What is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating is about taking the focus off of weight and really focusing on the cues of your body, mind and soul.

There are 10 principles of Intuitive Eating, all designed to help you have a great relationship with food.

There is no specific order one must go in in order to work on Intuitive Eating, but here is the general framework I like to teach.

First we start out by rejecting the diet mentality. How can we do that if we aren't really aware of all of the beliefs in our head that are completely entrenched in diet culture. We must first unpack your diet culture history. I call this the timeline. We go through from your earliest childhood memory all the way up to the current day to really understand how dieting has negatively affected your life and begin to realize that you are ready to reject this mentality.

Next we move on to what I call the "physical principles."  Honor your hunger, feel your fullness, and discover the satisfaction factor of food."

We will learn about the hunger/fullness scale. Learning to rate your hunger /fullness on a scale of 0-10 helps us realize that everything we experience in our body is subject, not objective. A diet will tell you "eat this and you won't feel hungry!" Or "don't eat that, it won't give you true fullness." But no one is the expert on YOUR body except for you. These principles ar eto help guide you tap into your natural hunger/fullness cues and learn to honor them.

We all have food preferences. We must learn what foods truly satisfy us. Not the foods that diet culture tells you will satisfy you, the actual foods that satiate and satisfy you. Once you learn this, food becomes much more enjoyable and you are less likely to binge or feel out of control around food.

After this, we move onto the very important topic of "self care." Although self care is not a principle, it is interwoven into the entire fabric of intuitive eating. What does self care have to do with eating? You'd be surprised! A LOT!

Many people discover through this journey that because they aren't' adequating taking care of themselves. food takes on that role. This may be because food is the most acceptable and accessible thing to use. It is ok to use food to cope, sometimes, but when we only have food, we end up eating in a way that feels out of control and we never get to actually give ourselves what we need.

We move on to the "emotional principles." Challenging the food police and coping with your emotions with kindness.

Now that you know what physical hunger/fullness feels like in your body, you can learn to differentiate between physical and emotional hunger. You will learn very valuable life skills- such as learning how to pay attention to how your thoughts and feelings are very much affecting your behaviors. You can reframe your thoughts and make a huge change in your life.

Next we learn some really powerful self care tools- honor your health with gentle nutrition, find movement that is joyful and respect your body. Our bodies are so much more than just the way that they look. We must learn to really respect this one and only body that hosts our soul for our entire life.

The last principle is making peace with food by giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. This one feels very scary for people because they think the more permission they have to eat, the more they will binge. The opposite is usually what happens. When you let go of your food rules, and choose to eat food for taste, nutrition, preference, socioeconomic reasons, you will feel free around food.

These principles have changed my life for the better.

They helped me truly learn about myself and how to care for myself with food and really with most areas of our lives. We know that women do have a strong sense of intuitiveness and this journey is really a journey back to yourself. Understanding your true values and using food as a tool for self care and not self punishment.