Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Intuitive Eating

I have something I want to talk about today! These past couple weeks I have tried intuitive eating.  This involves eating when you are HUNGRY (not when it's "time" to eat) and stopping when you are satisfied, not stuffed.  It's been difficult, but its something that progresses over time.  There's no counting, no measuring, and you eat whatever you want, whenever. If I'm ACTUALLY hungry, then i'll eat something, whereas before I would wait until it was "time"  There is a lot of information on the web, I suggest you do some reading! its really inspiring, and amazing to see how your body knows exactly what it wants, and when it wants it!
Here are the ten principals from www.intuitiveeating.com


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 might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

2. Honor Your Hunger

Keep your body biologically fed 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 honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with 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 food, 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 under 1000 calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created . The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the Food Police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

5. Respect Your Fullness

Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you're comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor

The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living In our fury to be thin and healthy, 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 and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you've had "enough".

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food

Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its 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 into a food hangover. But food won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating.

8. Respect Your Body

Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with 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 overly critical about your body shape.

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 energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it's usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time.

10 Honor Your Health

Gentle Nutrition Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds while making you feel well. Remember that you don't have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight 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.





I didn't start doing this because someone told me to, I decided to try it on my own. It has reduced my stress over food, I have neither lost or gained weight, and I have had a happy medium.  I know my body is at its "happy weight" because I am eating what it wants, and maintaining.  I suggest you try it for a day (at least).  stop eating on schedule, stop following a plan, and just eat and enjoy. Eat what you want, whether you deem it "good" or "bad" eat it because you like it, and because it tastes good! (although, I do not suggest going against doctor or nutritionists orders..)
Here's the hunger scale I follow..
HUNGER SCALE


10 - STUFFED: so full that you feel nauseous
9 - VERY UNCOMFORTABLY FULL:
you need to loosen your clothes
8 - UNCOMFORTABLY FULL: you feel bloated
7 - FULL: you feel a little bit uncomfortable
6 - PERFECTLY COMFORTABLE: you feel satisfied
5 - COMFORTABLE: you're more/less satisfied,
but could eat a little more
4 - SLIGHTLY UNCOMFORTABLE: you're just
beginning to feel signs of hunger
3 - UNCOMFORTABLE: stomach is rumbling

2 - VERY UNCOMFORTABLE: you feel irritable
& unable to concentrate
1 - WEAK & LIGHT-HEADED: your stomach acid is churning


** 
Begin eating when you're at a 3 or 4
** 
Stop at 5, if you're trying to lose weight
** 
Stop at 6, if you're wanting to maintain your weight



I normally eat a meal at 2.5 haha.. but I eat a snack at 3-4 depending on the day.
depending on what I am eating, how much i like it, etc.. i try to stop eating at a 6-7


everybodys different, but you got to try it and see! :)




Question: Have you ever tried this? if not, do you plan to?


I find it hard on school days, because my schedule is so mixed up, sometimes I just eat because it's the only time available. At home I follow pretty well :)

1 comments:

Janetha @ meals + moves said...

this is a great post, really good tips here, thanks katey! i have never tried eating this way but i think i follow a lot of the guidelines anyway!

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