What is the Intuitive Eating Model
Intuitive eating: A clear explanation
Photo by Wasa Crispbread on Unsplash
To keep it simple, intuitive eating is…
Gathering information about your own body and it’s cues
Listening and responding to your body’s cues for hunger, fullness, and satisfaction with food
Rejecting the diet mentality
Remembering important nutrition basics like…
Feeding the body regularly
Including a variety of nutrients like carbs, proteins, and fats
Eating when you’re hungry
This post is the 4th article in our guide to intuitive eating. You can find more information in this guide by visiting these links:
Who created the 10 principles of intuitive eating
After observing similar dieting and eating issues in clients year after year, two dietitians created the 10 principles of intuitive eating in the 90’s. The principles are used to guide people through stuck points in eating, and moving through each principle of intuitive eating helps individuals weave together a healthier relationship to food and body.
What are the principles of intuitive eating
Reject the Diet Mentality
Rejecting the diet mentality means looking diet culture in the face and seeing it for what it is: deceiving and unhelpful. Different people have different responses to this phase of the intuitive eating process; some feel anger and grief at the years they spent convinced that dieting was the answer, others feel relieved or awestruck when they learn strict diets and weight loss are actually damaging to health and wellness. The message is this: staying stuck in a mindset that keeps you feeling like weight control and dieting is the answer…is well, NOT.
Honor Your Hunger
Connecting to your body and trusting the wisdom of your body is an essential step in intuitive eating. The diet industry teaches us that we can’t trust our bodies and therefore we must use diets. Intuitive eating on the other hand leads us back to having an actual relationship with our body, and learning it’s unique cues for hunger and fullness. Gone are the days of drinking water to stave off hunger. This step is about regaining trust with your body and responding and learning it’s cues.
Make Peace with Food
What foods do you fear? Are there foods you feel like you can’t be trusted with? Here’s where the focus shifts to making peace with certain foods or food groups so that you no longer have to spend energy avoiding certain foods only to binge or crave them. Making peace with food is about taking away “good food” and “bad food” labels so that you can observe yourself with the food in a more authentic way.
Maybe you find that the foods you fear are foods you really do love and want around on a daily basis, or maybe you find those very foods aren’t even that satisfying to you. The only way to find out is to do experiments and observe neutrally.
Challenge the Food Police
There’s a voice in your head that says “that’s unhealthy!” or “why did you eat that?” Or “If you’re going to eat that you have to do ___.” That voice is what we call the food police and it needs to be challenged. We want to help this part evolve to be a more helpful part vs a fearful and guilt tripping part. Challenging the food police within you will allow you to find more peace in your own mind and to enjoy experiences around eating more.
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Food is supposed to be enjoyed, gathered around, and used for celebration—we need to normalize that. Diet culture often cuts us off from our own pleasure and satisfaction with eating. So here you will ask yourself what you enjoy, what levels of hunger feel satisfying to you, and you will allow yourself to find pleasure in eating again.
Feel Your Fullness
Part of really finding satisfaction with eating means understanding what it feels like in your specific body to feel full. Many of us have cut off from our body’s cues enough that we don’t know what it feels like to be “getting full,” to be “full” or “satisfied.” Here we are pausing and being mindful of what the stomach, body and mind experience at different levels of fullness.
Cope with Emotions with Kindness
Being an intuitive eater is also about your emotions unrelated to food. Yes, it’s normal to lean on food at times for celebrating, for comforting or for socializing—but if food is your only way to comfort and cope things can get tricky. This step of intuitive eating allows you to explore how you respond to your emotions, and gets you asking yourself questions like “is there anything I need right now that I cannot get from food?”
Respect Your Body
Genetics determine so much, including your body shape and size. Rather than fighting your body, intuitive eating asks you to respect it and treat it with kindness. It’s challenging to find peace with food when you’re constantly beating your body up, or asking it to look differently.
Movement- Feel the Difference
There is a difference between movement and exercise motivated by body change, and movement and exercise that’s motivated by what feels good in your body and mind. Here we ask questions like, “if you didn’t feel the pressure to change xyz about your body, how would you choose to move your body?” Would it be stretching? A walk? Dancing? A hard run? This varies greatly person to person. This step gives you an opportunity to connect with your own innate movement preferences, which is the best way to maintain movement in some way shape or form over the long-term.
Honor Your Health-Gentle Nutrition
Certain parts of food and movement can be used to address aspects of health as long as this isn’t disconnected from your satisfaction and everything else intuitive eating has taught you. There’s no such thing as perfect eating, and gentle nutrition is about approaching health holistically and making intentional choices that aren’t disruptive to your relationship with food and body.
Is it possible to lose weight with intuitive eating
It is possible, but it’s not at all the goal or point. With intuitive eating, the focus is completely off of weight and body change– because we are trusting your body to decide where it wants to be. With intuitive eating it is equally possible to stay the same weight, gain weight, or lose weight. We want you to be healthy in the largest scope of the meaning, and we know that focusing on weight is not the answer to health concerns.
For more support around eating, take a look at my affordable short courses or if you can find out how to start intuitive eating.
