Intuitive Eating progress

I think this intuitive eating thing may work for me. I'm slowly making progress on it. I sometimes catch myself eating because I'm frustrated or upset, but the fact that I'm catching it means I'm going in the right direction. I'm working hard on thinking about what I want to eat before I eat, and making sure I'm actually hungry and not just trying to feed something else. Sounds pretty "duh," I'm sure, but I've been on so many diets and used food as an emotional crutch for so long that I really need to reconnect with what it means to actually be hungry, not just to eat because it's Noon.

One important part of the whole thing is not concentrating on fat-free, low-calorie, no trans fat, etc. that we are trained to rely on. Some things are fine fat-free or sugar-free, but most of them just don't satisfy me and I end up eating more to be full and don't necessarily like the taste. For instance. I had been buying Dannon Light & Fit vanilla yogurt (4-oz.) to mix with my fruit and oat granola in the morning. It was OK, but I wasn't crazy about the taste and it was a bit runny. So, I bought some Dannon La Créme vanilla yogurt instead. Wow, what a difference! It's very thick and creamy (as the name insinuates), it tastes good, fills me up, and is just much more satisfying in every way. The light stuff has 60 calories and no fat. The creamy stuff has 140 calories and 5g of fat, which is probably why it satisfies me. But after I eat it I don't want more to eat, you know?

Speaking of low-fat and sugar-free, I've always bought the low-fat Jello pudding cups. They are actually pretty good, but now that I'm eating the regular pudding, it does taste better and fills me up quicker -- and doesn't have much more fat or calories than the low-fat. It's interesting, though, that there are more low-fat and sugar-free varieties of the Jello pudding than of the regular, at least in the refrigerated cups.

So, today I wasn't very hungry for much of the day until afternoon. Usually I eat breakfast, but since I wasn't hungry I didn't. I read that this is one of those things were one day you'll be hungry often and eat to satisfy it, and other days I won't be as hungry so won't eat as much, and it all balances out. Anyway, I bought groceries today and some nice salmon and a large amount of green beans for a mid-afternoon meal and am now enjoying some white wine. :)

So far, I'm pretty happy with this new way of eating. The hardest part is really asking myself if I'm hungry or if I want food for another reason, and stopping every so often while eating to check if I'm full and to actually taste the food and ask myself how much I really like it. That's when I realized that the particular light yogurt I was eating needed to go. :)