A Guide to Intuitive Eating, Part I

One of the biggest game-changers for clients (and myself) was the discovery of Intuitive Eating. This philosophy calls on you to honour and respect your body with internal cues (your own hungriness, satiety factor, satisfaction factor, etc.) rather than external cues (societal portion sizes, new diet trends) to tell your body how to feed and nourish itself.

Below are the general guidelines of this loving approach to eating and adopting a nurturing way to look after your relationship with food.

Principles of Intuitive Eating

1. Reject the diet mentality

Make a firm commitment to yourself that you will give up dieting for the rest of your life. If you hold on to the hope that dieting is in your future, you will sabotage your ability to become an intuitive eater.

2. Honour your hunger

Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy. If you wait until you’re ravenous to eat, you will trigger a primal drive to overeat. All intentions to eat mindfully and nutritiously will be out the window at this point! Eat when you’re a “6” or “7” on the Hunger Scale.

3. Make peace with food

Give yourself unconditional permission to eat! If you tell yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have a particular food…well, you know what happens…the feelings of deprivation will build until you find yourself giving in, burying yourself in it along with a huge serving of guilt.

When you give yourself unconditional permission to eat, observe how you feel when you eat this food. How satisfying is it? Make a note of this and remember this experience. In the times that I have given myself permission to eat something, sometimes, I realize that it is actually not all that delicious. The forbidden nature of it made it seem more appealing than it is. Of course, there are a lot of instances where the food is as delicious as you imagined, or perhaps more…in these situations, really enjoy and stay attuned to how much you are enjoying this food. Because of course, you can have it any time you like.

Be aware if you are giving yourself pseudo permission. If you continue to hold guilty thoughts about eating something, it won’t work!

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Congrats, you’ve learned all about the first three principles of intuitive eating. Continue here to learn about part two!

If you have questions or would love to get to learn more, don’t hesitate to get in touch at almondinewellness@gmail.com.