Intuitive Eating

1. Reject the Diet Mentality and Embrace Intuitive Eating

Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you the false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently.

Dieting is harmful. It not only fails to produce lasting weight loss but also causes physical and psychological damage. Chronic dieting slows metabolism, increases food cravings, and leads to feelings of deprivation and guilt. Research shows that dieting is a consistent predictor of future weight gain.

Intuitive Eating is the solution. This approach involves trusting your body's innate wisdom about eating. It's not about following external rules but listening to internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. Intuitive Eating allows you to make peace with food and your body, leading to a healthier relationship with eating and improved overall well-being.

Key aspects of rejecting the diet mentality include:

• Recognizing the harm caused by past dieting attempts
• Letting go of the false hope that the next diet will be "the one"
• Challenging societal messages that promote dieting and thinness as ideals
• Embracing a more compassionate and flexible approach to eating

2. Honor Your Hunger and Feel Your Fullness

Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat.

Biological signals are crucial. Honoring your hunger means eating when you feel hungry, not when a diet plan says you should. This prevents the primal urge to overeat that occurs when you're overly hungry. Similarly, feeling your fullness involves paying attention to your body's signals of comfortable satiety and stopping eating when you're satisfied, not overly full.

Attunement is key. Practice becoming more aware of your body's hunger and fullness cues. Use tools like the Hunger Discovery Scale and Fullness Discovery Scale to help you recognize different levels of hunger and fullness. Remember that it's normal for hunger and fullness levels to fluctuate throughout the day and from day to day.

Tips for honoring hunger and feeling fullness:

• Eat regular meals and snacks to keep yourself adequately fed
• Pay attention to physical sensations of hunger (e.g., stomach growling, light-headedness)
• Take pauses during meals to check in with your fullness level
• Practice eating without distractions to better tune into your body's signals

3. Make Peace with Food and Challenge the Food Police

Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat.

Unconditional permission is freedom. When you forbid certain foods, it often leads to intense cravings and eventual overeating of those foods. By giving yourself permission to eat all foods, you remove their "forbidden" status and reduce their power over you. This doesn't mean you'll only eat "junk" food; rather, you'll be able to make food choices based on what truly satisfies you.

Challenge negative thoughts. The "Food Police" are the critical thoughts in your head that judge your eating choices. Learn to recognize these thoughts and challenge them with more balanced, compassionate self-talk. This helps break the cycle of guilt and shame around eating.

Steps to make peace with food:

1. Identify foods you've been restricting or avoiding
2. Gradually incorporate these foods into your eating, without judgment
3. Pay attention to how these foods make you feel physically and emotionally
4. Practice self-compassion if you experience guilt or anxiety

4. Discover the Satisfaction Factor in Eating

The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living.

Pleasure is important. Finding satisfaction in your eating experiences is a crucial aspect of Intuitive Eating. When you eat foods you truly enjoy in a pleasant environment, you're likely to feel more satisfied with less food. This contrasts with diet culture, which often promotes eating foods you don't really like or denying yourself satisfaction.

Mindful eating enhances satisfaction. Pay attention to the sensory qualities of food - taste, texture, aroma, appearance, and temperature. Eat in a relaxed environment when possible, and focus on the experience of eating rather than multitasking. This helps you derive more pleasure and satisfaction from your meals.

Strategies to increase eating satisfaction:

• Take time to identify what you really want to eat
• Create a pleasant eating environment
• Eat without distractions when possible
• Savor your food, eating slowly and mindfully
• Check in with yourself during meals to see if the food still tastes good

5. Cope with Emotions Without Using Food

Find ways to comfort, nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food.

Emotional eating is common. Many people use food to cope with emotions like stress, boredom, loneliness, or anxiety. While food can provide temporary comfort, it doesn't address the underlying emotional issues and can lead to feelings of guilt and shame.

Develop alternative coping strategies. Learn to identify your emotions and find non-food ways to address them. This might involve seeking support from others, engaging in relaxation techniques, or finding activities that provide comfort or distraction.

Steps to cope with emotions without food:

1. Identify whether you're experiencing physical or emotional hunger
2. Name the emotion you're feeling
3. Ask yourself what you really need (e.g., comfort, distraction, relaxation)
4. Choose a non-food way to meet that need
5. Practice self-compassion throughout the process

6. Respect Your Body and Exercise for Well-being

Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size.

Body acceptance is crucial. Respect your body's natural shape and size. Criticizing your body only leads to more negative feelings and can perpetuate unhealthy eating behaviors. Remember that bodies come in diverse shapes and sizes, and health is possible at many sizes.

Exercise for feeling good. Shift your focus from exercising to burn calories or change your body shape to moving your body for the joy and health benefits it brings. Find activities you enjoy and pay attention to how exercise makes you feel energized, strong, and relaxed.

Ways to respect your body and enjoy movement:

• Appreciate what your body can do, rather than focusing on how it looks
• Wear comfortable clothes that fit your current body
• Explore different types of physical activities to find what you enjoy
• Focus on how exercise makes you feel, rather than on calorie burning
• Be gentle with yourself if you miss a workout; consistency matters more than perfection

7. Practice Gentle Nutrition for Long-term Health

Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel well.

Balance nutrition and satisfaction. Gentle nutrition involves making food choices that are both nourishing and satisfying. It's not about perfect eating but about consistent patterns over time. Remember that one meal or day of eating doesn't make or break your health.

Nutrition knowledge supports intuitive choices. While it's important not to let nutrition information override your intuitive signals, having a basic understanding of nutrition can help inform your food choices. Use this knowledge flexibly, always considering your personal preferences and how foods make you feel.

Guidelines for gentle nutrition:

• Aim for variety in your eating to ensure a range of nutrients
• Include plenty of fruits and vegetables for their health benefits
• Choose whole foods more often than highly processed foods
• Remember that all foods can fit into a healthy diet
• Pay attention to how different foods make you feel physically

8. Raise Intuitive Eaters: Nurturing Healthy Relationships with Food in Children

Parents often assume that their young children cannot adequately regulate their food intake.

Trust children's innate wisdom. Children are born with the ability to regulate their food intake based on internal hunger and fullness cues. Parental attempts to control children's eating often backfire, leading to disordered eating patterns.

Create a positive eating environment. Offer a variety of nutritious foods without pressure to eat. Allow children to determine how much they eat. Avoid using food as a reward or punishment, and refrain from labeling foods as "good" or "bad."

Strategies for raising intuitive eaters:

• Provide regular meals and snacks without rigid rules
• Allow children to serve themselves when age-appropriate
• Avoid commenting on the amount or type of food children eat
• Model a healthy relationship with food and your own body
• Teach children about nutrition in a neutral, non-judgmental way

9. Heal from Eating Disorders Through Intuitive Eating Principles

The ultimate path toward healing from eating disorders.

Eating disorders are serious conditions. They often develop from a combination of factors, including dieting, emotional issues, and societal pressures. Recovery involves addressing both the physical and psychological aspects of the disorder.

Intuitive Eating supports recovery. While individuals with active eating disorders may need more structured support initially, the principles of Intuitive Eating can be gradually incorporated into treatment. This approach helps rebuild trust in one's body and food choices, crucial for long-term recovery.

Key aspects of using Intuitive Eating in eating disorder recovery:

• Working with a qualified treatment team (therapist, dietitian, physician)
• Gradually reintroducing feared foods and challenging food rules
• Learning to recognize and honor hunger and fullness cues
• Developing non-food coping strategies for emotions
• Practicing body respect and challenging negative body image
• Incorporating gentle nutrition principles as recovery progresses

Last updated: October 3, 2024