Professor Loses Weight With No-Diet Diet By BROCK VERGAKIS, Associated Press Writer
Sun Dec 4, 5:17 PM ET
SALT LAKE CITY - When Steven Hawks is tempted by ice cream bars, M&Ms and toffee-covered almonds at the grocery store, he doesn't pass them by. He fills up his shopping cart.
It's the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young University health science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it off for more than five years.
Hawks calls his plan "intuitive eating" and thinks the rest of the country would be better off if people stopped counting calories, started paying attention to hunger pangs and ate whatever they wanted.
As part of intuitive eating, Hawks surrounds himself with unhealthy foods he especially craves. He says having an overabundance of what's taboo helps him lose his desire to gorge.
There is a catch to this no-diet diet, however: Intuitive eaters only eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full.
That means not eating a box of chocolates when you're feeling blue or digging into a big plate of nachos just because everyone else at the table is.
The trade-off is the opportunity to eat whatever your heart desires when you are actually hungry.
"One of the advantages of intuitive eating is you're always eating things that are most appealing to you, not out of emotional reasons, not because it's there and tastes good," he said. "Whenever you feel the physical urge to eat something, accept it and eat it. The cravings tend to subside. I don't have anywhere near the cravings I would as a 'restrained eater.'"
Hawks should know. In 1989, the Utah native had a job at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and wanted to return to his home state. But at 210 pounds, he didn't think a fat person could get a job teaching students how to be healthy, so his calorie-counting began.
He lost weight and got the job at Utah State University. But the pounds soon came back.
For several years his weight fluctuated, until he eventually gave up on being a restrained eater and the weight stayed on.
"You definitely lose weight on a diet, but resisting biological pressures is ultimately doomed," Hawks said.
Several years later and still overweight at a new job at BYU, Hawks decided it was time for a lifestyle change.
He stopped feeling guilty about eating salt-and-vinegar potato chips. He also stopped eating when he wasn't hungry.
Slowly and steadily his weight began to drop. Exercise helped.
His friends and co-workers soon took notice of the slimmer Hawks.
"It astonished me, actually," said his friend, Steven Peck. "We were both very heavy. It was hard not to be struck."
After watching Hawks lose and keep the weight off for a year and a half, Peck tried intuitive eating in January.
"I was pretty skeptical of the idea you could eat anything you wanted until you didn't feel like it. It struck me as odd," said Peck, who is an assistant professor at BYU.
But 11 months later, Peck sometimes eats mint chocolate chip ice cream for dinner, is 35 pounds lighter and a believer in intuitive eating.
"There are times when I overeat. I did at Thanksgiving," Peck said. "That's one thing about Steve's ideas, they're sort of forgiving. On other diets if you slip up, you feel you've blown it and it takes a couple weeks get back into it. ... This sort of has this built-in forgiveness factor."
The one thing all diets have in common is that they restrict food, said Michael Goran, an obesity expert at the University of Southern California. Ultimately, that's why they usually fail, he said.
"At some point you want what you can't have," Goran said. Still, he said intuitive eating makes sense as a concept "if you know what you're doing."
Intuitive eating alone won't give anyone six-pack abs, Hawks said, but it will lead to a healthier lifestyle. He still eats junk food and keeps a jar of honey in his office, but only indulges occasionally.
"My diet is actually quite healthy. ... I'm as likely to eat broccoli as eat a steak," he said. "It's a misconception that all of a sudden a diet is going to become all junk food and high fat," he said.
In a small study published in the American Journal of Health Education, Hawks and a team of researchers examined a group of BYU students and found those who were intuitive eaters typically weighed less and had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than other students.
He said the study indicates intuitive eating is a viable approach to long-term weight management and he plans to do a larger study across different cultures. Ultimately, he'd like intuitive eating to catch on as a way for people to normalize their relationship with food and fight eating disorders.
"Most of what the government is telling us is, we need to count calories, restrict fat grams, etc. I feel like that's a harmful message," he said. "I think encouraging dietary restraint creates more problems. I hope intuitive eating will be adopted at a national level."
___
On the Net:
National Institute for Intuitive Eating http://www.intuitiveeating.com
Well, doesn't this sound swell? It also seems to make some sense...but what about people who binge on junk because they think they feel "hungry"? What if the "stop" button doesn't work? This is a concept I'd love to try but I'd be afraid to buy certain red light foods like chips and chocolate.
The other thing is...the article says that exercising "helps". I have a feeling exercise plays a more important part than is being given credit for here. I wonder if these people would have weight loss if they didn't exercise?
Wouldn't it be nice if it did work, though? One good point I think made was that diets ultimately fail, mostly because of all the restrictions. Whatever it is we do has to become a permanent change in our lives, a whole lifestyle change.
More on Intuitive Eating:
The concept of intuitive eating is an anti-dieting philosophy that replaces external eating with a hunger-based approach. It has come to include several keys:
1. The ability to clearly recognize the physical signs of hunger, satisfaction, and fullness. The intuitive eater only eats when physically hungry, and stops eating when satisfied—well before fullness is reached.
2. The intuitive eater is capable of sensing the nutritional needs of the body. Since there are no restrictions on eating, the intuitive eater considers the full range of food possibilities and carefully weighs available choices against physical promptings. On any given day a chocolate shake may be desired, while on another day it might be cream of broccoli soup. In either case, the nutritional urgings of the body are honored without reference to emotional states or external plans.
3. For the intuitive eater, the physical effects of food consumption are carefully monitored in terms of satisfaction. Food is not consumed unconsciously while driving through rush hour traffic, but is instead fully appreciated as it satisfies the nutritional and hunger needs of the body.
4. The intuitive eater has come to recognize external motives for eating (environmental, social, emotional) and has learned to effectively manage such situations to avoid emotional overeating and/or deprivation. Emotions are no longer dealt with through consumption of food and environmental and social eating occasions are managed through hunger-based eating with an emphasis on avoiding feelings of deprivation.
...
There's more there, why not check it out?
Now I better go make an appointment to exercise!
1 comment:
I wish you the best in your diet efforts. May God continue to bless you! DivaC
Post a Comment