Intuitive Eating

A more recent approach to health and food that goes against typical diet mentality and focuses greatly on mindfulness is known as intuitive eating. Many people have heard the term “listen to their body.” This way of eating encourages the idea of listening to your body when it comes to your true hunger cues. Many people listen to their “pleasure system” before their hunger levels when they are considering eating something. One can integrate intuitive eating by practicing the principles, and slowly integrating them in their lifestyle.  There are 10 principles that intuitive eating focuses on (Intuitive Eating, 2019). 

1. Stop the Diet Mentality 

Diets are not a lifestyle change, they are just a temporary fix. Anything that is target as “quick” is probably not the right kind of mentality to have. You want to get the idea of a quick fix out your mind and embrace the idea of a new lifestyle change.

2. Honor Your Hunger

Our bodies need energy. It is biological for all humans to obtain energy through calories. When we restrict, we then prime ourselves to overeat. Once we go into these extreme levels of hunger, we lose our control easily. Learning to properly detect and honor our hunger signals is an important principle.

3. Make Peace with Food

Let’s end the bad relationship with food! Give yourself the permission to eat an enjoy the foods you love! Learning to not label foods as good or bad or foods that we should or shouldn’t eat, you look at foods simply as more nutritious than others. You allow the peace of knowing you can enjoy any food that you truly want, and you do not have to feel any sense of guilt in doing so.

4. Challenge the Food Police

Unreasonable rules that diet culture has established has come from “the food police”. The “food police” can cause one to develop a negative mindset of their own eating habits.

5. Enjoy it!

“We often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence—the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By giving yourself this experience , you will begin to understand the right amount of food that your body needs.” (Intuitive Eating, 2019).

6. Tap into fullness cues

Just as you would honor your hunger, you also need to honor your fullness. This involves eating as a slower pace. Since most people are in a rush, people are constantly eating on the go, and not being very mindful of what they are eating. They may not be able to recognize their fullness because they are not taking the time to slow down and be mindful. You can pause in the middle of eating to access your hunger levels. 

7. Cope with emotions

Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, and anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Food is not the fix of any of these issues, It may distract the pain or numb you temporarily. Eating out of emotion will make you feel worse in the long run and will prevent you from understanding your body’s biological  hunger and fullness cues.

8. Respect Your Body

It is important to respect your body and everything it is capable of. If we do not respect our body, then our body may not want to respect us back. Being kind to yourself through both words and actions is important. This will only help you on your journey to becoming a better intuitive eater. 

9. Get up and move!

Don’t put so much worry into exercising to burn calories, and to look a certain way. You should get up and move, and feel the movement! Movement should feel good to your body, so shift your focus to how it feels to move. This might make the difference for you when you don’t feel like exercising, because you will remember how great you felt rather than how little calories you burned. 

10. Honor your overall health with food choices

You do not have to eat perfectly in order to eat healthy. One meal will not make you “unhealthy” It’s about overall consistency. Give yourself freedom of not being perfect in your eating habits, because the pressure may be causing you to derail your progress even further. Instead, focus on all the positives of you, your body, food, and your eating habits, and be grateful for the ability to enjoy all of it.

Source:

“10 Principles of Intuitive Eating.” Intuitive Eating, 19 Dec. 2019, www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/.