How much should we really be eating? Should we snack? We live in a world that tells us our body is wrong and we dont know how to feed it. This couldnt be further from the truth. Were born knowing how much fuel our body needs. If we trust our body, experience and knowledge we can make choices around food that feel good.Making decisions around food can be done without judgment and without diet culture influence. You may have lost your food freedom but intuitive eating can help you learn to reclaim it. Time to start filtering out the noise! Here are the 10 principles of intuitive eating to help guide you.Diet culture has harmed us physically and mentally. Its a normal response to feel angry at it. Were born knowing how much fuel our body needs. Our body tells us how much to eat, we dont tell it how much it needs. Trust your body more than the diet products and gimmicks.2. Answer your hunger
Our body is designed in such a way that we are driven to over-eat after a period of restriction. Instead, if youre hungry, eat. Keep yourself biologically fed. Its important to note that if youre focused on getting hunger cues perfect, youre missing the point of intuitive eating. You are not supposed to be perfect.
3. Experience satiety
This starts with the food youre choosing to feed yourself. We can feel more satisfied when we give our body what it desires, when it desires it. As we eat, our body communicates to us. It tells us when we have eaten enough or when were starting to feel full. Taking time to listen to the internal chit chat is key. Sometimes a pause is all that is needed.
4. Give yourself unconditional permission to eat
With intuitive eating, you are neither on the wagon nor off it. Shouldnt and couldnt are words that dont apply to foods anymore. All foods are available to you, unless there is a medical reason to avoid them.
5. Respect your body
If youre a size seven in shoe and you try to squeeze into a size six, itll be physically uncomfortable for your feet as well as being an unhealthy thing to do. The same concept applies to your body. Everyones body is genetically designed to be unique. Even if we all ate and exercised the same way, we would still all look different. We would all be healthier if we accepted this.
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Orla Walsh believes we should be challenging food rules
Orla Walsh believes we should be challenging food rules
6. Challenge food rules and its rulers
Guilt isnt a naturally occurring ingredient in our food. We have been taught to add it. There is no such thing as a bad food or a good food. We must look out for and challenge all our food beliefs.
7. Enhance pleasure from eating experiences
Eating is an experience. Your environment needs to be inviting. Life is busy, so you have to be realistic. However, small things can be done to enhance all eating experiences to maximise pleasure and satisfaction.
8. Broaden your coping tools
Emotional eating is common. Food can give us comfort in the short term. Do you know what other things within your life comfort you? It can be helpful to explore this concept with yourself. Its a very individual list.
9. Move for pleasure, not punishment
Exercising and movement is healthy. Its made even healthier, and more sustainable, when its something you enjoy and that fits into your life.
10. Eat for physical, mental and social health
If the focus is too much on weighing our bodies and food, we can forget to weigh up the cost of doing this on our mental and social health. They are all interconnected and we cannot be truly healthier without focusing on all three. In todays society, it is far too common that people are becoming ill from pursuing wellness. In week one we discussed what a healthy diet looks like. We talked about moving towards it slowly, which will help you learn what it feels like with each tweak to your meals.
Making eating more pleasant can sometimes start with making it easier. The shopping list and using convenient nourishing food, as suggested in week one, can help facilitate this. Ask yourself, what areas would you like to focus on in week two to see how you feel when you put them in place?
