Intuitive Eating has gained more recognition over the last few years. It’s almost become a buzz word within the diet community. But what exactly is it? And is it just another diet?
Intuitive Eating was developed in the 1990s by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA, CEDRD. They co-wrote the book, “Intuitive Eating, A Revolutionary Program That Works.” Intuitive Eating is an approach to food that helps people heal their relationship with food, mind, and body. Our diet culture impacts every one of these parts of us. Intuitive Eating helps you to reconnect into your body and use your internal cues of hunger, fullness and satiation as a guide with eating, rather than the external plan of a diet.
This can feel like an impossible way with food given the $75 billion diet industry that surrounds us. An industry that preys on all of your insecurities that your body is and never will be enough. Not fit enough, thin enough, and now, with the latest diet trends, healthy enough. You buy-in and follow the written rules, eat the approved foods, and try your hardest to stay away from the forbidden food lists. Exercise becomes only a way to lose inches and pounds and to change your body.
The reality is this way doesn’t work. It's not sustainable. Research shows that any weight loss achieved will be regained in 1-5 years, often with additional weight gain. As you diet, you lower your metabolism which causes the weight to become harder and harder to lose over time. Unknowing to this, you push yourself to eat less and more restrictive diets. This is why the diet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. You believe you are doing something wrong or lack willpower, but the reality is, you were set-up to fail.
Intuitive Eating helps you to see the set-up that dieting creates. It not only teaches you to become more attuned to your body and the cues that you detached from with dieting, but it helps to heal the emotional and psychological wounds that are left by dieting. These are the wounds that have you unable to decide what to eat. That have you in fear and anxiety with eating “forbidden foods,” and has you chained to the scale.
As you work through the process of Intuitive Eating, you begin to repair your food relationship by eating the foods you want, bringing awareness to how your body feels with these foods, as well as your satiation. You look at how living in a diet mentality has impacted how you see your relationship with yourself and your body, and how this has influenced your relationship with exercise and self-care. You discover the emotions and patterns that lead to emotional eating or restriction.
Through Intuitive Eating, you learn how powerful curiosity and compassion with yourself can be. You find trust, understanding and acceptance with your body. And best of all, you find a kinder way, with you.