Find out how intuitive eating can allow you to break free from dieting and food restriction, make peace with food, and experience pleasure when you eat.
When I first began my wellness journey nearly 10 years ago, I was solely focused on losing weight. I really didn’t know where to start, so I joined Weight Watchers. I tracked my points using an online counter, and quickly learned which foods had the least amount of points. However, I was constantly going over my points when I went out with my friends. I felt restricted when I stayed within my points, and would often binge eat pizza, Cheetos, and Ben and Jerry ice cream.
After tracking points off and on for a couple of years, I decided to try counting calories. I used MyFitnessPal to track everything that I ate and track my workouts. The number of calories I allotted myself was pretty arbitrary, but I still ended up feeling like a total failure when I went over those calories. When I ate something high calorie I felt guilty, which would send me into a cycle of binge eating then vowing to start over the following Monday (because you can only start diets on Mondays!).
It took a couple more years, but I finally tired of tracking my meals and was sick of feeling bad about myself for not achieving calorie perfection. That roller coaster of restriction and over eating was also becoming exhausting.
Not tracking felt scary. Tracking my food made me feel in control, and I worried that I would eat everything and anything if I wasn’t tracking.
But something pretty magical happened when I stopped tracking my food. I started to pay closer attention to what my body needed, what I was craving, and how I felt.
I definitely didn’t go straight from tracking and dieting to being totally connected to myself. There were times when I didn’t trust myself and my body, and jumped back into a plan. But those diets were always short lived because they brought me back to feeling deprived and terrible about myself. Letting go of that feeling that I needed to be following a plan felt so freeing.
I soon found that I was eating healthier than ever, feeling more energized, sleeping better, my skin was glowing, and I felt happier. I also noticed that I wasn’t binge eating, eating emotionally, or feeling like I needed to start over.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was eating intuitively.
Intuitive eating is simply a non-diet approach to health and wellness that allows you to connect to your body signals. When you eat intuitively, you don’t feel guilt for eating certain foods and you give yourself unconditional permission to eat. You no longer view yourself as “good” for eating healthy foods or “bad” because you ate pizza and ice cream. You are able to experience pleasure and satisfaction from eating. Intuitive eating means you know that you don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. It’s all about making peace with food.
Doesn’t that sound freeing? Doesn’t that sound a million times better than going on a diet?
Once I learned about intuitive eating, I wanted to know more. I love the book, “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works” by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. I also went through the Body Trust Program through Be Nourished, which is a six-week course on reclaiming trust with your body.
Once I started to experience the freedom of intuitive eating, I wanted to teach others how to ditch dieting for good and really transform their lives. So I began to incorporate intuitive eating concepts into my health coaching programs.
It’s been so inspirational to watch my clients break free from the dieting cycle and start to connect more with their bodies to feel their best.
To begin eating more intuitively ask yourself these questions when you’re eating a meal…
- Do I like the way this food tastes? Am I enjoying the experience of eating?
- Am I trying to achieve health perfection or do I really want to eat this?
- How do these foods make me feel? Is this a positive feeling or a negative feeling?
This is a great start for starting your intuitive eating journey!
To discover how you can ditch dieting, heal your relationship with food, find more balance, and nourish you body from the inside out, take my quiz here.
To find out more about my health coaching programs, click here.
