4 Reasons Why Intuitive Eating Isn’t Working For You
Tell me if this is you…
You’ve tried every diet imaginable, just wanting to lose weight. But not just lose weight…when you get to the bottom of it, you want to feel good in your body. You want to feel healthy, energized, confident.
But every diet you’ve tried has left you even more confused about how to eat than before.
And then, you learn about intuitive eating.
And you think… this sounds interesting.
But, after giving it a try, you find yourself still where you were when you started…feeling lost, feeling like everyone else in the world can be an intuitive eater except for you.
Can I share something with you? You’re not broken. You 100% can be an intuitive eater because it’s who we are at our core. We were born as intuitive eaters.
In my work with clients, I’ve seen four main reasons why intuitive eating doesn’t work for people. These are essentially 4 mistakes you’re making that are keeping you from being able to eat intuitively. And fixing these four things, these four mindsets, will put you right on track to being able to say “goodbye” to dieting forever and a lifetime of confidence & peace with eating!
Here are the 4 reasons why intuitive eating isn’t working for you…
1. You’re focusing on weight loss
2. You’re thinking of it as just another diet
3. You aren’t diving in fully to making peace with food
4. You’re afraid of failure
Let’s explore each of these…
YOU’RE FOCUSING ON WEIGHT LOSS
I know that you may have the desire to lose weight. But the number one reason why I see people struggling to eat intuitively is that they’re still focusing on losing weight.
I explained more in this post why focusing on weight loss is keeping you stuck. But in short, when you focus on weight loss you inevitably will be influenced by wanting to lose weight above any signals and messages your body gives you. Focusing on weight loss inhibits your ability to eat intuitively. You’ll find yourself questioning your hunger cues when they don’t make sense (like feeling hungry only an hour after eating) or when it’s not “time” to eat. You’ll be focused on the calories in foods instead of how the food satisfies you.
Practicing intuitive eating will ensure that your weight gets to the place it needs to be and level out. But in order to find that place, you have to let go of focusing on the weight.
If you’re feeling stuck with intuitive eating, ask yourself, “Am I focusing on weight loss?” I promise, when you put weight loss aside and really practice listening to your body 100%, your weight will get to where it needs to be without you focusing on it. It takes trusting and letting go.
YOU’RE THINKING OF IT AS JUST ANOTHER DIET
If you’re struggling with intuitive eating, it could be that you’re thinking of it as just another diet. And this may not even be intentional. But if you’ve been on a lot of diets in the past, you may be thinking of it as a diet without even thinking.
I see this happen in a few ways. The first is, like I just mentioned, you’re focused on losing weight. You can’t do an intuitive eating “crash diet”. The goal of intuitive eating is to help you reconnect with your body and form a trusting relationship with her that then helps you use your body’s cues to know how to eat.
I also see this a lot in treating intuitive eating as the “hunger/fullness” diet where you just honor your hunger and stop when you’re full. But, with this mindset, you’re basically just adding more rules… and the goal is to let go of the rules and let your body lead. Honoring your hunger and fullness are part of intuitive eating. But they’re only one piece to the puzzle. You need the other principles like make peace with food, respect your body, and challenge the food police just as much.
So, ask yourself… “Am I treating intuitive eating like just another diet?”
YOU AREN’T DIVING FULLY INTO “MAKE PEACE WITH FOOD”
Making peace with food is one of the principles of intuitive eating, and probably, in my opinion, one of the hardest principles for people to grasp.
Making peace with food feels very wrong for us in our culture. We’ve been made to believe that we can’t trust ourselves around food, that we have to have discipline and restraint around “bad” foods and “watch” what we’re eating.. You probably have had experiences in your life with food, too, that make you believe that you can’t trust yourself around food. You remember the time where you bought a 1/2 gallon of ice cream and somehow ended up eating the whole thing in one sitting.
But, making peace with food is essential to intuitive eating. Check out this post for more of a deep dive into this principle, but essentially, part of learning how to eat intuitively is the work of making peace with food and getting rid of all of the food rules you’ve had… rules and beliefs like “Carbs and sugar are bad” and “I shouldn’t eat french fries”.
Why this matters is if you’re still abiding by food rules, food has the power instead of you having power over food. And when food has power over us, that’s when we feel like we need discipline and restraint around it.
But when you make peace with food… food is just… food! You can take the fries or leave them.
In this place you can, with a clear and calm mind, make decisions about how you want to eat instead of suppressing the desire to eat fries and then one day binging on them.
I can’t stress this enough, dive in head first to making peace with food. Don’t just tip toe in. Start to practice breaking food rules, one by one and you’ll find yourself feeling more calm around food and able to practice intuitive eating.
YOU’RE AFRAID OF FAILURE
Can I tell you something?
There is no such thing as failure with intuitive eating. Oftentimes what I see is people are. so afraid of failure that they give up trying to eat intuitively. They overeat and immediately feel shame because they think they failed.
There’s no such thing as failure here, friend!
Instead of feeling like a failure, what I want you to think about is “How can I learn from every single eating experience?” Ask yourself what you can take away from this time and apply to the next time you eat.
If you overate at dinner, ask yourself, “Why do I think I overate? Did I eat well throughout the day and honor my hunger? If not, is that maybe why I overate? Did I eat what sounded good and was satisfying or was there something else that I was craving and trying to suppress?”
Explore the experiences where you felt like a failure in a neutral way, not as a negative, and look for ways you can learn from the experience.
There’s no failure with intuitive eating. So just keep challenging yourself, putting yourself out of your comfort (cause girl I know this can be uncomfortable!), and let yourself LEARN!
Does one of these resonate with you and bring some clarity for why intuitive eating hasn’t felt like it’s worked for you? We were all born as intuitive eaters… it’s in our genes. So that means, you can do it!
Action Step:
Explore which of these four reasons you may find yourself in and practice what you need to do to eat intuitively.
And, if you enjoy listening to podcasts, come check out this episode on Apple, Spotify, or Google.