We Were Born Practicing Intuitive Eating

there are about as many different ways of practicing no diet/intuitive eating as there are people who practice it. This is because there aretwo parts to the process. There are the tenents of the process which are what makes it work. This is the eat when hungry, stop when satisfied part. There is no argument that what you eat has an effect on what you weigh. Food is energy, it is the means by which we power our bodies. If we do not take in enough energy to power ourselves we become weaker and weaker and will eventually die. If we take in more fuel than our body needs the excess is stored as fat.

The theory behind no diet/intuitive eating approaches is that if we listen to our bodies and eat in accordance with what they need we will consume neither too much nor too little because our bodies are wired to crave the right foods in the right amounts at the right time. We run into problems when we listen to people and things outside of us and eat because it is time to eat, or because the latest diet guru said that we need 5 small meals instead of 2 large ones, or because the diet we have chosen to follow says we must not skip meals.

We were born practicing intuitive eating. It is what is natural to us...and is what we did before our thinking and eating became confugled by well meaning outside forces that urged us to eat without regard to our own body's signals of hunger and satiety. The problem we face at the point that we discover no diet and intuitive eating is that our thinking and our eating HAS BECOME confused and disordered...not because this is the normal state for us...but because there has been too much input from outside sources which has separated us from the practice of listening to and eating in response to our own hunger and satiety signals. The more disconnected food becomes from the signals our body gives us to regulate the food we eat the more other ways we use food until eventually we use it for many things other than to power our bodies. And added to that, this has become a deeply ingrained habit that is modeled by most everything around us. Eating when hungry and stopping when satisfied is no longer the easy, natural, normal thing it was when we were children. It is now a difficult thing that we must think and focus to do.

This brings us to the second part of the process...those things that you do which enable you to do what at one time was the most natural thing in the world...following the innate signals of hunger and satiety that are wired into you.

What that entails is different for everyone but a large component of eating is emotional for most people...and there are emotional connections for most of us that tie into eating in general and to eating specific foods as well. Since many of us have learned to eat because we are stressed, or unhappy, or excited, or because it is time we now have to find other ways to cope with negative emotions so that we don't eat at them...and other ways of celebrating happy things so that gorging on cake and ice cream is not synonomous with celebration.

I find journaling helpful in dealing with negative emotions and find it works for me to plan to eat cake and ice cream at a celebration so I eat a little less and time my meal before the celebration so that I am hungry when it is time to eat cake and ice cream.

Other people find hypnosis helpful, or meditation, or go for a drive or a walk when they are stressed. The thing is...to be successful (to eat when you are physically hungry, and to stop when you are physically satisfied) you have to find a way of interrupting the urge to reach for food at times when you are not physically hungry. Using food is the habit...it has become what feels normal. It didn't start out that way....we were born knowing instinctively what to eat and when and how much...but the world around us was disordered...and the disorder has worn off onto us...and we have taken it inside...and that is why we need to "follow no diet." If we hadn't taken on the disorder pressed at us from outside...we would already be following no diet/intuitive eating....as that is what is normal.