Intuitive eating for every day
Intuitive eating is a mind-body health approach that involves eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. It encourages us to learn to eat mindfully, without guilt, while breaking free from restrictive diets and fasting trends. There are no guidelines about what to eat, when to eat and how much you should eat, instead it teaches that you are the best person to make these choices. Sounds simple, right?
‘‘Perhaps you are still dieting and don't know it! There are many eating styles that are actually unconscious forms of dieting.’’
This quote comes from Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works; a landmark book penned by dieticians, Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole. In this book, Resch and Tribole explore how dieting has become so embedded within us that we don’t even realise we are doing it.
The anti-diet
Intuitive eating isn’t a new concept - we’re all born intuitive eaters. Take babies for example, they cry when they’re hungry and stop when they’re full. It’s not based on a particular time of day or schedule. They might eat more one day and less the next. Right from day one, they eat according to their natural hunger and fullness cues.
As we grow up however we start to acknowledge dieting rules. We eat at a certain time and as kids we’re forced to eat all the food on our plate even if we’re full. As adults we may still force ourselves to clear the plate because we don’t like to waste any food! Then there’s the societal pressure of body image, where we change the way we eat in order to alter our body and fit in. When these things happen, we no longer use our intuition about eating. We ignore our internal cues and start to listen to external cues about what, how much and when to eat. This can provoke unwanted food behaviours like calorie counting, binge eating, emotional eating and obsessing about food. Intuitive eating is the opposite of this. It is an anti-diet that enables you to eat the way you were born to. It emphasises internal cues over external diet rules.
Trusting one’s body
Under this philosophy, no food is inherently good or bad. Of course, this may be tricky to comprehend as it can seem counter to much of what we have learned throughout our lives. However, before you proceed to ‘intuitively’ eat a chocolate cake for dinner, let’s explain what we mean. It’s more about letting your body guide your food choices, not the rules set out in your head. By listening to your body, you will become so in tune with its state of wellness that you intuitively know what nourishes your body and cells. It allows you to gain a deeper understanding of how to truly nourish your body with the right food choices.
In this way, intuitive eating allows you to build trust around food and your body. It helps you to distinguish between physical and emotional hunger. Sadness and boredom can cause us to eat which then results in guilt and a lack of self-love. By understanding when you need to replenish nutrients and not eat out of stress or emotion, you are learning to respect and listen to your body, letting go of the external food rules in your head. This creates more body awareness and teaches you to truly listen to and honour your physical hunger cues. This can re-establish the mind-body connection that we fall out of sync with.
Don’t forget to eat mindfully!
So often we eat mindlessly. We eat out of boredom and we don’t pay attention to eating, munching down food quickly when doing another task like watching TV or working on the laptop. The pleasure of eating dissipates as we aren’t fully experiencing our food. Slow down the pace of your meals, eat in a relaxed setting and allow yourself to enjoy the sensory experience of eating. We absorb more nutrients and energy from our food when we’re mindful and intuitive.