Two Questions to Ask Yourself When Structuring Meals

Many people come to me with the same question: “Am I allowed to plan out my meals in advance and still eat intuitively?”

This may seem like a straightforward question with an easy answer, but it’s not. Many diets have rules attached to them such as what you can eat and at what time. Even meal prepping can be very restrictive and almost like a diet if you are diligent about sticking to what you have planned out, not allowing for any wiggle room. This is one way that you can describe structured eating, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

One of the major differences between intuitive eating and diets is autonomy. When it comes to intuitive eating, it’s all about listening to your body and its needs. If you have packed your lunch, but your work company decides to treat everyone that day, it’s being able to change your plans on the whim and order something! Or you can eat your lunch and order something to eat later.

You can still have meal structure and be an intuitive eater.

When planning out your structured meals there are two questions that you want to ask yourself:

1. What is your definition of structure?

Arranging your eating pattern for the day into meals plus ‘as needed’ snacks would be putting a structure to your eating pattern. It’s basically laying down some guidelines for yourself so you have a basic idea of what you will eat for that day. If these are foods that you love and feel good in your body, then what you are doing is planning. And my motto is, “planning is smart living”.

You plan vacations, you plan your children’s activities, and you plan work tasks. You plan many different areas of your life. Why wouldn’t you plan your meals?

However, if you break out in hives because your plan does not pan out, and you have difficulty being flexible with it, then this meal plan structure is just another diet.

2. Do you still possess a diet mentality?

As stated above, if the meal plan structure you’ve created for yourself leads you to feeling deprived of foods you didn’t include in your plan because you think they aren’t “nutritious” for you and this leads to overeating or bingeing on these foods when you “just can’t take it anymore,” then this structure is doing you more harm than good.

Therefore, the first step on your intuitive eating journey must be shifting your mindset. It requires you to acknowledge all the damage that dieting has done, biologically, health-wise, psychologically, and emotionally! And not just acknowledge it. Really get down deep to understand why you will never ever diet again. This step takes time. You must not rush it.

Is it scary to no longer diet, and not have a meal plan to guide your eating? Absolutely, this is what you’re used to. But it might just take you having a leap of faith in this journey back to a place of body trust.