My Experience with Intuitive Eating
Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch wrote Intuitive Eating with the goal that these principles would help people move away from chronic dieting, respect their bodies and develop a better relationship with food. In this post, I’ll describe my experience and what I learnt from each principle!
Principle 1 - Reject the Diet Mentality
This is the beginning of a lifestyle change, it involves lots of self-compassion, changing your thought process and habits, as well as mindset. I stopped measuring myself, unfollowed social media accounts that weren’t promoting intuitive eating and stopped trying to eliminate “bad” food groups.
Principle 2 - Honour Your Hunger
Dieting can often cause hunger to be ignored but it's your body signalling that it needs energy. This isn't always an “emptiness” in the stomach. It could be a loss of energy, hangriness or even wanting foods you want/are necessary for the situation (taste hunger) which fulfil the soul. I’ve been trying to pay attention to these signals and what signals I experience. When these signals appear it’s important to honour them and eat something!
Principle 3 - Make Peace With Food
No food can truly be a bad food, unless it's poisonous. This principle focuses on not categorizing foods as good or bad and allowing yourself to eat unrestricted. The thought process behind this is that when things are not off-limits they become less temptatious. This makes it less likely that you'll eat a ton of things but more likely that you'll eat a moderate amount while maximizing the enjoyability of the food. This goes hand-in-hand with Principle 2, complete permission to eat is followed by attention to hunger and fullness. I’m still working on this one but not saving foods for special occasions has been helping!
An important part of making peace with food is to eat what you enjoy! I made a list of foods that were “off-limits” and have gone through each one and noted how much I really enjoy them. If I enjoyed the food, I plan to eat it regularly!
Principle 4 - Challenge the Food Police
The Food Police are the thoughts influenced by outer sources that are critical of food and cause negative feelings like guilt. I have been aware of these thoughts and trying to not put so much store in them. The thoughts can be shifted to the Food Anthropologist, which is unbiased and just observes eating habits. I have tried to track what I ate (not calories just what it is) and how I felt after eating using the Ate app!
Principle 5 - Feel Your Fullness
Note when you're full. To make this easier, I try to eat without distractions, when I’m not overly hungry or when I’m actually a little hungry. Taking a break from eating to stop and have a deep breath has also helped me to be in the present moment and mindful of the food.
Principle 6 - Satisfaction Factor
This principle sets to maximize the pleasure of food! Trying to be present and mindful, attending to how the food made you feel and ensuring an enjoyable environment have helped to increase the satisfaction! I also like to put together food combinations that go well. For example, having soup and sandwich for Sunday lunch, which goes well together and feels right. But, not all meals will be perfect, sometimes you just need to eat which I have to remind myself.
Principle 7- Cope with Your Emotion without Using Food
Food is a source of comfort, a distraction or "sedative". It gives joy and can make you feel good. But it can be problematic if it's the only source of comfort, distraction or joy. The source of these emotions needs to be discovered. Journaling how I feel has helped me to pay attention to the emotions and let me check-in with myself to see if I’m actually hungry. Mostly, a distraction is needed so doing an activity will help!
Principle 8 - Respect Your Body
Respecting your body focuses on accepting your genetic make-up and how your body naturally wants to be without forcing any changes. This principle is based on Health At Every Size (a post on this coming soon!) and accepting that your body deserves to be fed and comfortable at any size. I try to focus on dressing in things that make me feel good about myself! Not only do you respect your body but others' as well! This principle helps to limit "fat-talk" and negative body-talk. I try to point out when others are partaking in this to try to limit my exposure and only follow social media that supports body acceptance. It also helps to accept that with Intuitive Eating your weight will even out to the weight that is healthiest for you.
Principle 9 - Exercise
A personal favourite, exercise! The purpose of this principle is to move! No set workouts, no going to the gym required, just moving. I recognize that I also like having set workout routines, so I have focused on making a variety of exercises within my routine to keep it fun. Thinking about exercise as a form of self-care can help cultivate self-compassion and break the mentality of exercise = weight loss. Having said that, rest is just as important as exercise and is crucial in taking care of yourself so I have tried to focus on getting good sleep, stretching and baths for healing!
Principle 10 - Honour Your Health with Gentle Nutrition
In this chapter of the book, the authors describe how France values food and its pleasure but has fewer incidents of heart disease and eating disorders. This shows that having positive psychological associations with food can have a big influence on people's health.
Eating what is nutritionally beneficial makes us feel good! A variety of foods, versus a restricted diet, will have greater health benefits than a reduced diet. So the purpose of gentle nutrition is to maximize nutrition without compromising taste! I do this by limiting processed foods, focusing on including lots of fruits and vegetables in my meals and eating a variety of foods.
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