I appreciate the link, but I do find most of the advice there falls into the general category of ‘wishful thinking’.

Intuitive eating is something, it seems, that is very difficult for most people to achieve — especially people who are prone to weight gain — although I agree that some people do find it a useful strategy. To give just one example of the difficulties inherent in IE: it’s much easier to just serve yourself a weighed or measured portion that you know is a reasonable amount and then allow yourself to clean your plate than to plate up a large amount of something tempting and delicious and then try to resist eating more of it when you are physiologically satisfied (something that it hard to tell anyway on a moment-by-moment basis as you are eating). My friends’ children ate pretty intuitively until they were 3 or 4 years’ old, but then, like most of us, were tempted to go on nibbling tasty things past the point of minimum satiation.

I also find the philosophy of ‘small swaps’ unrealistic. I don’t know anyone who is trying to lose weight who eats a chocolate bar every day as a matter of course. I am trying to lose 10kg but examining my diet fails to turn up any ‘daily treats’ that I could cut out and as I teach dance and yoga and walk everywhere I don’t really see any way of increasing my exercise levels either. The sad fact is that the only way I have found to lose weight is to just go a little hungrier. IE people always tell you to not eat if you aren’t hungry. But I cannot remember the last time I wasn’t hungry a few hours after eating my last meal or snack. And I am talking about real physiological hunger, not cravings for unhealthy food. I eat plenty of protein, fibre, vegetables, water-rich foods, etc. but there is no getting away from the fact that weight loss does involve hunger. A couple of hours after my healthy and delicious evening meal of (say) grilled mackerel and a large portion of three different kinds of steamed vegetables, I am hungry again. But I know from long experience that eating a larger supper or snacking later will add extra calories and my weight will not go down. And I’m not planning to snack on a chocolate bar — an apple and a few oatcakes would do me fine, but those are 200 extra kcals I can’t afford. So I distract myself with a good book or an extra gentle yoga or dance session and wait for my glass of skimmed milk before bed. This is the reality of my weight loss regime. Yes, when I was in my twenties and early thirties I could eat more or less what I wanted and stay slender but once I hit forty that just didn’t work anymore. I can’t both satisfy my hunger (hunger, not cravings) and stay slender. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Jonathan Franzen actually has a wonderful description of dieting and what it’s REALLY like for many people in his novel The Corrections. If you don’t know it, it’s a great read for many other reasons, too.

PS I diet on no less than 1600-1750 kcals per day, which is a lot more than most nutritionists would recommend for my height and age. And weight loss proceeds at around 1lb every couple of weeks. This is not the same as wanting to lose 20kgs in 2 weeks. I don’t know anyone who realistically expects to be able to do that.

I know it’s tempting, as a nutritionist, to want to think that weight loss and maintenance are easy and painless. I know that you want to be positive, upbeat and encouraging. But I think it would be helpful to acknowledge that it can be hard. Nutritionists don’t write much about the problems of hunger, because, of course, there is no magic solution. It’s much easier to just happily imagine that it’s as simple as not eating a chocolate bar or walking to the bus stop.

As someone who has been struggling with weight almost all my life, I second what the above commenter says. I wish I ate a chocolate everyday. Then I could just stop it and lose the weight…Yeah!