Intuitive eating isn’t a diet

Intuitive eating is not counting calories or entering things in your phone like a crazy person. What you are doing is listening to your body. Are you hungry? Eat. Are you full? Stop. Are you bored and browsing the pantry? Half of the time when I do this it’s because I’m dehydrated. Drink a tall glass of water and find something else to do.

How to start intuitive eating

Intuitive eating is designed to help people heal from chronic dieting, or any diet at all for that matter. Finding balance with food can be so hard for so many people and new diet after new diet that raises its ugly head at every turn doesn’t help. I mean right off the top of my head, I can think of 5 different fad diets. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface. With all the opinions out there on what we should be eating, it’s enough to make anyone go insane.

What is intuitive eating?

Intuitive eating is not giving yourself permission to eat whatever you want whenever you want. What it is doing is encouraging you to do actual research on healthy foods you should be eating everyday. A combination of healthy proteins, carbs, and fats. Stay away from processed foods and reduce your sugar intake.

What makes food such a struggle is highly processed foods. Majority of food companies out there don’t care for people’s health for a second. All they care about is money, so in turn we have convenient addicting food that tastes good at every corner. We have to fight to get our kids to eat well because of the heavy media, fun packaging, and pressure by the average American diet to not “be so uptight”.

Use common sense

So many people are blinded by how bad the majority of the food that’s out there really is. It’s so socially acceptable. In fact, if you try to make a stand for your family and refuse the average American diet, you’re frowned upon. It baffles me how many Americans are snooped by all these companies and are ok with the fact that they’re addicted to garbage. Sugar is basically a legal drug that is laced in everything. It’s addicting, tastes good, and it keeps people coming back for more.

Is intuitive eating for everyone?

Intuitive eating is not for everyone. Some people love things like macro counting where they have an allotted amount of carbs, protein, and fats and they can eat whatever they want as long as the don’t go over their allotment. But it just wasn’t for me.

We wonder why America has such a battle with food. Why people scramble and go to fad died after fad diet because what is advertised to them and made “ normal” makes it so hard for people to refuse.

Listen to your body

Intuitive eating is meant for people to listen to their body, use common sense with food choices, and retrain yourself to do something else instead of emotional eating. If you’re hungry, eat. Focus on Whole Foods, healthy carbs, proteins, and fats. Choose fruit over a whole bag of chips. If you’re full, stop eating. Empower yourself to make healthy decisions and you rule food instead of letting food rule you.

Don’t deprive yourself

We all know eating the “bad stuff” just tastes so good. For many of us it is unavoidable and unrealistic to cut it out all together. That is the true battle in intuitive eating is learning how to allow yourself to still have those foods without going overboard. Intuitive eating is all about balance and that is why it is sustainable.