The difference between a healthy relationship with food and dieting is that you feel connected to your body, feel satisfied, and enjoy variety.
Intuitive eating is a process of learning to tune into your body and using your body’s cues and signals to determine what your body needs and what you are going to eat. It consists of ten principles to help us reject the diet mentality and get back in tune with our bodies.
You basically have to make an agreement with yourself that you are going to drop all of the food rules you have read, heard, and made up.
What Is Intuitive Eating? Is It Another Way of Dieting?
Intuitive eating rejects traditional diets that restrict or ban certain foods. It requires you to stop looking at food as good or bad and instead focus on foods that work best for your overall physical and mental health.
You listen to and respond to your body’s cues. Dieting doesn’t give us that result. Dieting is about restriction, obsession, fixation, and short-term results.
Research shows that 95 percent of diets fail, and most people will regain all of that lost weight within one to five years. Intuitive eating is not a tool designed to help you lose weight, nor should it be used to help you lose weight. The intuitive eating approach actually suggests that you focus on health and body rather than weight, and encourages you to let go of your desire to change your weight or the way your body looks.
Let’s take a look at the definition from the intuitive eating website: “Intuitive eating is a self-care eating framework that integrates instinct, emotion, and rational thought1.” It doesn’t matter what diet you’re on, you’re a human being with an inherent ability to know what foods are and are not good for your system.
Intuitive eating is not a diet or weight-loss program, it takes a holistic and mindful approach. This weight neutral program guides you towards a healthier lifestyle and helps you achieve optimal wellness. Intuitive eating is a mind-body framework that was developed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. You can get the book “Intuitive Eating” right here: Our Books – Intuitive Eating. It will change your life!
Basically, there are 10 principles that build upon one another and we’re going to cover each of them.
10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
1. Get rid of the diet mentality
The goal should be to find a way of eating that you can do for the rest of your life and still enjoy. This is where intuitive eating comes in. Weight is often something that we can’t magically change. It’s better to approach health from a behavior modification standpoint. Behaviors are things that we actually have control over, and we can think of any weight changes as side effects. Research suggests that behaviors are actually a better indicator of health than body weight.
The goal of intuitive eating is to make your own decisions and take charge of your life. You decide what feels good, what your body needs and how much it needs. Your body sets the rules and you’re less likely to break the rules that make your body feel good.
2. Respect Your Hunger
Fullness is the physical sensation of satiety, while satisfaction is the mental sensation of satiety. Both are really important.
Hunger is a deep-rooted, natural biological process that is meant to keep human beings fed, nourished, and, in the end, alive. We pay attention to when our bodies tell us they are hungry or full so that we can maintain our natural setpoint.
Studies on intuitive eating have shown that when people aren’t being pushed by outside factors, they tend to eat in a balanced way on their own. But if we ignore our body’s natural wisdom and instead try to control our weight by following a set of rules, like a diet, our body will set up ways to get us back on track.
We need to stop thinking that hunger is bad and instead see it as a really important biological drive. It is also a sign that our metabolism is working.
3. Get along with food
This principle shows how important it is to change your relationship with food. Often, not being able to have something makes us want it more. The more you can’t have something, the more you want it, right?
Imagine that you don’t limit anything and that you know what your body really needs. You can give yourself permission to eat with no restrictions or rules
We need to get rid of the idea that some foods are morally better than others. We can’t deny that some foods may not be nutritious, but if we treat them all the same morally, we’re less likely to become obsessed with them and can do a better job of staying in control. Giving yourself freedom with food takes away the power that food has over you and makes it much less likely that you will overeat.
Once you get used to being around different kinds of food, they stop being special. With this intuitive eating training principle, the goal is to treat all foods the same way.
4. Take on the “Food Police“
Because of diet culture, many of the foods we choose to eat are tinged with guilt and worry. Researchers found that thinking of junk food as “bad” makes you feel more guilt, stress, and low self-esteem, which makes you ignore your body’s signals that you are hungry or full. People who see food as a celebration, on the other hand, don’t feel stressed and have a higher sense of self-worth and self-efficacy.
According to the authors of intuitive eating, these food thoughts are “cognitive distortions,” and the people who talk about these distortions are the “food police.” An intuitive eater ignores the “food police” and listens to the body’s natural signals, whether they are based on biology, personal need, desires, or anything else.
5. Find the Satisfaction Factor
Our society’s obsession with being thin has made us forget some of our most important psychological needs, like getting pleasure and satisfaction from food.
Satisfaction is very different from being full. Let’s think of “fullness” as the feeling of being physically full and “satisfaction” as the feeling of being mentally full. You could be full physically but not satisfied mentally, or the other way around.
We eat to get the nutrients we need and to satisfy our hunger, but we choose specific foods based on what we ultimately like, and feeling satisfied after a meal is what makes us stop when we’re done, so a food’s taste, texture, and smell all play a big role in what we choose to eat. When we choose foods, we really want them to “hit the spot.” For example, if you want pasta but choose a salad instead, it won’t be very satisfying.
The more you try to avoid food, the more likely it is that you will binge on it afterwards. People’s willpower is usually shown in one way, and the bad side of dieting, which usually includes binging, a lot of guilt, and a terrible relationship with one’s body, is almost never shown.
The key is to enjoy all foods without being picky about them. When we take away food’s power over us, it loses its hold. We eventually learn to enjoy the tastes and textures of all foods and stop feeling like we have to eat too much since it’s always available.
6. Be Aware of Your Fullness
If you always try to “clean your plate,” you may be eating too much without even realizing it. Because of this way of thinking, a lot of people find it hard to know what it feels like to be comfortably full. At this point, you’ve eaten enough to satisfy your hunger but not so much that you feel uncomfortable.
You need to stop thinking that you’re done eating when there’s nothing left to eat. To do this, you must try to be very aware when you eat and pay attention to every bite, taste, and texture. You can learn more about Mindful Eating – How to Enjoy What We Eat More.
By paying attention to how you’re eating, you’re focusing your attention on the experience of eating rather than on what’s on your plate. Over time, this may help you slow down, and you’ll start to notice the gradual change from being hungry to being full.
7. Manage Your Emotions
We experience many different feelings, such as anger, happiness, boredom, loneliness, anxiety, and so on. Feeling these emotions is normal and a part of being human. We can’t always change or control that, but what we can control is how we process and cope with our emotions.
Reaching for tasty food is a common way to find some happiness in the midst of hard times, even if that happiness is fleeting and short-lived. Unfortunately, it may not be obvious to you that you’re reacting this way. Ask yourself, “Why am I eating this right now?” In a lot of cases, it may not be because you’re physically hungry, it may be because you’re emotionally hungry.
Either way, if you use food to deal with your feelings, you might end up overeating. Interestingly, the effect of saying “I ate X, Y, and Z” is that you may feel guilty, but the thing is that guilt is associated with a moral wrongdoing, and food is neither right nor wrong. It’s just food.
It’s important to remember that we can abuse food as a coping mechanism. If you often use food to hide your feelings, it’s probably something you need to deal with. You might be interested in: Emotions That Cause Weight Gain (Even More Than Food).
8. Respect Your Body
If you don’t treat your body with respect, it will be hard to make peace with food. When we think about our bodies, we know that some things, like hair color, skin color, shoe size, height, etc., are due to our genes. These are all things we can’t change and that we’ve had since birth. So, if we can accept that our bodies are so different, why can’t we also accept that they are different in size and shape? And diet culture is a big reason why people feel bad about their bodies.
You can’t take care of something you don’t like or respect. Let’s stop speaking badly about ourselves and start enjoying our bodies, no matter what weight or size they are. Keep in mind that this won’t be easy, and you won’t start loving every part of your body all at once. It might take you weeks, months, or even years to accept your body.
The goal here is to appreciate your body for all the amazing things it can do and then treat it with respect by making choices about what you eat, how you move, how you deal with stress, etc. Respecting your body means taking care of it and meeting its basic needs, even if you don’t love it every day.
9. Move Your Body
Every person has a different body, and each person responds to exercise differently. When we exercise, different things affect our metabolism, such as age, gender, aerobic capacity, insulin sensitivity, fat oxidation, etc.
Many of us don’t enjoy movement because we’re not exercising out of love for our body but out of a desire to change it. In many cases, we don’t like to move because we’re so motivated by our body goals.
You don’t have to work out every day to get health benefits beyond losing weight. It doesn’t have to be extreme, and even small things like walking to work or taking the stairs can add up. While exercise may not actually be a really great weight loss tool, it truly is good for our health.
Hormones like norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin make us feel good. These hormones are released when we work out, which can make us feel better. Exercise isn’t meant to be a place to hide away, but rather a short break from the stresses of everyday life.
It’s really important to find a way to move that you actually enjoy. When you find something you really like to do, working out becomes fun and something you look forward to. It’s time to stop thinking about how many calories you burn and start thinking about how your body and mind feel after exercise.
10. Respect Your Health: Eat Mildly
As we talked about in the previous principles, intuitive eating is a way to improve your health and well-being by paying attention to what you eat and how much you move. Intuitive eating isn’t about eating endless amounts of chips and candy. Instead, it’s about ditching the diet mentality and developing a healthy relationship with food, getting rid of guilt, and enjoying all foods the way they were meant to be enjoyed.
Before we can make intuitive eating a part of our lives, we need to unlearn the diet mentality and think about other ways to eat. When you’ve made peace with food, turned off the food police, and are able to make food choices without fear or guilt, you can start to work on adding some mild nutrition.
When you finally stop thinking about food in terms of diets and morality, you can start paying attention to how different foods make you feel. This can make people choose healthier foods more often because they feel more energized, have fewer digestive problems, can focus better, maybe even sleep better, and just feel more alive. This is in contrast to eating a lot of junk food, which doesn’t usually make most people feel very good. However, eating a colorful salad with protein, grains, fats, and something sweet does make you feel good in both body and mind.
Individually, the most important thing is that you make decisions based on how they affect your health, not because you want to stay on a diet.
1Homepage – Intuitive Eating. (n.d.). Intuitive Eating. http://www.intuitiveeating.org/
DISCLAIMER
This information is not presented by a medical practitioner and is for educational and informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you have read.
