I think we can all agree that dieting sucks. Dieting doesn’t lead to long term change; it instead leads to binge eating, cravings, and a whole lot of negative self talk. There is substantive research showing that dieting is a predictor is weight gain, not weight loss as the fitness industry would love for us to believe. In a society overcome with dieting propaganda, it’s difficult to know what course of action to take when trying to obtain long term wellness. The intuitive eating movement is attempting to overcome this dieting barrier to actually help people reach their ultimate health goals and maintain them.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach to attaining health and wellness. It is based off of the idea that our bodies know what we need for fuel, and it is best to dictate what and when you eat based off of your natural hunger cues and logic. There are 10 main guiding principles behind intuitive eating:
1. Ditch the Diet Mentality
Forget about the idea of a quick fix. There are no magic pills that make you lose weight fast. If you never give up the idea that the next new diet will be the cure for you, you’ll never completely open up to the idea of intuitive eating.
2. Honor Your Hunger
Trust that your body knows what’s best for you. It’s when you face excessive hunger that you are most likely to binge.
3. Make Peace With Food
The minute you tell yourself something is forbidden, you’ll only want it more. This can lead to uncontrollable cravings.
4. Challenge the Food Police
The food police is the voice that has been ingrained within you that you’re “good” for excessively restricting calories and “bad” for indulging in ice cream. Don’t base your worth off of what you ate.
5. Respect Your Fullness
This part is key. Stop and think to yourself what your current fullness level is at several points in your meal. Ignore the voice that tells you you must finish your plate.
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Food is meant to be enjoyed. Once you’ve learned to truly appreciate and experience the food you’re eating, you’ll find you need less to feel satisfied.
7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
Find avenues other than food to cope with boredom, anxiety, sadness, anger, etc. Food can’t fix feelings.
8. Respect Your Body
The diet mentality is deeply rooted in low self-esteem. There is no need to torture yourself over the amount of food you’re eating when you respect yourself at every size.
9. Exercise – Feel the Difference
Focus more on the way exercise makes you more in tune with your body and less on the number of calories you’re burning while doing it.
10. Honor Your Health
Being healthy doesn’t mean being perfect. Make healthy eating a priority but understand you don’t have to eat healthy all the time to be healthy overall.
To be clear – it is NOT easy to uphold all 10 principles of intuitive eating. Most people have been conditioned against it their entire lives. This conditioning can start as early as formula feeding, where parents make sure their baby finishes drinking the entire bottle of milk instead of the child deciding for themselves when to stop feeding. Many are raised being told to finish their dinner plate, and that it would be wasteful otherwise. Combine that with the insane portion sizes served at restaurants and fast food establishments, and you get a nation that has completely lost the ability to recognize their natural hunger cues. That isn’t to say you can’t relearn and reconnect with your body, but it is a long process that takes commitment and, at times, a completely new mindset towards food.
If you’re looking for quick weight loss on a time limit, intuitive eating probably won’t get you there. When you start intuitive eating, your weight may go up, it may go down, or it may stay the same. I can’t tell you which will happen for you. If the prospect of your weight potentially going up is scary for you, you’re definitely not alone, but you should stop and ask yourself why it is so scary.
The Research Behind Intuitive Eating
Intuitive eating is inversely associated with internalization of the thin ideal, feeling pressure to lose weight, body dissatisfaction, body shaming, lack of interoceptive awareness (aka hunger cues), emotional eating, and negative affect. It is because of this that intuitive eaters are 40% less likely to engage in disordered eating behavior.
Intuitive eating significantly correlates with lower levels of blood triglycerides, lower total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, higher HDL cholesterol, and decreased blood pressure.
Intuitive eaters are more likely to exercise and consume a diet that is high in quality than dieters.
Intuitive eating does not predict adaptive eating, meaning that it is not associated with eating less or eating only when hungry.
To summarize, intuitive eating looks promising in terms of decreasing heart disease risk, preventing binge eating and restricting, and increasing self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. This can be a game changer for people who are tired of the diet fight and are truly dedicated to healthy living for the long term. It does not look promising in terms of weight loss, but does promote weight maintenance. This poses a problem for individuals needing to lose weight quickly, such as those losing weight for knee surgery.
There is no question that Americans in general have a poorly developed relationship with food. We have no chance of fixing this problem unless we not only work on changing health behaviors but also on changing our mindset and psychological relationship to food. A change in mindset through intuitive eating doesn’t come easy, and at first is even harder than dieting. With that said, if you value the relationship you have with your body and the pleasure you get out of eating things you love, intuitive eating could be a liberating route for you.
Resources:
http://www.intuitiveeating.org/
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