Gaining Your Life Back with Intuitive Eating
Intuitive Eating (I.E. for short) is a non-diet, self-care approach to healthy eating where the goal is to tune out the noise of diet culture and tune into your own body to take care of your entire well-being.
To learn more about exactly what Intuitve Eating is, head to my blog post sharing more details here.
While the first step of I.E. is to ditch the diet mentality, this doesn't mean you are only giving up diet culture with this approach to eating...you're also allowing yourself to start gaining so much of your life back.
Until you're out of diet mentality, you may not realize all that diets and food rules have stolen from your life!
Which is why in this blog post I'm going to share real-life benefits you can gain back in your life by giving up dieting and improving your relationship with food using the help of Intuitive Eating.
What's the deal with dieting?
While diets may "work" and help you lose weight at first, they more often than not stop working in the long run for those who go on one.
Roughly 95% of those who go on a diet will gain all or more of the weight they lost back within 1-5 years of their diet.
Most people want to blame themselves or their lack of willpower for gaining weight back. The truth is, diets are usually so restrictive, time-consuming, and needed to be followed perfectly, that they are basically setting you up for failure from the start.
Diets don't take into consideration the real world and day-to-day life that you live, which is why they aren't able to be followed long-term.
If you continue to go back to diets because they "worked" for you before, I encourage you to redefine the definition of work.
Because if the diet really worked, you wouldn't have to keep starting a new one over and over again, right??
If dieting isn't the answer, then what is?
You know diets don't work and you're sick of feeling stuck in the same cycle with food that you've been in for years.
But dieting is all you've known, and you're not sure if you trust yourself to let go of food rules completely because you're worried you'll lack all control at that point.
I get where you're coming from! But Intuitive Eating is not just about letting go of food rules and being able to eat anything you want.
It's about having freedom and choices when it comes to food so you can nourish your body in a way that helps you feel your best overall!
In fact, Intuitive Eating and non-diet approaches have been shown to decrease anxiety and improve health-promoting behaviors such as increased physical activity, increased fruit and vegetable intake, and decreased emotional and binge eating.
This is according to the book Gentle Nutrition by Rachael Hartley which also states that there is not a single study on a non-diet approach to eating that has shown a worsening of blood glucose, blood pressure, or cholesterol.
With all of this in mind, it's worth giving Intuitive Eating a shot, because it certainly doesn't take the focus off of your health and can improve your quality of life too!
Keep reading to see how Intuitive Eating can give back to your life and what dieting has taken away with real-life examples from women I've worked with before.
Examples of what dieting takes away from your life that Intuitive Eating gives back
I have worked with a lot of women who had dieted for 10-30+ years of their life. Each one has taught me something new, especially when it comes to the personal benefits each one experiences when they bring Intuitive Eating techniques into their life.
More time and money
For example, one of the women I worked with was a busy mom. She had to think about feeding not only herself but her kids and husband each night too. When she was in diet mindset, she forced herself to make two separate dinners because the food she had to eat for her diet was something her husband and kids wouldn't enjoy.
After working together on letting go of dieting and changing her mindset around food, she is now able to make one dinner only that everyone in her family enjoys! This has helped her gain so much time and money back because she isn't buying and cooking food for two dinners some nights.
And she's getting more time with her family at dinner as an added bonus too!
More peace and comfort
Another woman I worked with had always struggled when she went out to dinner with her friends. She always overdid it and compared the way she ate to her friends. Because she used these nights as her way to indulge, she always got herself a dessert too. When she would leave the restaurant, she felt so uncomfortable with how much she ate, that she would swear she'd never go back there.
After working together on some different habits and mindset shifts around food leading up to a night out to dinner with her friends, she is now able to go out to eat with her friends knowing she's capable of eating a comfortable amount that satisfies her. She's also willing to split a dessert with her friends if she's still hungry afterward!
She was able to gain more peace around going out with her friends and more comfort in her body by eating the right amount that satisfies her instead of overdoing it each time.
More time, less stress
Lastly, another woman I worked with came to me relying heavily on MyFitnessPal to tell her how much to eat. She spent so much time entering what she ate each day and often stressed if she went over her intake for the day or didn't have enough left even when she felt hungry still.
After working through her mindset blocks and helping her tune into her body, she was finally able to let go of MyFitnessPal and stop tracking her calories for the day.
She has gained so much time in her day back from letting this go--and spends less time on her phone now too--double bonus!
She also has less stress each day around food because she is honoring her body and eating the amount that feels right to her instead of letting an app tell her how much to eat.
These are only some examples of what you gain by letting go of diets/food rules and taking the Intuitive Eating or non-diet approach to healthy eating.
If you're reading this and have a personal benefit you've gained from Intuitive Eating that you'd like to share, leave a reply sharing your experience at the end of this post!
What will happen to my weight with this approach?
The last thing I want to address with Intuitive Eating is why taking the focus off of your weight is beneficial for your health.
Stepping on the scale is more often than not a negative experience. Stepping on it frequently can lead to poor body image, low self-esteem, and a negative relationship with food.
Weight is not a behavior to change either, but when you're using weight as a measure of progress and see no change at times, it may seem more difficult to keep working towards your goals.
This is why taking the focus off of your weight (or other external numbers) and focusing on creating healthy behaviors that help you feel your best overall is the focus with Intuitive Eating.
If you want to learn more about what could happen to your weight with Intuitive Eating, check out my Instragram Reel here where I share all about it.
In conclusion
To summarize, following a diet or having food rules for years of your life is time-consuming, stressful, can contribute to a negative relationship with food and body image, and usually doesn't work in the way you would hope in the long run!
Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach to healthy eating where you can tune out the noise from diet culture, tune into your own body, and improve your health from a self-care frame of mind.
With Intuitive Eating, you're able to gain so much of your life back that you may have lost or missed out on with dieting.
And with I.E. you'll be able to create lifelong habits that can be altered to fit your needs at any stage in life!
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References:
Hartley, Rachael. Gentle Nutrition. Victory Belt Publishing Inc., 2021, p. 10.
Pacanowski, C. R., Linde, J. A., & Neumark-Sztainer, D. (2015, March 1). Self-weighing: Helpful or harmful for psychological well-being? A review of the literature. Current obesity reports. Retrieved September 14, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4729441/
