intuitive eating Archives - Diet Free Radiant Me | Intuitive Eating | Emotional Eating

Navigating Intuitive Eating While Sick

Do you ever worry about what will happen the first time you get sick while on your intuitive eating journey? Do you worry that you’ll find it hard to listen to your body and may fall back into old habits? Unfortunately, it can be harder for you to eat intuitively while you’re sick, but that doesn’t mean you have to fall back into old habits.

Let me tell you a lesson I learned a few years ago about a time I was sick and how it affected my intuitive eating journey.

I don’t usually get sick so when I do, it really throws me for a loop.

After I woke up one morning from a difficult night sleep, with a sore throat, coughing, and achy body, I went into the kitchen to prepare my breakfast. What I realized as I tuned into my hunger signals was that I wasn’t really hearing hunger. I stopped to think about this. The last time I ate was dinner the night before, and I am usually hungry in the morning. Yet, I just wasn’t feeling it that morning.

So, what do you think I did?

Well, I could have left the kitchen and said I’m not going to eat because I don’t hear my hunger. But that’s not what I did. I changed up my breakfast a bit and had a much smaller breakfast with a cup of tea.

A few hours later, I sensed a gentle hunger, but still not typical of my usual hunger mid-day. Yet, I realized that it’s been some time since I’ve eaten, and it’s very important to keep my energy levels up with proper fuel. And so again, I tweaked what my usual lunch would be, and had a smaller lunch with another cup of tea.

I learned several lessons from my experience, and I would like to share them with you:

Always Make Sure to Nourish Your Body

While I encourage you to tune into your inner hunger signals as your guide to eating, there are times when those hunger signals might be blunted. And one of those times is during illness. Therefore, even if you don’t hear and feel the hunger signals like you normally do, it’s still so important to eat so you can properly nourish your body.

Choose Foods that Fit Your Current State

The best option when you’re sick and don’t feel or hear your hunger signals is to choose “sick-friendly” foods. These types of foods are easy on the stomach (and in my case, easy on my throat). That may be soup if you have a sore throat or a piece of toast with butter if you are having an upset stomach.

Listen to Your Body

Keep in mind while you’re eating that this might be one situation where you just don’t hear those hunger signals as sharply as when you are feeling well. And that’s okay! But still try to check in with your body for how it’s feeling!

The most important thing to remember is that while you’re sick, your body needs nourishment to feel better, which is why it’s necessary for you to eat, even if you have trouble hearing your hunger signals.

If you are on your intuitive eating journey and are bumping into obstacles like this, please reach out to me. I can help you navigate this and other hurdle that might pop up for you.

3 Steps to Get You Started on the Path towards Intuitive Eating

You’re standing in front of the mirror having changed your clothes three times already this morning. Nothing seems to fit right. You are discouraged and start with the negative self-talk you’re all too familiar with.

“Why can’t I just stick to my diet”, you say to yourself. “I am such a failure; I will never succeed at weight loss”. “Tomorrow I will start my diet again”.

Does this sound familiar to you? If you have been battling your weight for some time, then likely you have been on countless diets that have not worked long-term, and you have gotten very good at berating yourself for your failures.

The commercials all sound so promising! The radio ads promise fat burning powers of the miracle pills you just bought at the health food store.

Why aren’t you able to lose weight?

The answer lies in the fact that you are dieting.

Let me repeat that!

The answer lies in the fact that you are dieting.

You see, nobody lives on a diet. One goes on a diet but eventually goes off the diet.

When you go on a diet, you are in essence putting your body into a short-term starvation state. When given the first opportunity to really eat what you desire, you will often experience a feeling of such intensity that any initial thoughts of wanting to be thin fly out the window. You feel out of control, guilty, and view yourself as having no willpower.

However, listen up!

This type of eating in response to semi-starvation is “normal” and expected. It has nothing to do with willpower! When you are underfed, you will obsess about food. Period!

The best solution to achieving peace with food and your body is to embrace an intuitive eating approach to food.

Intuitive eating is eating based on your physiological hunger and satiety cues not based on situations or emotional cues. So, that means eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied or comfortably full.

Now, I recognize that for the chronic yo-yo dieter, this is not necessarily easy. It requires you to explore how you got to where you are today in your eating habits and understand deeply what it means to become an intuitive eater.

During this process, it’s important for you to begin to get rid of your diet mentality, and to truly believe that you will never diet again. If you continue to think there is “just one more diet, this time I’ll be good”, then you won’t be able to move forward to becoming an intuitive eater. You will continue to have foods that are “good” and “bad” and you will continue to think of yourself as being “on” or “off”.

To help you get started on the path towards intuitive eating, commit to the following 3 steps:

Get Rid of All the Dieting Literature

Throw out all the diet books and pre-printed menus from magazines that you have tried over the years. Make a commitment to yourself that you will no longer be tempted by new diets that come out because you are committed to learning to listen to your body.

Throw Out the Scale

Get rid of the bathroom scale. Do you weigh yourself every morning or even several times per day? Does the number on the scale influence your mood for the day? Most likely it does, even if you don’t consciously realize it. Your weight fluctuates day-to-day and is a measure of more than just fat. It includes your bones, organs, muscle, and substances such as water, food, and waste that pass through your system. Begin to measure your success by factors other than the scale such as improved blood work, blood pressure, mood, energy level, and overall satisfaction with your progress towards becoming an intuitive eater.

Find a Support Group

Seek out caring support to help you on your journey. Becoming an intuitive eater is a process and the amount of time it takes will depend on how long you’ve been dieting, how strong your diet mentality is, how long you’ve been using food to cope with your emotions, and how willing you are to trust yourself. It’s very important for you to surround yourself with like-minded people who can provide positive feedback and support.

You were born with the instinct to eat when hungry and stop when full. Chances are you lost this ability due to all the diets you tried and the media exposure to quick fixes.

You can reclaim what you were born with and achieve guilt-free eating, a body you love, and a life free of dieting.

Intuitive eating is the answer you have been looking for. To learn more about this journey, please reach out to me. I can help you navigate this and any hurdles that might pop up for you.

3 Ways to Reframe “I Can’t”

When it comes to making changes in your life, your self-talk makes all the difference. And learning to stop dieting is no different.

Do the words “I can’t” sound in your head?

You probably developed this mindset following years of dieting. Diets are full of rules and restrictions that set you up for failure. When it comes to eating intuitively, you may also feel like you “can’t” do it because programs have not worked for you in the past. However, intuitive eating is not a diet, and those restrictive rules do not apply.

While you are on your intuitive eating journey, you are working on reframing your mindset. You are changing the way you think about your body, food, and the way you eat.

You can get rid of your “I can’t” by reframing your mindset.

Change your “I can’t” to “I am”, “I can”, and “I will”.

I am

When you’re working towards stopping the binge eating, your gut reaction may be “I can’t do it.”

Change this thought to, “I am no longer binge eating!”

Even if you still have an occasional binge, repeat this statement to help rewire your neural pathways in the brain.

I can

Incorporating gentle movement into your life can bring up fear if you’re used to exercise bootcamps for the purpose of burning calories and losing weight. Moving to more gentle, joyful movement might bring up worries such as “will I gain weight?” This will keep you stuck in diet mentality.

Instead, acknowledge the challenge and reframe the “I can’t just do gentle movement” into “I can do gentle movement and feel great”.

By changing your self-talk, you will see how easy it is to progress forward.

I will

Taking action is key! When you say, “I can’t”, that stops you in your tracks.

Instead, acknowledge that learning to become an intuitive eater is a process and it takes time. Do yourself a favor and reframe this thought into a more realistic self-talk.

I will be an intuitive eater again, just like I was born!

Simply reframing your mindset will help you get “I can’t” out of your vocabulary and you will feel great doing it!!

What to do if You’re Desperate to Lose Weight

You’ve struggled with food and your body for a long time. You’ve been on and off diets to no avail. You are desperate to lose weight but nothing you’ve tried works. What should you do?

Let’s take a step back and explore the following scenario:

You’ve just decided that you want to start a new diet, a new plan, a new lifestyle journey (whatever you wish to call it). You start and things feel great—you’re following the diet exactly as you “should”, making no “mistakes”, and you may even begin to lose some weight.

However, as time goes on, maybe days, weeks, or even months, the deprivation and restriction builds, which makes the diet a bit harder to stick to. On the inside, your body starts to fight back against the restriction and deprivation by ramping up your hunger hormones, sending messages of intense cravings, and doing anything it can to let you know “it’s hungry!”

But you think to yourself “my willpower is strong”, and you continue with your plan.

Then suddenly, something out of the ordinary pops up such as a special friend’s wedding, a surprise vacation, or your birthday dinner. The diet/plan/lifestyle changes you were once sticking too so well aren’t so flexible and accommodating for this event and upcoming time in your life.

As the events of life take place, you quickly find yourself slipping. This slip eventually turns into out of control (or binge) eating. You realize what you have done, feelings of guilt, shame, and failure set in, and the cycle REPEATS.

This is what is known as the diet cycle. In essence, it’s a TRAP in which you get caught over and over again which keeps you in a whirlwind of restrained eating followed by chaotic eating and weight cycling.

Breaking this cycle can be difficult for anyone, especially chronic dieters.

On the outside looking in, it’s clear that the problem is the diet itself; the restriction and deprivation because of the diet. However, chronic dieters do not see it this way.

Chronic dieters believe since they were not able to successfully follow the diet, they are the one at fault, they are a failure, they are the one to blame, or they have no “willpower”. But, the reality is that the diet is the clear problem.

Dieting leads to restriction, undereating, and feelings of deprivation which ultimately leads to overeating.

The big question here is: How do you break away from this vicious cycle?

3 Things to Do Now

(1) Adjust your mindset

Instead of feeling like you need to “fix” your body to be smaller or “healthier”, find alternative ways to address what is truly going on. Are you holding onto limiting beliefs can cause you to self-sabotage? Do you believe that you will struggle with food forever? Is your mind ONLY on weight loss?

Can you perhaps take your mind off weight loss for now?

This can be a scary and new feeling so be sure to give yourself grace and be kind to your body while you transition through this mindset shift.

(2) Take the focus off weight loss and shift it elsewhere

Instead of being fixated on the scale, assess your lifestyle, behaviors, and habits.

Get curious and ask yourself questions—how am I eating now? Am I eating in a way that is making me feel my absolute best? Can I focus on eating as self-care versus to yield weight loss?

What about how you are speaking to yourself. Or the type of movement you are doing.

Focuses on these areas is far less stressful than focusing on the scale.

(3) Show your body and mind love

Shifting your mindset can be difficult, so while you’re doing the very important mindset work that needs to be done, give yourself grace.

Remember, with lifestyle and behavior changes, your body will respond how it is supposed to, therefore treat yourself nicely!

Ready to break the diet cycle? Pop your name and email in the boxes below and get started with your free online break the spell of diet experience.

Top 5 Reasons Why Diets Don’t Work

Many people swear by diets. They tell me the diets work, but when I point out tha they go back on the diet when they regain the weight, so essentially the diets don’t work, they shake their head and finally get it.

A diet isn’t just those flashy branded weight loss companies (you know which I’m talking about). Dieting is any form of food restriction such as cleanses, “lifestyle” changes, restricting foods or entire food groups. It’s all dieting!

Dieting programs and weight loss schemes (yes, schemes!) are a part of a $72 billion industry, therefore it’s no wonder many people fall for its tricks. These companies profit off of telling consumers that “they are not good enough in the body they are in” and they promote “shrinking your body” in order to be happy, healthy, and worthy.

As humans, we naturally internalize these negative and harmful messages and believe we must “fix” ourselves, and therefore give in to the various weight loss products, programs etc. available on the market.

There are numerous reasons why you should avoid diets—they mess with your health, they make you feel shame and guilt about your eating, and they take away from the pleasures of eating.

Let’s look deeper into why diet’s don’t work?

Here are the top 5 reasons why diet’s don’t work:

(1) Diets are not sustainable

Yes, diets may lead to weight loss in the short term. However, once the dieting rules and restriction go away—the weight is regained (plus more)! The literature states that 95% of people who diet end up gaining the weight back that they previously lost. Of the 95%, about 2/3 of those people gained back MORE weight than they started out at.

This cycle of losing and gaining weight brings on the vicious cycles of restrict/binge eating, or yo-yo dieting, which actually causes more harm to your body and your health than good:

Impacted metabolism
Increased weight gain
Increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, hypertension
Negative body image
Increased frustration

(2) Dieting is starvation in disguise

Purposefully restricting meals or food causes your body to go into a state of fight or flight. When your body is not receiving the fuel it needs from food, it will go into full-on survival mode. Restricting food sends the signal to your body saying “hey we are in a famine right now, it’s time to help me survive” .

Your body will then begin to compensate to keep you going by:

Lowering metabolism
Stimulating a chemical in the brain to make you consistently think about food
Store/hold onto fat
Shut down non-essential systems to promote survival (like reproductive systems)

With all of these compensating measures at play, this is why it is difficult to lose weight time and time again with dieting and food restriction; your body is working hard to keep you alive (since it thinks there is a famine out there!)

(3) Dieting can cause disordered eating

If dieting goes on for long enough, this can lead to the development of disordered eating or eating disorders, and more commonly, binge eating.

Binge eating is a biological reaction to deprivation (which we know is because of dieting). Here’s what happens: there is a chemical release of neuropeptide Y (NPY) which is secreted in the brain when there is not enough calories being consumed (specifically CHO since this is the brains fuel source). The secretion of NPY increases the motivation to eat, delays satiety and stimulates food intake which can feel like binge eating!

Binge eating is a survival mechanism resulting from dieting and food restriction.

(4) Diets lead to food obsession

Reducing food intake not only makes you feel irritable, fatigued, have brain-fog, and lack motivation, but you will think about food… ALL.THE.TIME.

As a dieters, you often blame yourself for this feeling (being preoccupied with the thought of food), but it is actually a natural biological reaction to food restriction. Of course you will think about food all the time if your body is hungry!

This biological reaction is, again, a survival mechanism. Your body is doing its job!

However, the diet industry want you to believe that something is wrong with you. But your body is not the enemy!

(5) Dieting causes intense cravings

Diet programs and “diet rules” tell you what foods you should and shouldn’t eat, or give you a “good” food list and a “bad” food list.

If this idea of “good” and “bad” foods is kept up long enough, you will begin to think about and crave the very foods you are restricting. As humans, we are driven by our unmet needs. If you tell yourself “I can’t have ice cream anymore”, all you’re going to think about is eating ice cream.

So if you think you’re addicted to (insert food here), it’s likely that you’re not actually addicted to it but it’s the dieting and food restriction causing you to think about it and crave it!

canva

Are you ready to leave dieting behind? Pop your name and email in the boxes below to get started with your Break the Spell of Diets in 3 days online experience.

Intuitive Eating on Vacation

Have I mentioned yet that summer is my favorite season? Yes, it is!

The hot weather, spending time outdoors, longer days, time off…I can on and on. I just love it.

Whether you’re planning a weekend away, a visit to a tropical island, or a staycation, food and eating challenges might come up, especially for those who are in the process of recovering from dieting. If this is you, then keep reading!

If you feel the urge to say, “I’m on vacation, I’ll enjoy myself and start over when I get home”, then please know that you’re not alone. This is what’s called the “vacation mindset.” When you’re on vacation, the sneaky diet mentality and food police might join you.

This never pans out well. So, let’s discuss how you can continue your intuitive eating practice while you’re soaking up the sun!

Avoid the All or Nothing Mindset

If you go into vacation thinking “I won’t eat anything I shouldn’t, or “I’m just going to eat and deal with it when I get home”, you’re thinking in extremes. Instead, commit to staying fully present while on vacation, and continue to make purposeful food choices, just like you’re doing at home.

Pay Attention to Your Fullness Signals

Go ahead and explore new foods and enjoy familiar ones. Remind yourself to check in mid-meal to see how you are feeling. As you become more satisfied, remind yourself that you can come back and order this food again. You don’t need to eat it all, to a point of being overfull and uncomfortable. That just takes away from the whole experience.

Listen for Hunger

When you’re out and busy trying to jam all the activities you would like to do into a short time frame, you may forget to stop and eat lunch and then feel overhungry by dinner. Throughout the day check-in with your body and listen for those hunger cues. Make sure you carry snacks with you so you can answer the hunger when it calls.

Make Movement Fun

Going to the hotel gym on vacation may not be your cup of tea, and that’s okay. However, there are many movements you may enjoy doing, that you can do while vacationing. Or you may want to try something new, such a hiking as local trail, or kayaking in the clear waters. Find an activity that is appealing to you, and remove all expectations. Just have fun!

We all need a break, and the summer is a great time to take a vacation! Tell the food police they are not welcome and enjoy yourself while making memories!

4 Tips to Honor Your Fullness

One of the biggest lies diet culture pushes onto you is that there is an exact calorie or amount of food you should be eating every day. Diet culture also tells you to use outside sources to help guide your eating. Whether it’s tracking calories, points, macros, or using food lists or pre-made meal plans—these are all outside sources telling you “How much to eat”.

But guess what? You don’t need anything or anyone telling you when or how much to eat. You have the tools built inside of you, better known as your hunger fullness cues. These are innate feelings that tell you exactly when to start and stop eating. However, the feelings of hunger and fulness can be interrupted by long standing diets!

Can Hunger and Fullness Signals Return

The answer is yes. Once you ditch the diets and outside rules and learn to tune inward, you can reignite your inner cues!

I have found with my clients that attuning to hunger cues happens a bit quicker than fullness cues. There are many perceived barriers and social pressures that can cause you to eat passed the point of comfort. Perhaps you eat out of obligation and feel it would be rude to your hostess by not eating everything on the plate. Or you are distracted when eating out socially and miss that point of comfortable fullness. Or even still, you are really enjoying your meal and don’t want it to end.

4 Tips to Honor Your Fullness:

1: Be patient

When I talk about patience, I am referring to both patience as you eat your meal, and patience in your expectations of when you will attune to the signal.

In the fast-paced society we will live in, it’s easy to speed through your meal to get to the next task. Be kind to yourself, and your body, and make it a goal to slow down and not rush through the meal, be patient. Give yourself plenty of time to focus on what you are eating, savoring every bite. In this way, you will pick up your fullness signals more so than if you just focus on finishing the food on your plate.

You’ll also want to practice patience when it comes to actually hearing your fullness signals. It will take time for you to attune to it, especially if you’ve been dieting for a long time. There is no rush, it will come!

2: Check-in with Yourself

If you never pause to check it with how you are feeling, how will you learn to pick up the signals of your body. It’s important to periodically check in and ask yourself if you are getting less hungry and if fullness is starting to emerge. If you are still hungry, by all means continue eating. And if you are starting to feel full, perhaps now is a good time to consider finishing the meal. You are in charge.

3: Leave the Clean the Plate Club

This is one membership that does not have your best interest at heart. If you are finishing your plate because you are part of the clean the plate club, it’s time to re-evaluate. There are any number of reasons why you are a member of this club, but realizing the damage it’s caused you will help you respect the feelings of fullness you experience during the meal. You don’t have to throw away food! You can always save it for later or the next day. Just imagine how delicious it will taste when you are hungry again.

4: Set up a Positive Home Environment

Make your home a place for success by clearing space at a table for mealtime. When you have a designated area to eat your meals at, you are more likely to focus on the food in front of you. This space should be free of distractions like television and computers.

I recognize that it might take a while for your signals to reappear, and for you to trust them. Take your time, be patient, and enjoy the ride!

Rebound Eating- What is it & how do I stop?

You may have heard the term “rebound eating” and find yourself asking “what is this”?

In a nutshell, when you restrict the foods you really enjoy eating until you’ve reaching a your breaking point, the backlash is rebound eating.

Think of it as your body’s last ditch effort to get your attention after you’ve decided to ignore what it’s trying to tell you—it’s also saying, “Hey! You’re seriously depriving me over here!”

As a chronic dieter, rebound eating is something you may have experienced in the past. Does this cycle sound familiar?

Reducing the number of calories you consume to less than what your body needs > deprive, deprive, deprive > hit a wall where you can’t take the deprivation anymore and your restriction takes a nose dive > binge, binge, binge > compensate with intense exercise—“I need to work this off!”> REPEAT!

This common cycle is harmful to your physical and mental health, and truly take a toll on your body. It leads to disordered eating patterns, and if not responded to immediately could lead to other health complications (i.e., dehydration, brittle hair/nails, fatigue, brain fog, and more).

How to Stop Rebound Eating

The only way to put an end to this cycle of rebound eating is to stop the restriction. That means to stop dieting. So what is the alternative you might ask?

Intuitive eating!

Making peace with food and giving yourself full permission to eat while connecting to your inner wisdom to guide you is the way to stop this destructive cycle. When you embrace intuitive eating and bring all foods back into your eating world, you no longer obsess about those foods.

Intuitive eating is a practice you are cultivating, and it’s a lifelong journey (it’s not a quick fix!). If you truly want to end the cycle of restriction-deprivation-rebound eating/binge eating – repeat, then consider committing to stop dieting.

Pop your name and email into the boxes below for a free experience to Break the Spell of Diets in 3 Days.

Want more? Join an amazing supportive community of women inside my membership called The Intuitive Nutrition Circle (aka The IN Circle) where the are learning to integrate gentle nutrition into their intuitive eating practice. Click here for all the deets.

5 Side Effects of Dieting (and what to do to bounce back)

So why do you keep falling into the mind trap of “I need to keep dieting to be healthy”?

This is a common misconception that many people think! However it’s not the case! There has been major bodies of evidence suggesting that dieting is not a sustainable strategy for weight loss and does not promote a healthier life. In fact, “dieting for health” has been associated with many problems that actually work against you and impact your health negatively. In other words, when it comes down to it—dieting is causing you more harm than good!

Here are some of the common side effects to dieting (and what to do to bounce back):

1.Rebound weight gain. Did you know that about 80-95% of people that diet to intentionally lose weight will gain the weight they had originally lost (plus more!) back? Weight regain after a diet is very common! This is because during periods of dieting, you are restricting your body from specific foods or even food groups. Once you have restricted long enough, you are likely to crave these foods more and more because you are denying your body what it needs! Then the moment your diet is “over” you will find yourself bingeing, or overeating, the foods or food groups you were dramatically restricting.

What to do? Stop dieting. While this might be a scary thought, it’s truly the only way you will cultivate a healthier relationship with food.

2.You’ll be obsessed with food. As you go on diet after diet, dramatically restrict your intake, and ignore what your body is telling you it needs, this sends the message to your brain that “I am starving! I need food! Please feed me!”. These signals are a biological survival mechanism that prevents you from starvation and – newsflash – you can’t’ fight biology! By choosing to ignore these messages, you are likely to think about food nonstop. Soon your whole world is going to revolve around food. You’ll find yourself thinking about your next meal, or the foods you can or can’t eat while out with friends or family—this is no way to live!

What to do? Stop dieting. Dieting triggers overeating and food obsession. Once you stop dieting, you will find that you no longer obsess about food.

3.No longer able to detect hunger-fullness signals. With whatever diet you find yourself on, you’re usually relying on external cues to guide your eating. Whether it’s food rules, a diet plan, calorie tracking, points, the scale—these things are teaching you to ignore your own natural biological signals that were made to help detect hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. If you choose to ignore your own body signals and allow external cues to control you, your hunger and fullness signals can’t hang on for long. If you don’t use them, you’ll lose them!

What to do? Stop dieting. When you give up dieting and begin to nourish yourself consistently, you will reignite your signals of hunger and fullness.

4.Slowed metabolism. Dieting typically means; “I can only eat ____ amount every day”, or “I’m going to eliminate ______ from my diet.” Either way, the bottom line is you are ignoring what your body is asking for and denying what it needs. Without enough calories or energy from food, this forces your body to find other sources to keep the body going. If food is not available to be used for energy, the next best thing is muscle! Yes, your body will break down your muscle to keep it going. With a low level of muscle, also known as low muscle mass, this creates a slower metabolism. A low muscle mass combined with a slowed metabolism causes your body to become more efficient at storing fat and using less energy—both of which are not so great for your health!

What to do? Stop dieting. When you stop restricting and begin to nourish your body adequately and consistently, your metabolism will kick back into gear.

5.Negative emotions when diets fail you. Let’s face it, dieting can feel like a never-ending rollercoaster. You start off so strong and high up. You’re following your “diet rules”, eating what you “should be”, and putting all your energy into being “good” on your diet. But the moment you “mess up”, it takes a sharp turn and you immediately feel shame, guilt, anxiety or like a failure. This emotional up and down is extremely damaging to you mental health, as well as deepens the negative relationship you have with food.

What to do? Stop dieting. When you decide to stop this rollercoaster and learn to trust yourself and to value yourself for who you are rather than based on a number, your mental health will improve dramatically.

By now you’ve noticed a common theme – my recommendation to stop dieting. Please know that I understand how difficult this can be. I’d like to walk this journey with you. Comment below or DM me if you’d like to chat.

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).

Tag Archive for: intuitive eating