What is Intuitive Eating?
What is intuitive eating? You may have heard of or read about intuitive eating, but what makes it different from any other diet? For starts, intuitive eating is not a diet. It's an approach, a mindset, about how to eat and have a relationship with food. It's founded on 10 principles, with the main goal being to experience freedom around food and learn (or re-learn, rather) how to trust your body.I say "re-learn" because we were all born as intuitive eaters. Think back to a time where you remember not caring about your size or weight or calories. You just ate. And you trusted that your body would do it's job with the food you ate. Somewhere along the way, diet culture begins to be what influences you in how you eat, when you eat, how and how much you exercise. And there's no shame with this...so many women like you struggle to pick out what is and isn't true when it comes to health in our world today. There is SO much information on health and nutrition...just do a quick google search and you'll see page upon page of information that all somehow seems to contradict itself. It's no wonder we're all confused! And so what happens is we seek out different diets, jumping from one to the next, to try and find the "perfect" way to eat. And by "perfect", we're looking for something we can stick to, not feel crazy and anxious around food with, and be promised to get to or stay in a smaller, thin body.You've been there, done that, though...and each diet you've tried has made you feel even more lost and confused about how to eat. You've maybe even mastered eating healthy but you still feel like something's missing because it just feels like all of your energy is spent trying to keep up this way of eating. I totally get that!
SO HOW IS INTUITIVE EATING ANY DIFFERENT?
Maybe you're asking...how's it going to feel any different from how I'm eating now?Imagine being able to wake up without having a set plan for what to eat and have the freedom and flexibility to be spontaneous with eating.Imagine freedom to eat a bowl of ice cream after dinner and not feel like if you let yourself have even the smallest amount that you'll eat the whole pint.Imagine not being starving when you're going to bed because you already ate "x" number of calories throughout the day...you have freedom to listen to your hunger without guilt.These are just a few examples of how intuitive eating is different from dieting.
Get my free ebook, "Intuitive Eating Playbook" to learn more about how to start eating intuitively!
OK, SO WHAT ARE THE PRINCIPLES THAT MAKE UP INTUITIVE EATING?
1. Reject the diet mentality: This means letting go of everything that keeps you stuck in "diet mentality" so things like your scale (and not weighing yourself), calorie tracking apps, even unfollowing people on instagram who feed into a mindset of dieting. With this, think about creating a diet-free bubble for yourself as you work to re-frame your thinking around food and your body.2. Honor your hunger: Honoring your hunger, that is noticing when your body tells you you're hungry and then eating. Honoring your hunger throughout the day will help you practice the other principles because your body is fed and energized. This is fundamental.3. Make peace with food: Making peace with food means working to get rid of the "good food/bad food" mentality that diet culture engrains in each of us.4. Challenge the food police: That is, that little voice inside your head telling you that you should feel guilty for eating x,y, or z way.5. Discover the satisfaction factor: Eat foods that satisfy your cravings, whether that's for something sweet or salty, crunchy or smooth, cold or hot. Eat food that tastes good and notice how it helps you feel more calm around food and ultimately actually eat less than if you were to not eat for satisfaction.6. Feel your fullness: Practice paying attention to how food makes you feel as you eat, in particular noticing what it feels like to reach "comfortable fullness".7. Cope with your emotions with kindness: So often we use food to suppress our emotions when what we actually need is rest, friendship, a hug, a good cry, etc.8. Respect your body: Honor the fact that your body is not out to get you, that you can trust your body. You may not be able to love your body right now and that's ok, but you can choose to respect your body.9. Movement- feel the difference: Exercise, unfortunately, has the connotation of being for weight loss and calorie burn. But what if you just saw it as movement. Just move your body, however you want that to look for you today!10. Honor your health- gentle nutrition: Gentle, as in, with fluidity. You know certain things are going to promote your health and others not as much. Use this knowledge to be empowered as opposed to being entrapped. Practice, what I like to say, nutrition from a place of self care. Ok, there you have it. Those are the 10 principles of intuitive eating. What principle most speaks to you today?And, if you want more on all things intuitive eating, check out my free ebook, "Intuitive Eating Playbook"!