If you’re wondering what Intuitive Eating is, you’re not alone. Intuitive eating is based on the belief that you are the expert of your body and its hunger signals. It’s the opposite of a traditional diet in that it doesn’t impose guidelines about what to avoid, and what or when to eat. It teaches you that you are the best, and only person to make those choices.
Intuitive eating promotes a healthy attitude toward food and body image. It stresses that you should eat when you’re hungry and stop when you are full. Turning toward diet books and experts about what, when, and how to eat can lead you away from trusting your body and its intuition. Dietitians in Florida often recommend an approach with a focus on intuitive eating for patients who have problems with up and down eating patterns.
To eat intuitively, you need to learn how to distinguish between physical and emotional hunger:
- Physical hunger: Your body will send different signals, such as a growling stomach, fatigue, or irritability and is satisfied when you eat any food.
- Emotional hunger: Sadness, loneliness, and boredom are some of the feelings that can create food cravings. Eating based on these feelings can create guilt.
With the growing Intuitive Eating movement, many weight loss companies are changing their marketing strategies to capitalize on its popularity. Don’t be fooled- they are still rooted in diet culture. A diet is a diet, no matter what you call it. The following are signs of a diet, dressed up in anti-diet language:
- It says it’s a psychology-based, science-based, or mindful-eating based program, but it includes counting calories, points, macros, or food groups.
- It allows you to eat whatever you want during a specific period of time, but you are not allowed to eat outside of that arbitrary time frame, even when you are hungry.
- It’s a medically supervised program that eliminates food groups, calories, or macros to shrink your body.
- Before and after pictures are promoted and endorsed as “evidence” of the program working.
- It promotes the idea that weight loss leads to happiness and health.
- It has cheat days.
- It defines “working” by the narrow definition of weight, shape, or size.
You can heighten your awareness and notice the varied ways that weight loss programs are sneakily marketed in social media, talk shows, advertisements, and friends following such regimen.
Florida Binge Eating Treatment
Behavioral Nutrition aims to help those struggling with an eating disorder develop healthy eating habits that make sense for each one of our patients. Our Florida dietitians understand that everyone is different and needs a unique diet that works for them and is as healthy as possible. Contact us today for more information on how our Registered Dietitians can help with this lifestyle change.
