I’ve decided to give intuitive eating a go. Mostly because I’ve decided it means I can eat cake all the time and not feel guilty about it, which sounds like the world’s best diet to me.

I know a lot of people who eat by the IIFYM mentality, which is (from what I can tell) essentially the same as intuitive eating, and it seems to work for them. What bugs me most is that ‘intuitive eating’ actually means ‘eat like a normal person’ – but it’s got the stage where the diet industry has had to put a wanky name on it to get people involved.

Before I started going to the gym, I never ate breakfast. Like, ever. Then suddenly I was eating it every day at 7am without really knowing why. Okay, I understood that my body needed more fuel now that I was going to the gym, and that replacing no food with good food early in the day was the best way to get that fuel into my system, but I wasn’t really assessing whether or not I wanted to eat it, or whether or not I was actually hungry beforehand, and full afterwards.

This week I’ll stop having breakfast. This used to be my routine:

06:40 – wake up, shower (05:40 on gym days)
07:00 – breakfast
08:00 – walk to work
08:40 – arrive at work, coffee & water
13:00 – lunch
17:30 – walk home
18:30 – dinner 1
19:30 – gym
21:00 – dinner 2

Four meals – two in the morning, two in the afternoon, 400cals each.

Now I’ve decided to not eat anything until I’ve got to work, and so far it’s been a banana or two and some tea when my stomach starts to rumble. This means my stomach is empty until about 10am, having already put in a few miles of exercise. Surprisingly, I’ve found that my hunger levels at this time were the same whether I had or hadn’t eaten breakfast, making me wonder whether the months I’d been eating it had been a waste of time.

I know that the most important aspect of breakfast is literally breaking your fast, and getting your body and metabolism revved up for the day, but I’ve been managing fine without it, so I’ll stick to this ‘eating like a normal person’ a bit longer and see where it gets me..