Life should be measured by the amazing memories you make, not the number of calories you eat – welcome to intuitive eating! We’ve all heard the old adage: nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels but we’d like to challenge that. We want you to know that you can look and feel good without being on a crazy fad diet.
If you’ve read some of our other blogs, you know that we love self care, self love, and building a life of happiness. Through the use of intuitive eating exercises and understanding that weight doesn’t equal worth, you can start the process of leaving the diet mentality behind.
In this post, we take a look into intuitive eating. We’ll cover research, and provide tips to follow an intuitive eating practice while loving your body.
Your Pick: Using Diets or Living a Full Life With Intuitive Eating?
So what exactly is the diet mentality? The Diet Mentality can be described as something that negatively changes your relationship with food, your body, and your mind. By encouraging a diet mindset, people obsess about calories or low-carb, and limit their food options. The Diet mentality encourages the limitation of food and causes anxiety around eating too much. It will also make you think that you will be happier after losing weight and that your weight is directly correlated with being valued which is not true at all.
It’s hard to get away from this type of thinking in our daily lives. In our society and culture, there is a value placed on being thin. Think about all the models that have been famous throughout history and the marketing that we are victims of on a daily basis.
The Research on The Diet Mentality is Scary Too:
- Weight stigma poses a significant threat to psychological and physical health. It has been documented as a significant risk factor for depression, low self-esteem, and body dissatisfaction. source
- The best-known environmental contributor to the development of eating disorders is the sociocultural idealization of thinness. source
- Chronic dieters consistently report guilt, irritability, anxiety, and depression source
- The Diet Mentality demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power source
Now that we’ve looked at the scary truth behind diet culture, let’s chat about ditching that mentality and embracing intuitive eating.
Eating Intuitively: A New Way of Enjoying Your Food
Intuitive eating will challenge your way of viewing food. While diets label specific foods as good and bad, Intuitive eating removes the labels and restrictions. Instead of getting onto the hamster wheel of diets and going through phases of restriction/bingeing, Intuitive eating is much deeper.
This means that you listen to your body and eat healthy food choices that will satisfy your body. You eat when you’re hungry and listen to your body when you are full.
Intuitive eating – where do you start? Let’s look at the guiding principles to help you along this journey!
Change Your Relationship With Food: 10 Principals of Intuitive Eating
If you want to start embracing the Intuitive Eating Mentality, it’s important to understand it! Bhf.org.uk is a great resource and we pulled the principals from their website.
1. Reject the Diet Mentality
Get rid of the diet books, cleanses, and tummy teas. Being on a diet long-term is not sustainable and it’s actually very likely to do some emotional or mental damage. It’s time to understand that a diet will not help you achieve your goals long term and diets are pushed upon us so companies can sell products. Ditch the idea that dieting is the best way to look and feel your best.
This can be tough when you are just starting out but if you begin to eat whole foods, do some deep emotional work, and see professional help when needed, it’s possible to change your mentality.
2. Honor Your Hunger
Pay attention to your body. Are you eating out of hunger or are you eating because you are bored? By eating regularly, consuming enough carbs, and eating whole foods that aren’t extremely processed, you’ll provide your body with the ultimate fuel. Listen to your body when you’re hungry and listen to your body when you’re full.
3. Make Peace with Food
Food is your friend, not your enemy. Stop labeling foods as good and bad. Understand that some foods are a lot healthier than others but you can enjoy some foods that aren’t as healthy and you don’t need to feel bad about it. Food isn’t scary, if you focus on eating healthy meals and paying attention to your hunger, you can feel at peace with having some cookies when you want.
Also – it’s time to drop the all-or-nothing attitude. One meal will not derail your progress.
4. Challenge the Food Police
You might hear a voice inside your head that is asking you to count calories or telling you that you can only eat a small piece of a meal. When these thoughts pop into your head, stop what you are doing and try to change your way of thinking.
You can use positive food affirmations such as: I love nourishing my body with healthy foods. Choosing healthy foods allows me to honor my body. I am in control of my thoughts, actions, and words. Whole foods are my favorite foods. I am healing my relationship with food. I am excited and grateful for the food I am eating.
5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Eat what you want when you want and be present when you do so. There might be a time when you haven’t eaten healthy all day but you really feel like a bowl of ice cream. Allow yourself to consume foods when you want them but make sure you are enjoying the experience.
We suggest maintaining a nutritious diet of mainly whole foods but it’s important to strike balance. Try to avoid distractions when eating. Eat slow and do not rush through your meal. Enjoy each bite and pay attention to how you feel when you are focused on eating.
6. Feel Your Fullness
It’s important to feel your fullness and understand that your body will give you queues when you’ve eaten enough. If you are mid-meal and you’re full, that’s okay – package it up for later.
If you just had a big salad and it didn’t fill you up, go for a healthy snack after. By feeling your fullness, it’s likely you will not overeat.
7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
Your relationship with food can help you understand the deeper emotions that you’re dealing with. Limitation/bingeing is a pattern that is seen in some who are experiencing turmoil in their life and need to feel control. What is your relationship with food like? Do you use food as a coping mechanism? Do you limit food to control your world?
It’s important to understand that your relationship with food is sometimes an indicator of other things impacting your world. If you’re struggling with something in your life, you can journal, meditate, or seek professional help. We love all three of those options!
8. Respect Your Body
When you start to love and feel grateful for your body, things change. Some people are genetically gifted with the ability to eat anything and stay in great shape and others are still gifted but in other areas. There is no reason to compare yourself to anyone else or put yourself down.
Love your body, it takes care of you and you need to take care of it. Honor it, thank it, and accept it. Accepting your body is the biggest act of self-care and one of the boldest and greatest moves you can ever make in life.
Also – if you find yourself comparing your body to others, try doing a social media detox.
9. Movement—Feel the Difference
Move around! Get some movement in every day. If it’s yoga or a ride on a bike outdoors, it’s important to stimulate your body and your mind with movement.
If you aren’t big into lifting weights or you don’t have a bike, it’s easy to go outside and walk around for 20 minutes.
10. Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition
When you remove bad and good food labels, it clears up some of the limiting beliefs. Focus on filling your plate with healthy options and allowing yourself to have a dessert or snack when you want it. A protein, grain, and veggie for each meal will ensure that you’re building positive habits.
One healthy meal will not make you healthy and one meal that is from a fast food drive-in will not make you gain a ton of weight. By taking the energy spent limiting foods and placing it into the energy around cooking/trying out nutritious options, you can eat freely.
Kick That Diet to The Curb and Say Hello to Intuitive Eating Today
Now that you have the evidence about the negative impacts of diets and you’ve read the principles of intuitive eating, you are ready to make big changes in your life. We have a few suggestions for your Intuitive Eating Journey:
- Start a Journaling Practice – write out your feelings and thoughts. If you’re dealing with something emotionally, find a positive way to channel that energy and you will not feel as compelled to use food as a vice.
- Remove negative influences from your life and understand your triggers. Try to limit social media or negative news sources.
- Fall in love with cooking – look up new recipes that are nutritious and tasty.
- Learn to love your body. Practice gratitude for your body and even write a love letter to your body if you want. Exercise and prioritize positive self-talk.
- Use intuitive eating exercises regularly – pay attention to your hunger and your food. Do not eat when distracted, bored, or in a place of sadness.
- Prioritize yourself. Set time aside to meal prep or focus on self-care.
- Don’t be so hard on yourself! This might be a major life change for you. Use positive thinking, honor your emotions, and set small goals to start changing your mindset.
- Drink lots of water! Water is wonderful for your skin, and overall body functions, and it will help you truly understand when your body is hungry.
- Avoid the scale and focus on how you feel. The numbers on a scale have no correlation with your value.
- If you feel that you are in need of talking to a professional or you struggle with anxiety or depression, please seek professional help.
Final Thoughts on Loving Food and Our Well Wishes For You
Everyone is different and everyone’s body is different. One thing we want for our community is the ability to live a life that is meaningful and happy. By spending less time obsessing about food, you might be able to make meaningful connections with yourself or find a hobby, community, and purpose that you never thought was possible. Life is beautiful and we hope that you enjoy every day!
As always, thank you so much for stopping by. If you liked this article, we would love to hear from you 🙂
xx,
T&W
References:
Culbert KM, Racine SE, Klump KL. Research Review: What we have learned about the causes of eating disorders – a synthesis of sociocultural, psychological, and biological research. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2015 Nov;56(11):1141-64. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12441. Epub 2015 Jun 19. PMID: 26095891.
https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/weight-stigma