Intuitive Eating: What is It?
If you’ve consumed any social media lately, you’ve probably been exposed to the concept of intuitive eating. It can be hard to differentiate intuitive eating from just another weight loss fad when surrounded by other media advertising different forms of weight loss. Here we’ll dive into a full explanation of intuitive eating, what it means, and how it can help you.
Firstly, intuitive eating is not in fact a weight loss diet. Its principles can certainly be used when trying to lose weight, but the focus of intuitive eating is not weight loss. Intuitive eating is sort of the anti-diet diet. Diets impose strict rules about when to eat and what to eat that often go against the body’s natural responses and behaviors. When we break those rules, we feel guilt and shame.
Diet rules perpetuate restrictive behaviors that often lead us to break those rules even if we do not intend to; they also contribute to poor self esteem and body image. They cause us psychological distress leading us to mistrust our bodies, our hunger signals, and our intuition.
Enter intuitive eating. The philosophy behind this diet strategy is to re-establish trust with our hunger signals and build a more positive body image. Instead of following rules and guidelines, intuitive eating requires you to tune in with yourself to analyze the root of your hunger, how you feel as you eat, how you feel when you are done eating, and helps differentiate between satisfaction and overfullness. Intuitive eating requires patience and active listening to rebuild trust in yourself around food.
Some questions intuitive eaters ask themselves:
When you are hungry, does that hunger derive from emotional distress/boredom/general appetite, or is your body giving you cues that you need more energy (stomach growling, irritability, etc.)?
If you’re craving dessert after dinner but already feel satisfied, think about the way that food item will make you feel after you eat it. Do you genuinely want that food now/will it make you happy & satisfied? Or are you craving that food more out of habit/will it make you feel overfull and uncomfortable?
If you’re having a craving is there another way to express it? Will going for a walk outside, exercising, calling a friend, or practicing a self care routine satisfy your need? Will you still think about that food item even after doing one of these activities?
Intuitive eating works to satisfy emotions and cultivate inner peace. On an intuitive eating diet you learn to drop the moral value on food (aka thinking about foods as “good” or “bad”). You practice sitting down at the table, eating slowly, appreciating your food and how it tastes, and eating food that tastes good and makes you excited!
The philosophy also extends into movement—intuitive movement encourages individuals to move in the way that feels best for them, rather than pushing themselves to do intense exercise (that they may not even enjoy) every day. You learn to trust your body and feel at peace if you wake up one day and find that your body wants light movement and not a 5k run.
While intuitive eating may help with weight loss, its primary focus is weight maintenance and cultivating a healthy relationship with food and the body. It is a successfully sustainable way to empower individuals to make smart decisions about food and view their bodies positively. The individual, rather than the diet, becomes the decision maker about what to eat, when to eat, and how to move.
With all that diet culture has thrown at us throughout the years, it’s refreshing to see a trend that advocates for healthy minds, healthy bodies, and individuality.
By Jessica Kaplan