deepstash
Beta
What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet
Honor your health with gentle nutrition
Eating “intuitively” should still involve more fruits and veggies than ice cream. But at the same time, a diet doesn’t have to be perfect to be healthy, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up every time you make a less-than-perfect meal or snack choice.
96 SAVES
This is a professional note extracted from an online article.
Read more efficiently
Save what inspires you
Remember anything
IDEA EXTRACTED FROM:
10
Key Ideas
Reject the diet mentality
Dieting isn’t sustainable. Quick-fix plans cannot deliver lasting results.
The first principle of intuitive eating is to stop dieting—and to stop believing society’s messages that quick-fix plans can deliver lasting results.
Honor your hunger
Eat a sufficient amount of calories and carbohydrates to keep your body “fed” and satiated. Once you learn to recognize these signals in your own body, it becomes much easier to trust your instincts and repair unhealthy relationships with food.
Make peace with food
Give yourself “unconditional permission to eat.”
People realize they don’t really want that food that was forbidden before; they just got caught up in society telling them they couldn’t have it.
Challenge the food police
The “food police” are those voices in your head that tell you it’s good to eat fewer calories and it’s bad to eat dessert. The food police can be real people too.
“Chasing them away” is an important step in embracing intuitive eating.
Respect your fullness
It can help to pause in the middle of your meal or snack to assess your current state: How full do you feel? Are you still eating to feed your hunger, or are you eating out of distraction, boredom, or stress?
Discover the satisfaction factor
The satisfaction factor has to do with noticing and appreciating the taste and texture of food, but also the environment in which you’re eating.
When you can bring the pleasure and joy back to eating, you can truly feel satisfied after a meal and move on and enjoy the rest of your life, rather than continue to eat for other reasons.
Honor your feelings without using food
It’s not always big, extreme emotions that are causing
But being more mindful in all aspects of life—with your food and with your emotions—can help you sort out those overlaps.
Respect your body
Intuitive eating is also about feeling good about your “genetic blueprint” and the body you were meant to have—not striving for unrealistic expectations about how much weight you can lose or what size jeans you can squeeze into.
Exercise: Feel the difference
You don’t have to go to the gym every day while following an intuitive eating approach, but it is important to move your body on a regular basis.
It’s not about finding the exercise that burns the most calories or the most fat. It’s about finding something that’s sustainable and that you enjoy.
Honor your health with gentle nutrition
Eating “intuitively” should still involve more fruits and veggies than ice cream. But at the same time, a diet doesn’t have to be perfect to be healthy, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up every time you make a less-than-perfect meal or snack choice.
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
6
Key Ideas
Intuitive eating
It is a philosophy of eating that makes you the expert of your body and its hunger signals.
Essentially, it’s the opposite of a traditional diet. It doesn’t impose guidelines about wha...
The basics
To eat intuitively, you may need to relearn how to trust your body. Distinguish between physical and emotional hunger:
- Physical hunger. This biological urge tells you to replenish nutrients. It builds gradually and has different signals, such as a growling stomach, fatigue, or irritability.
- Emotional hunger. This is driven by emotional need. Sadness, loneliness, and boredom are some of the feelings that can create cravings for food, often comfort foods.
History of intuitive eating
Some of the concepts of intuitive eating have been around at least since the early 1970s, though the term wasn’t coined until 1995.
The program was built on the principle that diets don’t work and that lifestyle changes and personal care are more important for long-term health.
3 more ideas
5
Key Ideas
Intuitive eating
This is not a diet. Intuitive eating is an approach to health and food that emphasizes learning to give your body what it needs.
It doesn't involve rules related to how or w...
Quiet your inner food police
Recognize and silence your inner critic.
An example of your inner food police: if you're scanning a restaurant menu and you catch yourself saying "That’s not healthy. That’s too many servings. That’s too high fat, " that voice is not yours, although it feels like it. It's only fueled by external messaging.
Stop moralizing
Food isn’t good or bad. Don't fall for this 'black or white' way of thinking.
Health and nutrition exist on a gradient. Keeping your health in mind when making food choices is totally in line with intuitive eating, but being rigid about healthy eating isn’t.
2 more ideas
5
Key Ideas
Intuitive eating
Intuitive eating involves coming to peace with your body’s needs, letting go of the guilt associated with eating and ending the struggle of
Intuitive eating and mindful eating
With mindful eating, there is no explicit rejection of dieting.
Intuitive eating rejects the diet mentality altogether—that’s the biggest difference.
Principles of intuitive eating
- Honor your hunger. Reject the diet mentality, make peace with food and challenge the food police.
- The act of eating. Respect your fullness, and discover the food delight factor.
- The emotion of eating. Honor your feelings without using food, and respect your body.
- Exercise—feel the difference.
- Honor your health.
2 more ideas