Can You Still Work Towards Nutrition & Fitness Goals With Intuitive Eating?

A common theme that I'm hearing from you all is this question of can I still work towards goals, both nutrition and fitness, while practicing intuitive eating. It may seem like intuitive eating and these specific goals don't go together, but they 100% do! So let's talk about it. What does it look like to have goals while practicing intuitive eating and joyful movement?What are some goals you have for your health? Some common ones I hear are..."I want to improve my fitness.""I want to lose weight.""I want to stop obsessing over calories.""I want to FEEL healthy."Ahh, I love talking about goals because it's like tapping into this potential version of yourself. I love starting out a conversation with a potential client for my 6-month coaching program talking about the vision they have for themselves after our time together. And as they begin to describe her, something magical happens. Putting words to this person, speaking it out loud, brings it just a little bit more to life! And excitement builds inside of her. It really is magical! And as we're envisioning together this future self, we talk about what goals are involved in being there.What vision do you have for yourself in 6-months, a year, five years (it's ok if you're not thinking that far in advance, but for you who do)?The difference, I believe, between goals wrapped in diet culture and goals wrapped in intuitive eating is that diet culture gives short-lived promises that often aren't sustainable for the long run. Diets are the cheap version, in a sense. Yes, you may lose weight and yes you may feel healthy for a time. But oftentimes history shows that the weight comes back and you're back to not necessarily eating the way you want to eat. And the cycle continues. But this diet rollercoaster is so exhausting, is it not? It's exhausting to keep feeling like you're taking one step forward and then 3 steps back all the time, and never really making any progress.One of the many reasons why I love working from a foundation of intuitive eating is that the work you do to heal your relationship with food and your body is work that lasts for a lifetime! I still have old clients reaching out to me and telling me stories about how they still use things we talked about on our calls to this day. I absolutely love getting messages like these... ahh, they make my heart feel so full!Let me share a little example to help you really see what it looks like to have a goal with intuitive eating.Say you have the goal of wanting to feel healthier. I love when I hear this goal because feeling healthy and strong in your body feels so good, right? Now think...what are some barriers that you have to feeling healthy right now? Can you think of a time in your past where you felt healthy? What were you doing?Do you see how we start to explore this a little deeper by asking some questions to get to the root of this goal?So maybe you talk about how you felt really healthy when you were on a diet. You were meal prepping every week so you felt prepared and ready when hunger hit. You ate food that was fresh and felt nourishing. You moved your body and were exercising. You were drinking more water.But what about that diet didn't help you achieve your long-term goals? Maybe you finished the diet and still felt stuck about how to eat. Maybe you gained the weight you lost back. Maybe you're back to not being as active.When we start to uncover why you don't feel like you're where you want to be regarding your goal we discover one key message. Dieting set you up to feel healthy, but just for the short term. It didn't set you up to know how to eat for the long run.Do you see where we're going here?That's why learning to eat and trusting your body is the most sustainable way to approach goals around nutrition and fitness. When you learn to eat, you don't have to rely on a diet to feel healthy anymore. No one wants to live their life on a diet. That's no fun, and definitely not a life filled with joy. The good news is that you can feel healthy and still eat all foods.So understanding why you feel far from your goal is key to moving forward.What if weight loss is your goal? This is probably the most common goal I hear from clients and I love that they share this with me even though they know that I don't claim to be a weight loss coach or talk about weight loss. I love the honesty because I 100% understand that weight loss is something they desire. Maybe it's something you desire too. And that's ok!But after we talk about the why behind their goal of weight loss, some other goals start to come up. Goals of being healthier, wanting to prevent disease, wanting to be able to be active with their kids for a long time, wanting to have more energy. Underneath the goal of weight loss are these beautiful goals that come along with their goal of weight loss. These are where I try and encourage clients to put their focus, on those root goals as opposed to just the goal of weight loss. There's nothing wrong with desiring weight loss, but we talk about how having a goal of weight loss takes away from our ability to go all-in with intuitive eating. And so we try and shift the focus, maybe just for now.What about with fitness goals? I have a few fitness goals, myself. I want to feel strong in my body. I want to run another 1/2 marathon. I want to be able to go hiking and not get terribly winded.What are your fitness goals?Just like any goals, with fitness goals there has to be a level of commitment to working towards your goals. And how do you stay committed? I believe commitment comes from a balance of both having some structure and routine as well as flexibility. Here's where tuning into your body comes into play. Say you have the goal of running a 5K race in a couple of months. What do you have to do to get there? Start running, right? So maybe you put it on your calendar that you want to run 3 times per week. Maybe you run on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But then on Saturday it sounds good to run again, so you do! And it felt amazing. But then on Monday you wake up and feel a little sick. Here, recognizing it may be the best thing for your body to take a rest day is part of honoring your body within the goal you have to run a 5K.The roadblock I hear a lot of times when it comes to fitness, or any health goal, is the fear of missing a day or eating "poorly" for a day and then feeling like you've "fallen off the wagon" or gotten off track. It feels like a slippery slope. But what if you gave yourself permission to have those "off" days? What if you even expected them, anticipated them? What would happen then? The likelihood is that you'd rest or enjoy a day of yummy food and then wake up the next day making nothing of it. You'd get back outside and go on with a normal day of eating for you. Again, no rollercoasters, no falling off. And that's because you've got grace as your buffer.Can you think of what it would be like to not feel guilty for not sticking to what you set out to do? What if you just acknowledged it and moved on? So to tie this all together, I wanted to share a few key things to think about when it comes to making health and fitness goals with a foundation of intuitive eating and joyful movement.1. Come up with your vision... remember, what do you hope for yourself for 6 months from now, a year, 5 years?2. Choose goals with that vision in mind.3. Choose goals that align with YOU and YOUR values. Other people's goals aren't important here. Only what matters to you and feels good to you!4. Set up a routine, while keeping flexibility in mind. So I would love to hear, what goals do you have for yourself? Let's dream big together!