Intuitive Eating: Forget about fad diets?
Have you spent years bouncing from one fad diet to another? Do you wish you could eat healthily but find you’re always craving the foods you’re denying yourself?
Intuitive eating in a nutritional philosophy that aims to teach healthy relationships with food – making it much easier for you to eat well and find the foods that boost your wellbeing.
Asking you to reject diets and strict calorie controls, intuitive eating is all about creating a connection between your mind, your body and the food you put in it. Ultimately, it is designed to help you become the expert on your own needs and teaches you how to distinguish between physical and emotional needs and it’s basic (but sometime difficult to follow) principle is: Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full.
The philosophy was started by two nutritionists – Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD, and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA – who noticed the high numbers of patients who were failing to lose weight and eat healthily despite trying to follow various diets.
Why embrace intuitive eating?
One of the best things about the system is that it can help people rid themselves of lots of the negative relationships they have with food, quashing constant worries about breaking diets or overindulging.
The idea is that you will be able to learn your body’s inner cues and respond to them in the proper way. The first step is trusting yourself and doing your best to forget about past dieting rules that may be clouding your judgement.
It allows you to really think about what you’re eating and can leave people feeling calmer, happier and more appreciative of the body they have. It might not be the fastest way to drop a lot of weight, but it can help re-route thinking and get rid of bad eating habits for longer, more trustworthy results. According to a scientific article about intuitive eating, it has also been linked with a lower BMI (body mass index) and better psychological health.
How to get started
If you want to be a successful intuitive eater, you must to slow down and pay close attention to what your body is telling you. You also need to honour your own hunger and keep your body well fuelled if you want to avoid triggering the primal need to consume as many calories as you can to survive.
A professional dietician who specialises in intuitive eating can help you embrace the change and there are plenty of useful resources available online, including the 10 principles of intuitive eating and the interesting articles on Experience Life. Or, you might want to consider investing in a copy of the book written by the two nutritionists who started the philosophy – Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works.
Have you ever heard of intuitive eating?
Rachel - Silversurfers Assistant Editor
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