What are we aiming for with Intuitive Eating?

What do we aim for with Intuitive Eating?

Many people come to me hoping to lose weight - but is that actually what they really want?

I often ask my clients - "Do you want to lose weight and keep worrying about what you eat and what you weigh OR do you want to improve your relationship with food, stop worrying about food, weight and body and eventually be at peace?"

Interestingly nearly everyone - actually I'd say everyone - chooses the 2nd option. But the way to reach the 2nd option is through learning to listen to your body, hear what it wants to eat, when it wants to eat, how much it wants to eat - and give it to it. And that is learning to eat Intuitively. It is not obeying a diet plan given to you by someone else, or taken from a book, or printed off the internet - because how on earth can anyone except you know what YOUR BODY needs or wants on any one day.

My role as an Intuitive eating counsellor is to help you trust your choices and to trust that what you are hearing from your body is OK. I also help you block out the noise from diet culture and analyse that all those messages from the multi-trillion dollar industry are just designed to keep making you feel miserable - so you keep buying their products, so THEY keep making money.

And this is where NOT WEIGHING is a vital part of the process. To be a truly non-diet dietitian - any weighing initiated and supported by me is counter productive to the process because it not only reinforces the idea that who you are as a person is not good enough right now as you are, but it reinforces the idea that weight loss is a behaviour and you can control weight loss. You can't!!! It also can encourage you to restrict your eating and nudge you back into dieting behaviours and not LISTEN to your body again, when what we're trying to do is get you to listen to your body. If you get on any scales - I don't care what - BIA, body comp, fancy scales that measure fat, muscle, water - whatever - they all encourage you to focus on the wrong thing - your body/body shape/body fat/body weight, rather than behaviours that are helpful to improving your health. Weighing encourages people to restrict food to lose weight, rather than eat food to nourish their body - and ultimately results in bingeing and usually weight gain - so is ultimately counter-productive.

It can take multiple months before people see "measurable" progress with Intuitive eating - usually 3-4 months before clothes feel loser - because the first few months are about trusting that all food is available whenever you want it, and discovering what foods you actually really like. But after that phase is over then my clients settle in to enjoying the foods they really like and their bodies start to find the shape and weight they are meant to be. They find new energy they didn't have before, and they start to want to do exercise/movement.

It is slow-ish, but it's a life-long sustainable approach. And because the body isn’t forced to lose weight, one’s self-esteem isn’t tied to reaching and then staying at a random or arbitrary number that you, me, another health practitioner or some equation has suggested you should be.

That's not to say that exciting changes don't start straight away. Clients often come back after their first session and say "I can't believe I spent SO MUCH TIME thinking and worrying about what I should eat!" This is because they are now listening to their bodies and eating what their bodies want them to eat - and ironically it's not chocolate, chips, lollies, cake, doughnuts.... But rather - (some real examples) - a ham and cheese sandwich, sushi, rice paper rolls, corn and a Thai chicken curry. I've had to talk through with people how these foods are not "bad", but how their internalised "food rules" have made them view them as "bad" and has consequently made them think these foods are dangerous.

So when it comes to Christmas - It's just another day, with party food. And we can eat a bit and feel satisfied and know that all that food will be available tomorrow, the next day, next week, next month if we so desire it. The desire to gorge is gone because we allow ourselves this food without guilt, without shame, without remorse... It's just food.

It's not good, bad or otherwise...

Because since when did food have a moral value?