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 passthem by. He fills up his shopping cart.
It's the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young Universityhealth science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it offfor more than five years.
Hawks calls his plan 'intuitive eating' and thinks the rest of thecountry would be better off if people stopped counting calories,started paying attention to hunger pangs and ate whatever theywanted.
NO EMOTIONAL EATING
As part of intuitive eating, Hawks surrounds himself withunhealthy foods he especially craves. He says having an overabundanceof what's taboo helps him lose his desire to gorge.
There is a catch to this no-diet diet, however: Intuitive eatersonly eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full.
That means not eating a box of chocolates when you're feeling blueor digging into a big plate of nachos just because everyone else atthe table is.
'One of the advantages of intuitive eating is you're always eatingthings that are most appealing to you, not out of emotional reasons,not because it's there and tastes good,' he said.
Hawks should know. In 1989, the Utah native had a job at NorthCarolina State University and wanted to return to his home state. Butat 210 pounds, he didn't think a fat man could get a job teachingstudents how to be healthy, so his calorie-counting began.
He lost weight and got the job at Utah State University. But thepounds soon came back.
'YOU WANT WHAT YOU CAN'T HAVE'
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 potatochips. He also stopped eating when he wasn't hungry.
His friends and co-workers soon took notice of the slimmer Hawks.
'It astonished me, actually,' said his friend Steven Peck.
The one thing all diets have in common is that they restrict food,said Michael Goran, an obesity expert.
'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 whatyou're doing.'
In a small study published in the American Journal of HealthEducation, Hawks and a team of researchers examined a group ofstudents and found those who were intuitive eaters typically weighedless than other students.
On the Web:
www.intuitiveeating.com
