The 10 principles of Intuitive eating self care frame work - the path to true authentic health and freedom!

Intuitive eating is an evidence based self care framework of 10 principles that are designed to acknowledge the damage and harm that diets cause, and offer solutions based around healing your mind, body and soul to achieve long term sustainable health that relies on inner wisdom and trust within your self, rather than relying on external factors, control, and will power to achieve the health you dream of. As a refresher I have done a blog post with the overview of what each principle covers, including movement and gentle nutrition. Although there is not set order in which to approach the principles, it is recommended to approach gentle nutrition after completing the other principles, and when you feel that you have made significant progress in the healing of your relationship with food and your body. 

If you would like to read more, please click the link below to purchase the book - Intuitive eating - a revolutionary anti-diet approach by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, who I trained with in 2019 to become a certified intuitive eating counsellor, which truly changed my health and my life! 

Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1250255198/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_XB7GJJP3Z6K7C1PCSHABhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Intuitive-Eating-4th-Anti-Diet-Revolutionary/dp/1250255198/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=intuitive+eating&qid=1625391929&sr=8-3

The Intuitive Eating Workbook: Ten Principles for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1626256225/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_97PGR9EN7AYYZ0DYJMFG

1. Reject the diet mentality

Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet is possibly lurking around the corner, it will keep you from staying free enough to rediscover ‘intuitive eating.’

2. Honour your hunger

Keep your body biologically fed with with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honour this first biological signal sets the stage for rebuilding trust in yourself and food. 

3. Make peace with food

Call a truce: stop the food fight!Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing. When you finally ‘give in’ to your forbidden foods, eating will be experienced with such intensity it usually results in last supper overeating and overwhelming guilt. 

4. Challenge the food police

Scream a loud no to thoughts in your head that declare you’re ‘good’ for eating minimal calories or ‘bad’ because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The food police monitor the unreasonable rules that diet culture has created. The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loudspeaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the food police away is a critical step in returning to intuitive eating.

5. Discover the satisfaction factor

Japanese have the wisdom to keep pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In our compulsion to comply with diet culture, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence - the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you fell satisfied and content.

6. Feel your fullness

In order to honour your fullness, you need to trust that you will give yourself the foods that you desire. Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer and observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full. Pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what your current hunger level is.

7. Cope with your emotions with kindness

First, recognise that food restriction, both physically and mentally, can, in and of itself, trigger loss of control, which can feel like emotional eating. Find kind ways to comfort, nurture, distract, and resolve your issues. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, and anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has it’s own trigger, and each has it’s own appeasement. Food won’t fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you. But food won’t solve the problem. You’ll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion.

8. Respect your body

Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of 5 would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size 4, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size. But mostly, respect your body so you can feel better about who you are. It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and critical way your body size or shape. All bodies deserve dignity.

9. Exercise - feel the difference

Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie-burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energised, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm.

10. Honour your health - Gentle nutrition

Make food choices that honour your health and taste buds while making you feel good. Remember that you don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or become unhealthy from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters. Progress, not perfection, is what counts.