Intuitive Eating: The Anti-Diet
On the heels of the holidays many people feel pressure to diet. Each year, “get in shape” and “lose weight” rank at the top of American’s New Year’s resolutions. Instead of jumping on the latest and greatest dieting craze this year, I’d like to propose a different approach: Intuitive Eating.
The Basics:
The term ‘Intuitive Eating’ was coined by dieticians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995, but the concept is much, MUCH, older. In fact, the premise of intuitive eating is really a return to the basics- to get in touch with our physiological cues of hunger and satiation.
We are all born natural intuitive eaters. Babies cry, they eat, and then stop eating until they’re hungry again. Kids innately balance out their food intake from week to week, some days they may eat a ton of food, and other days they may barely eat anything. As we grow older, we internalize rules and restrictions around food, and lose our inner intuitive eater. We learn to finish everything on our plate. We learn that dessert is a reward, or can be taken away if we misbehave. We are told that certain foods are good for us and others are bad – causing us to feel good about ourselves when we eat certain foods and guilty when we eat others.
Intuitive Eating is not a diet. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. There’s no counting calories, carbs, or macros, and no making certain foods off limits. It’s not about following a meal plan or measuring out your portions (in fact, that is all discouraged!). Instead, it’s about re-learning to eat outside of the diet mentality, putting the focus on your internal cues like hunger, fullness and satisfaction, and moving away from external cues like food rules and restrictions.
10 Principles of Intuitive Eating:
1. Reject the Diet Mentality
Sure you hear success stories. These anecdotes fuel the multi-billion dollar diet industry. The sad truth is that diets don’t work. In fact, restrictive dieting is associated with weight gain (Rothblum 2018). Furthermore, dieting can lead to shame, guilt, and low self-worth and confidence (O’Hara & Taylor 2018). So stop feeling like a failure when you fall off the diet bandwagon and gain back all those pounds because (I’ll say it again), diets don’t work!
2. Honor Your Hunger
Food fuels our bodies. Our level of energy, stamina, and focus is directly related to our blood sugar. For optimal performance, we need stable blood sugar levels, which means we need regular carbohydrate intake throughout our waking hours, tapering off in the evening when it benefits us to wind down. With some foods packing a greater carbo-punch, how do we know when our body needs more fuel? Hunger! Easy right? Maybe not. It’s key to honor our hunger before it gets out of hand. If we wait until we are excessively hungry, we inevitably eat to excess. So it’s important to learn to recognize our first physiological signals of hunger.
3. Make Peace with Food
Food is not the enemy. When we treat food as such we are perpetuating a lie that our bodies can see through. If we designate certain foods as “off limits” or restrict our diet, we actually increase our focus on the forbidden food and experience shame and guilt when we succumb to our urges. Which brings us to the next principle of intuitive eating:
4. Challenge the Food Police
Stand up to that voice in your head that tells you that you that you are “good” for consuming minimal calories and “bad” for enjoying your favorite dessert. Tying our worth (both positive and negative) to food consumption is deeply ingrained and equally harmful.
5. Respect Your Fullness
So far, we’ve talked a lot about letting ourselves eat, but equally important is learning to stop eating when we are full. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Between structuring our day around fixed mealtimes and being expected to clear our plates, we’ve been conditioned to ignore our body’s natural satiation cues. Take time to acquaint yourself with these cues. Slowing down and checking in with our bodies during meals is a good place to start.
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Eating food, good food, is a pleasure of life. When we eat foods we like and appreciate the presentation and the environment surrounding the meal, we open ourselves up to the pleasure and satisfaction that can be derived from the eating experience. Bonus: if you allow pleasure back into eating, you’ll find it takes much less food to feel satisfied.
7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
Eating is comforting. Many people eat when they are sad, anxious, bored, or lonely. Emotional eating may result in momentary relief, but is not a long-term solution and can compound negative feelings by tacking on guilt. It is critical that we find other ways to address/tolerate unpleasant emotional states.
8. Respect Your Body
Accept your genetic blueprint. We all have different sizes, shapes, and metabolisms. It is impossible to reject the diet mentality if we are overly-critical of our bodies and are striving to change our genetics.
9. Exercise-Feel the Difference
Tune in to how it feels to get active and move our bodies in different ways. If losing weight is the only motivation you have for working out, it will not be sustainable. Instead, focus on the other benefits of exercise, such as increased energy, better sleep, and more strength.
10. Honor Your Health
Choose foods that make you feel well, both physically and psychologically. Sometimes that might mean enjoying a slice of chocolate cake. Remember, you don’t have to eat a perfectly healthy diet to be healthy. Health is reflective of what and how you eat consistently over time. Feeling good, not perfection, is the goal.
Research:
The benefits of Intuitive Eating are both physical and psychological. Individuals who practice intuitive eating tend to have lower Body Mass Index (BMI) and better weight maintenance (VanDyke & Drinkwater, 2013). Participants in Intuitive Eating studies reported lower anxiety and fewer depressive symptoms, as well as improved self-esteem, body image, and overall quality of life.
The Bottom Line:
With intuitive eating, how you eat is just as important as what you eat. Let your body be your guide, enjoy food, and live healthy.
References
O’ Hara, L. & Taylor J. (2018). What’s Wrong with War on Obesity? A Narrative Review of the Weight-Centered Health Paradigm and Development of the 3C Framework to Build Critical Competency for a Paradigm Shift. SAGE Open, 8(2), 1-28. doi.org/10.1177/2158244018772888
Rothblum E. (2018) Slim Chance for Permanent Weight Loss. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 6, 63–69. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/arc0000043
Schaefer, J.T. & Magnusen, A.B. (2014) A Review of Interventions that Promote Eating by Internal Cues. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,114(5), 734-760
VanDyke, N., & Drinkwater, E.J. (2013) Relationships between intuitive eating and health indicators: literature review. Journal of Public Health and Nutrition: 17(8), 1757-66. doi: 10.1017/S1368980013002139