 24/7 and break the emotional bonds we formed with food

Be mindful and kind to yourself,

Best of luck in your journey,

Karen