Getting started with Intuitive Eating - Part 1
If you tuned in last week you would have read my intro blog on Intuitive Eating and the basics around what it is. So after reading that, are you ready to ditch the diet mentality and free yourself from rules and restrictions to rebuild a guilt free relationship with food??? If so then time to read on.....
So here are my first few steps towards Intuitive Eating. By starting with baby steps and taking it slow, you are setting yourself up for long-term success:
Ditch the diet mentality – this is a bigee. Think back to all the diets and detoxes you may have done in the past. Did they get you to where you want to be? Were you obsessive with food and miserable about what you couldn’t eat? Forget about the crazy thoughts, fatigue and cravings that are all associated with dieting. The first step towards eating intuitively is to fully let go of dieting and to start to detach yourself from any rules, boundaries and restrictions those diets gave you or you have set for yourself. Recognise that those diets have never worked for you in the past and in the long term that they never will. It’s been proven time and time again that people that follow restrictive diets and lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time end up regaining that weight plus some a few months down the track. Re-read this last paragraph and really let it sink in. DIETS DON’T WORK!!
Think of Intuitive Eating as a well balanced approach to feeding and fuelling your body with what it needs (and wants) without compromising your happiness.
Honour your hunger – there is a lot of negativity associated with hunger. Our hunger has been made out to be the evil villain that we must purge or ignore thanks to the clever marketing and advertising fuelled by the diet industry.
Time to reframe your hunger and recognise that it is actually a positive instinct that tells you when your energy levels need refilled. This is a natural process that occurs – the body feels deprived of energy and so it sends a hunger signal to the brain to tell you to eat. Whenever you try to ignore or suppress that hunger you are simply setting yourself up for a potential binge later on or you will reach for a less healthful meal when the time comes around. Instead, honour and satisfy that hunger with something nourishing and healthful. It doesn’t mean you need to sit down to a full meal at that time if it’s not appropriate or you don’t want to. Perhaps just a little snack and some good hydration will be enough to sustain your energy till your next meal.
By honouring this hunger you are rebuilding trust with yourself and with food. Hello freedom!
Observation - an important part of intuitive eating is to recognise your own behaviours. Spend a few days simply observing the types of food you eat, how often you eat, the reasons why you eat and how that food makes you feel. By really connecting to yourself and trying to understand your relationship with food, only then will you be able to start making peace with food and truly eat intuitively.
Different foods we eat will have different responses in our bodies. For example some foods will make you feel really alert and full of energy while other may make you feel tired and lazy. Recognise and observe your different responses to foods and make mental notes to yourself. By recognising these responses it will likely make you more selective towards your future food choices. I mean who wants to be left feeling tired and lethargic after lunch?! But that’s not to say you ‘shouldn’t’ or ‘can’t’ ever reach for those foods. It’s about choosing what’s right for you and your body at any given time.
Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day. By learning to eat intuitively you are challenging possibly years of the dieting and restriction mentality. Change isn’t easy but it is possible. Instead of trying to think of it as re-wiring your brain, think of it as building new habits not trying to stop old ones. It’s like the analogy of the good wolf and bad wolf – which one wins? The one you feed! So choose to feed yourself with positive thoughts and behaviours(the good wolf) that will set yourself free from any dieting mentality and get you reconnected to your inbuilt instinct of knowing how, what, when and why to eat.
Tune in next week for Part 2 of my Intuitive Eating blog to help you continue on your journey.
I hope you enjoyed.
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