Wanting to learn how to listen to your body instead of following dieting rules? Here are 5 intuitive eating tips!
What is Intuitive Eating
Intuitive eating is trusting your inner wisdom, your intuition, to make all those decisions about the foods we put into our bodies. Letting go of any judgement from yourself or others, and letting go of the diet mentality. Get away from those “quick-fixes” and strict diets that aren’t ever sustainable long term, and aren’t fun to go through. Transition into paying close attention to your intuition when it comes to food. Use your senses to help you determine what and how much of something your body truly needs. Our intuition is one of our greatest gifts, and we need to use to endlessly! You may have seen my whole video series here on it, or my blog post outlining ALL about intuitive eating here, or the biggest myths on it right here.
But today, I put together 5 of my favorite tips for implementing healthy intuitive eating. It’s helped so many of my clients and even myself when it comes to a good, healthy, and fun relationship with food. I suggest you try it the next time you feel hungry and have a meal!
5 Intuitive Eating Tips
1.Mindful Eating
You may have heard of this hot topic before, and that’s because it works! Mindfulness is the mental state of being completely conscious and aware of the present moment. While mindfulness is an excellent practice that you might have heard from your yoga teacher before, it’s also something that can be applied to our everyday lives- especially at meal times! The practice of mindfulness takes us out of our ever-going chatter mind by putting our total awareness on whatever is happening in that moment.
So next time you have a meal, try not to think about anything else besides everything your feeling. Taste the different flavors of the food, feel the textures, smell all of the aromas, be mindful of every spoonful you put into your mouth. If at any point your attention is drifted, just return to the sensation of food! Chew slowly and pay equal and full attention to each bite. I personally love mindful eating, I feel like it makes food taste so much better and it’s helped me create a really healthy relationship with food!
2. Evaluate your Hunger + Fullness
There are some crucial questions to ask yourself before you begin any meal or snack. Next time you feel ready for food ask yourself, “on a scale of 1-10, how hungry am I?” I always try to be at least a 6 or 7 before I decide to eat a meal, because otherwise I can usually wait. Another great question to ask yourself is distinguishing the difference between emotional eating and physical hunger. Am I emotionally eating? Or is this physical hunger? Sometimes it’s not so easy to tell the difference. Having an intense craving for a specific food or sweet treat might be signs of emotional eating. If you’re not really hungry for anything else, you might just be wanting to eat out of boredom or emotions. I know it happens to me all the time! The trick is to become mindful (see #1!) of it and kick the habit.
When it comes to evaluating fullness, they say it takes 20 minutes to feel full once you start eating. With that in mind, pay close attention to your fullness after each bite and eat slowly. This one is huge friends, if you scarf down a meal you might end up feeling stuffed and even unsatisfied. My grandma used to make us chew 20 times before swallowing, and though that might be excessive, it taught us to really take it slow when we eat! A good trick is to stop eating once you’re about 80% full, both for optimum health and to avoid the icky stuffed feeling after a big meal. Intuitive eating requires full awareness of your hunger and fullness levels, pay close attention!
3. Listen to your Body After a Meal
Every food talks to your body. Each food is doing something totally different and really contributing a huge variety of nutrients. So, after any meal or snack, really tune in to your body and see how that food made you feel. Do you feel bloated or heavy from the meal? Or do you feel good and full of energy? Pay close attention for the next two hours to really get a sense for how your body reacts to different foods, and the combinations of them. I know I personally feel super lethargic after a carb-heavy meal, but for someone else it might be fat or too much protein! Pay attention to how your body feels and listen to what it’s trying to tell you… it may be just as wise as you!
4. Be at Peace with Food.
Intuitive eating is the best way to make peace with foods. Most foods are not bad foods, and like my professor always told me in college, the poison is in the dose. It’s okay to indulge moderately- and most importantly, don’t be hard on yourself and forgive yourself if you do decide to indulge. Enjoy it! If your body is overwhelmingly craving something, it’s okay to have a bit of it. If you tell yourself you can’t have it, it may lead to feelings of intense deprivation and maybe bingeing later. And maybe if it feels right, make up for it with an extra 15 or 30 minutes at the gym and then return to your healthy eating habits. Food is fuel, and we should view it as a very essential and important part of our lives. Give yourself permission to eat unconditionally, your body needs food! Be at peace with food and make meal times fun and exciting!
5. Honor your Body and your Health.
We’ve all heard it before, your body is a temple- and it’s true. Honor it, treat it with love and your upmost care. End the war with your body and love it in its entirety for all that it is and does for you. Your body houses you, and is a direct reflection of your habits and the foods your putting into it. Your health is determined by many factors, stress, exercise, food, work, all of which are equally important. Remember you don’t have to have a perfect diet to be healthy, and one meal won’t ruin all of your progress. The habits you form consistently around food are really what determines your health. Treat your body with respect, listen to when it tries to tell you things, and honor it. If your body asks for more or less of something, trust your intuition and do your best efforts to honor your physical body and your health.
What’s Next?
That sums up my best advice for beginning to eating intuitively! The most important thing is to trust your intuition, know the difference between something your body needs and something your mind is craving. Be mindful of all the foods, how they feel and make you feel, and honor every step of the way!
