For most of my life I have been seriously underweight except when I was pregnant. Nothing I did put the weight on. Then I hit menopause and gained 35 pounds in one year, and actually started feeling healthy because of it.

But now my GP has begun harping on me about my cholesterol level (which also skyrocketed as soon as my hormones shut down my ovaries) and my weight gain, insisting on my switching over to “diet food” and that I need to drop 15 pounds, etc.

Well, for 6 months I tried to follow what that nutritionist she sent me to said and I am in worse shape now than I was before. So I have thrown that “low-fat diet” out the window. No more fake-butter made of chemicals that I can’t pronounce. No more angsting about how to meet that diet and still ensure that my children are getting enough fats and proteins in their diet to keep their brains developing and growing properly. No more building up insulin resistance because of the increase in carbs and reduction of proteins that came from cutting down having meat to only 3 times a week.

Intuitive eating is working for me and my family is finding me a much easier person to live with because of it. I haven’t gained nor lost anymore weight, my clothes fit me just fine, and my kids say that it’s nicer to hug me now because I’m “cuddly” instead of boney. :)

I just wish that I could go to a different doctor who is more accepting of my choices… but I don’t have that option at the clinic that I have to go to.

Thanks again for your blog post. It absolutely ROCKS!

A quote from Bertolt Brecht has been running through my head recently: “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.” (Literally, first comes feeding, then comes morality–figuratively, a hungry person has no conscience). I wonder if this is true. I wonder if it’s a luxury of our privileged, over-industrialized culture that we even have such food choices, that we can even sit here and assign value to this food and not that.

I’m British, and hubby and I both recently received letters inviting us to our GP’s surgery for a ‘health MOT’, a new thing that’s being pushed for anyone over 40 (we’re both pushing 42). It states that measurement of height, weight and waist size are involved, and neither of us will be going for precisely that reason. None of the three doctors I’ve seen since I signed up at the surgery over a decade ago have ever weighed me or commented on my weight, but it seems the NHS is now pushing them to do so. I half thought about writing to them to explain why focusing on weight is not only a useless health indicator but will actually put many people off going for checkups, and your excellent letter has inspired me…again, thanks.

Food is not BAD. We need food to LIVE. That’s been the hardest lesson ever to learn, and now I revel in the budding relationship I’m building with my body – the relationship of listening to each other, brain and body.

[thank you for this post, it's been a wealth of discussion fodder for me!]

We don’t need anyone else telling us how much to eat; we need more support for listening to our bodies and eating according to our own intuition, whether that’s leaving food on the plate or going back for seconds. Or sometimes doing one, and sometimes the other.

I might send this, or I might take snippets of it with me. I don’t want to piss him off (because I’d like to work with him), but I do want him to understand where I’m coming from. So… I don’t know.

Doesn’t the concept of intuitive eating freak the hell out of people? I always take this as further proof that intuitive eating is the right thing to be doing.. if intuitive eating *still* seems so dangerous to people then that is all the more reason for me to believe that the world I live in has *issues with food* and listening to my body is the *only* way to go.

Oh so much this.