Why your intuitive eater gets buried, and how to reconnect to it to achieve your happiest, healthiest life!
We are all born intuitive eaters, however as toddlers get older, the mixed messages begin to creep in - from the early influences of food advertisements, to the well meaning parent who coaxes their child to ‘clean your plate’. This does not stop after childhood. There are several external forces that influence our eating, which further bury intuitive eating. Dieting at any stage in life further contributes to, and re-enforces the damage that chronic dieting plays, including but not limited to:
increased binge eating
Decreased metabolic rate
Increased preoccupation with food
Increased feelings of deprivation
Increased sense of failure
Decreased sense of willpower
This only serves to erode your trust with food and urges you to rely on external sources to guide your eating (a food plan, a diet, the time of day, food rules, and so forth). The more you go to external sources to ‘judge’ if your eating is in check, the further removed you become. Intuitive eating relies on your internal cues and signals.
Messages about eating healthily are everywhere, promoting a strong bias towards ‘eat healthy or die!’, from non profit health organisations to food companies touting the health benefits of their particular product. The consistent message? What you eat can improve your health. Conversely, take one wrong move, and you’re one step closer to the grave. These messages can easily leave you feeling guilty for eating the ‘wrong’ kind of food, and feeling confused about what you should eat.
Are we saying that you should ignore the value of healthful eating?Of course not. However, when you have a dieting mindset, the barrage of ‘healthy eating’ messages can make you feel guiltier about the food you choose to eat.
Eating does not need to be done with a side order of guilt….ever!Guilt robs the joy of eating. The guilt factor is one of the reasons that establishing nutrition or healthy eating as an initial priority in the intuitive eating process is counterproductive. In the beginning we ignore nutrition, because it interferes with process of relearning how to become an intuitive eater. Much though it is possible to respect and honour nutrition, it, doesn’t work to make it an initial priority when you have been dieting all your life. Look at this way, if you have focused all you attention on nutrition, has it helped? The most nutritious eating plan (including counting macros) can become embraced as another form of diet. In fact, sometimes people unknowingly try to turn intuitive eating into a diet!
To get an idea of whether you are already an intuitive eater, or where you might need some further work, please refer to the intuitive eating assessment which I sent you in your welcome email. Or alternately you can download it again here.
You can recapture intuitive eating, but first you have to get rid of the diet mentality rules that keep the intuitive eater buried. This healing process occurs through following the evidence based self care framework of the 10 principles of intuitive eating. You can find this framework in my previous blog posts, and by purchase the amazing book, ‘Intuitive eating - a revolutionary anti-diet approach’ by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch to get your healing journey started!.