Ever feel as if “healthy eating” gets too complicated? When you think about all the dieting rules you’ve been told to follow and all the constraints you have to put on what you eat, all of a sudden, being healthy from a nutritional perspective becomes very unhealthy from a mental perspective. It’s stressful (and sometimes emotionally draining) to count calories, to watch your intake of fat or sugar, to avoid dessert, and even to prioritize foods you don’t like because they’re “good” for you.
Now there’s growing pushback to the notion of what’s often referred to as “diet culture,” the normalization of always watching what you eat and categorizing foods as good or bad. Instead, people are choosing the route of intuitive eating—an approach that encourages listening to your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues, as well as how foods make you feel physically, so you can have a positive relationship with food. As the Cleveland Clinic puts it, it’s about unlearning everything we’ve learned about food from dieting over the years.
So, what does that mean? At its most basic, intuitive eating comes down to three factors:
Eat When You’re Hungry
People tend to ignore their hunger cues because they think they’re supposed to wait a certain amount of time between eating or because they want to overindulge later. This sets them up to make poor nutrition choices.
In other situations, they might eat for emotional reasons or because they’re bored—not because they’re genuinely hungry. Recognize that it’s okay to eat for social reasons occasionally (maybe a friend has a new snack and offers you a chance to try it, even though you’re not hungry) but by being intuitive, you can distinguish why you are eating a food. Before you eat, ask yourself how hungry you are on a scale of 1 to 10. Determine whether there are any emotional triggers that might be affecting the food choices you’re making.
It’s just as important to stop eating when you’re no longer hungry. If there is a reason you feel inclined to overeat (for example, you’re having one of your favorite dishes for dinner), remind yourself you can always have some later.
No Foods Are Off Limits
Think about all the foods you’ve been told you can’t eat because they’re bad for you. Is it pizza? Ice cream? French fries? Maybe you’ve been told you can have a substitute, such as cauliflower in place of rice, but it never really tastes the same to you. When you eat intuitively, you recognize that there are no foods that are off limits, even though some foods should be eaten in moderation. Depriving yourself of foods that you really enjoy only makes you crave them more, and sets you up to be unable to control yourself when you finally do eat them.
In some situations, you might not be able to tell the difference. If carrot sticks taste just as good as chips when it comes to eating your favorite spinach dip, you might opt for the carrots simply because you know they have more nutrients. Intuitive eating shouldn’t be about always eating low-nutrition foods just because you can. Although you recognize you have the flexibility to eat your favorite foods, pay attention to how what you eat makes you feel. If you ate birthday cake for dinner every night, you wouldn’t feel so great—but when you eat a balanced meal with complex carbohydrates, lean protein, and plenty of nutrients, you have the energy you need to take on the day. Then you can have that slice of cake if you want it, and because you haven’t been depriving yourself, you have better self-control and feel satisfied.
Get Rid of The Emotion
Far too many people get down on themselves because they deviated from eating healthy. If they overeat, they feel guilty. They develop a poor self-perception.
Intuitive eating involves learning from bad experiences. For example, if you eat past the point of fullness, recognize that the physical discomfort you’re experiencing isn’t something you like to feel, and it’s something you want to avoid in the future. However, it’s not a reason for you to feel bad emotionally about yourself. Similarly, if you find that negative emotions are prompting certain food choices, figure out other ways you can practice self-care. You likely might find that engaging in physical activity you really enjoy coupled with preparing a nutritious meal does more for your mood than a sugary snack does.
While these three factors are the primary basis of intuitive eating, they shouldn’t be taken as hard and fast rules—the whole premise of intuitive eating is that there are no rules. It’s about approaching food in a way that doesn’t involve stress or anxiety, and it’s about learning to make healthy choices because you want to, not because you feel as if you must.
