By Kristin Neusel, MS, RD, LD, CDCES
It's time to rediscover the pleasures of eating!
You should never feel hungry or deprived, or have cravings because you can’t eat a certain food—or food group—due to a “diet.”
As a Registered Dietitian, I’ve spoken with many clients who tell me they have tried every "fad diet" and yo-yo’d with weight-loss successes and failures.
A successful weight loss is when you have kept the weight off for two years? By bouncing back and forth with your weight, you are actually hurting your metabolism—and making it more challenging to lose weight the next time.
When a client tells me they are following a certain fad diet (e.g Atkins, intermittent fasting, the Zone diet) they ask me what I think about it.
I then ask them the following questions:
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What healthy habits are you learning from this "diet?"
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Is this diet something you can do long-term?
The answer to question 1 is generally “I’m not sure."
The answer to number 2 is generally “No."
If a certain eating style is not something you can do long-term, it should be a red flag!
I encourage my clients to follow a sustainable/long-term eating plan so that they’re not coming back to me in 2 years saying they need my help again.
If one of the "fad diets" works for you, that’s great!
If not, you should consider exploring other options.
Intuitive Eating
This leads me to intuitive eating, a long-term solution to having a healthy relationship with food.
Intuitive eating:
- Helps to free you from chronic dieting
- Helps you rediscover the pleasures of eating
The process of intuitive eating is a practice, which honors both mental and physical health.
Intuitive Eating is aligned with health at every size because the pursuit of intentional weight loss is a failed paradigm, which creates health problems, including:
- Weight stigma
- Weight cycling, and
- Eating disorders
All bodies deserve dignity and respect2.
There are no eliminations of any food groups, foods in general, macronutrients, or the like.
All foods fit, and intuitive eating really focuses on building that healthy relationship with eating.
There are 10 principles of intuitive eating 1
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Reject the "diet mentality"
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Honor your hunger
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Make peace with food
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Challenge the food police
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Discover the satisfaction factor
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Feel your fullness
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Cope with your emotions and kindness
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Respect your body
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Movement- feel the difference
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Honor your health- gentle nutrition
Intuitive-eating principles work in two key ways2:
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By helping you cultivate attunement to the physical sensations that arise from within your body to get both your biological and psychological needs met, and...
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By removing the obstacles and disruptors to attunement, which usually come from the mind in the form of rules, beliefs, and thoughts.
I’ve had clients who do intermittent fasting tell me they’re starving in the morning, "but they get used to feeling famished."
On the other end of the spectrum, many clients tell me they’ve done extreme calorie-deficit diets (or macronutrient-deficit diets), lost weight, then plateaued and ended up right back where they were before.
It’s kind of like a kid who had strict parents going away to college and having freedom for the first time. That kid might behave a little crazier than the kids who had more freedom at home!
By so intensely restricting yourself, you end up having “cheat days” and go crazy because you have been so strict with your eating patterns.
This is something you want to avoid.
By listening to your body, not depriving yourself of adequate nutrition, and having occasional indulgences, you prevent yourself from having these “cheat days”.
Intuitive eating helps you:
- Free yourself from chronic dieting and
- Rediscover the pleasures of eating
Created and written by Evelyn Tribole, MS RDN CEDRD-S, and Elyse Resch, MS RDN CEDRD-S, FAND, the intuitive-eating approach has been adopted by many health-and-wellness professionals.
To learn more, you can check out www.intuitiveeating.org.
The process of intuitive eating is a practice, which honors both mental and physical health.
Intuitive Eating is aligned with Health at Every Size because the pursuit of intentional weight loss is a failed paradigm, which creates health problems: including weight stigma, weight cycling, and eating disorders.
All bodies deserve dignity and respect2.
There are no eliminations of any food groups, foods in general, macronutrients, or the like.
All foods fit, and intuitive eating really focuses on building that healthy relationship with eating.
Got questions about healthy eating?
If you have any questions about nutrition, Pendulum has registered dietitians who can help you. Also, stay on top of information about healthy eating by following Pendulum on social media.
LinkedIn
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
TikTok
Interested in submitting a question to Kristin?
Email it to her at nutrition@pendulumlife.com and we’ll try to answer it in an upcoming post!
References:
- https://www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/
- https://www.intuitiveeating.org/definition-of-intuitive-eating/