Have you struggled with going on diets, losing weight, or eating healthy? If yes, intuitive eating could be right up your alley. Dr. Archana Batra – a dietitian, physiotherapist, and certified diabetes educator breaks down this non-diet approach to food, and how to implement it.
Intuitive Eating is a non-diet eating approach that promotes a healthy attitude towards food and body image. It’s a way of eating without judgement, just curiosity. Through the process of intuitive eating, the goal is to understand the difference between physical hunger, the biological urge that tells us we need our punishment of nutrients, and emotional hunger which is driven by cravings and emotional needs.
HOW TO INTUITIVELY EAT
Due to diet culture polluting our brains, it’s gotten easier to lose our natural intuition of eating when we’re hungry and when we feel full. We over-indulge in foods that we don’t even like and we only allow ourselves when we think we deserve them.
Practicing intuitive eating can be daunting at first, but your food rules and diet restrictions need to be looked into step-by-step before you can successfully practice intuitive eating. It requires time, reflection, support, and forgiveness. However, at the end, food will be categorized as just food and not the enemy!
Recognize Diet Culture – We are exposed to it 24/7. We are surrounded with ads, social media posts and products to help us minimize this or that. Look for it and call it out. By recognizing it, you are more likely to be able to stand up to it rather than have it take control over you.
Get to know your body – Check in with yourself every two hours throughout the day and ask if you feel pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. It will help drive your food choices thereafter. Make room to care for your body and spend time with people you love without caring about your food or exercise.
Eat when you want – Understand your hunger by responding to the hunger cues and not letting yourself become excessively hungry. Try to eat every 3-4 hours. Have 3 regular meals with 1-3 snacks per day and notice your hunger with a schedule. Check-in with yourself. How does this work for you or do you like the way it makes you feel? Eat with awareness until you are comfortably full.
IS INTUITIVE EATING WORK FOR WEIGHT LOSS?
Remember, intuitive eating is not about losing weight. In fact, if you focus in weight loss, it can easily put damper on the whole approach. Intuitive eating is about making peace with food. Once you give yourself permission to eat any food you like, whenever you want, you can truly feel body’s natural feelings of hunger, fullness, desire, and satisfaction. It takes commitment and support and recommend working with a professional like a registered dietician who can help you ditch the dieting mentality and learn to eat healthy.
As it is well said, a room isn’t built in one day. You will have to give some time to get comfortable with this. There is no right or wrong in intuitive eating which is the beauty of it.
So, check it with your body and most important, trust your body. It trusts you!
Disclaimer: The article is authored by Dr Archana Batra – a dietitian, physiotherapist, and a certified diabetes educator. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not represent those of GlobalSpa.
