Tag Archive for: food trust

3 Reasons to Say Yes to Intuitive Eating

Every week I receive dozens of phone calls asking me for a meal plan to help them lose weight. Most of my clients have tried the most popular diets on the market with little success. Instead of giving them another meal plan with strict rules to follow, I will instead point them in the direction of Intuitive Eating.

 

Intuitive Eating is not a weight loss program. Unlike diets, the focus is not on weight loss. It’s on creating a healthy relationship with food as you work towards regaining trust in yourself and food choices. Intuitive Eating is the opposite of a diet. You will not follow a set of rules set forth by a money-making corporation but instead, you will learn to listen to your body’s natural hunger and fullness signals.

 

Your relationship with your body is affected by many years of dieting. Marketing campaigns are centered around the theory that everyone needs to look a certain way. However, everyone’s body is different, and we aren’t all going to look the same.

 

Intuitive Eating embraces that idea that everyone is different and that all bodies aren’t meant to look the same. That is why Intuitive Eating does not come with a set of rules and instead, focuses on restoring your relationship with your body.

 

Losing weight may make you happy short term. But when you gain that weight back, you are the opposite of happy. You can find inner peace and restore your relationship with food and your body through Intuitive Eating.

 

Here are 3 reasons to say yes to Intuitive Eating:

 

1. You are in charge

 

After years of dieting, you aren’t listening to your hunger and fullness signals as a guide to your eating, you’ve been listening to external rules. Intuitive Eating reminds you that you are in charge of your food choices and your body. You have the inner wisdom to know when you are hungry and when you are full, when you should start eating and when to stop.

 

2. You will live life guilt-free

 

Every diet has a list of restrictions with the food you can and cannot eat. But what if you happen to want to eat a food that’s on the “avoid” list? You can deny your desire for only so long. So, you indulge, and the guilty feelings and harsh self-talk start. With Intuitive Eating, you learn to enjoy the foods you love without guilt, and without the worry of overeating.

 

3. You will restore trust in yourself 

 

Marketing campaigns for diets want you to think that everything you have done before you start their diet was wrong. Diets will make you think that you have been choosing the “wrong” foods for years or doing the incorrect workout regimen. However, you are in charge of your body and what it needs. The diets have stripped you of trust. But Intuitive Eating can help you regain that trust!

 

WholeBody Trust: Intuitive Eating for a Peaceful Life Program is now open. Click here to learn more!

How to Free Yourself from Food Fear

If you’re like me, the last few months have been filled with anxiety regarding the uncertainty of the pandemic. It seems like every day the news is reporting something more unnerving than the day before. With everything going on in the world, you are likely experiencing a lot of stress.

You’re not going to be able to control all of the stressors in your life, however you can take charge of some of them. Weight loss companies are aware of how stressed and anxious you are and use this to fuel your insecurities. You may have been hearing more weight loss advertisements on the radio and television lately.

Try not to let these companies take up any headspace, they are just added stress to your life. Instead, think about how wonderful your body has been over the past few months, it has helped you survive a global pandemic. Your body deserves to be celebrated!

Celebrating Your Body through Building Trust

I was thinking about ways you could celebrate your body, and I thought National Macaroni Day would be the perfect time to show your body that you DO trust it. You may not have realized it, but yesterday we celebrated this Macaroni-shaped pasta.

Let’s face it. If you’ve dieted, then more than likely you realize that pasta has been demonized as an “unhealthy” food because it’s a high carbohydrate food. This is unfortunate because you need carbohydrate, it’s the main energy source for your body. And because pasta is delicious!

Macaroni, and other pastas, are chock full of fiber, especially whole-grain varieties. Getting sufficient dietary fiber in your meals throughout the day is an act of self-care!

Fiber keeps your bowel movements regular and helps with satiety. It keeps you fuller for longer, so you aren’t rummaging through the cabinets searching for food throughout the day.

Demonizing Foods

The definition of “demonizing” is to portray as wicked and threatening.

Before I started teaching intuitive eating, it had not occurred to me that there were foods that were being demonized by the diet industry. But as I got knee deep into learning about diet culture and its sneaky ways, I came to find out that there’s a long list of foods that people are afraid to eat.

Yes, afraid! People have a ton of food fear!

“Oh no, I can’t eat _____ (fill in the blank). It’s bad for me.”
“I’m scared to eat _____ (fill in the blank), I will gain weight.”
“I’d love to eat _____ (fill in the blank), but I won’t fit into my pants tomorrow.”

Most of this fear is around weight gain. Yes, sometimes it’s about health. But often even that is under the guise of weight loss.

No one, and I mean no one, no matter what shape or size, should be afraid of food and made to feel that they are wrong or “bad” for eating certain food.

Freedom from Food Fear

One of the ways to get rid of food fear is to learn to build trust around that food. That means that you eat that food, see that nothing “terrible” happened (i.e. you didn’t gain 5 pounds over night), and then eat it again.

I am not talking about binge eating on these foods. Nor am I speaking about “see it, want it, eat it” without any thought given to eat.

That is a BIG misconception about Intuitive Eating. Those who are hesitant to begin this journey think they will “lose control” (their words) around foods. I’ve said this multiple times but it is worth repeating:

Intuitive Eating is NOT about instant gratification!

When you embark on the journey towards giving up dieting to reclaim WholeBody Trust™ through intuitive eating, you are learning to be rid of the food fear and body worry that has plagued you for so many years and decades. It’s a feeling of freedom of not being bound to the chains of dieting! It’s about having pleasure and satisfaction in your meals, without guilt. It’s about learning to tune inward to listen to what your body needs and wants. And to be able to trust it.

For how many more years will you be at war with food and your body? Isn’t it time you gave yourself the gift of peace around food?

Click HERE to schedule a complementary call with me and let’s figure out the best way for you to start this journey.