How to Get Started With Intuitive Eating

Learning how to become an intuitive eater after months, years, or even decades of dieting and unsuccessful weight loss attempts is a journey. Intuitive eating is a marathon not a sprint… no quick fixes here!

Intuitive eating goes against what diet culture has taught you your entire life. The messages of diet culture are basically that you must look a certain way (skinny) to be worthy of respect. And to get skinny, you must restrict your food and deprive yourself of what you really want.

Intuitive eating, on the other hand, teaches you how to attune to your body’s hunger cues, listening to what it’s craving, provide what it needs, and to give your body the love and respect it deserves. Dieting teaches you how to ignore your body’s signals, it creates a toxic mentally with food, and causes you to obsess about unrealistically shrinking your body.

Intuitive eating is NOT about dieting, weight loss, and creating food rules. It’s about unlearning what has been drilled into your mind from diet culture. And although this does take time and it is definitely a process, there are some steps you can take to get started, without the overwhelm!

4 Steps to Get Started with Intuitive Eating

(1) Identify your burning food rules.

We all have them. Whether its no “junk food”, not eating after a certain time, or avoiding a food group altogether—these food rules are not your fault. This is the result of what diet culture has made you believe.

It’s important to notice when these food rules come up for you. Next time you’re in the grocery store, sitting down at the dinner table, or thinking about food—get curious about what food rules you have and start challenging them.

(2) Acknowledge that hunger is a good (and normal) feeling.

No diet, meal plan or nutrition label can tell you how much to eat. With all these external sources telling you when you eat and when to stop eating, no wonder hunger is no longer an intuitive feeling. Diet culture and dieting itself teaches you to go against what your body is telling you and to ultimately not trust it.

Physical hunger is your body’s way of telling you it’s time for nourishment. This is not a feeling to be ignored! If you’re feeling hungry… eat. And celebrate this feeling!

(3) Know the difference between feelings of “fullness” and “satisfaction”.

Believe it or not… these feelings are two different things. Fullness is a physical feeling of eating enough, while satisfaction is the mental or psychological feeling of eating enough. The way to get these two feelings in check is to eat enough food that is also satisfying. Your meals/snacks should be a combination of foods that provide you with energy and satisfy your cravings.

(4) Think of food and eating as a form of self-care.

Instead of thinking of eating as something that is supposed to be “perfect” or “all or nothing”, think of food and providing your body with nourishment as a form of self-care. Providing your body with foods that are nutrient-dense and that make you feel energized and happy, while also giving it delicious desserts and a glass of wine ARE BOTH forms of self-care. You can’t have self-care without a balance of these two!

I recognize that even these 4 steps might seem overwhelming. To make it easier for you, I’m hosting a webinar on Monday, June 13^th! It’s called 3 steps to Eating for Healthy Living: The Intuitive Eating Blueprint.

Click here to register for FREE (replay will be available to those who register).