Intuitive eating: it is best not to diet

The intuitive diet is not chaos and it does not consist of doing what you want without further ado. On the contrary, it is about recover communication with your body, to capture your real needs. It is not easy, because most eating habits are conditioned by custom, by the environment or by advertising. Intuitive eating suggests that you pay no attention to anything, just your own body.

What is intuitive eating?

Eating intuitively is something we do from birth, but that we often forget throughout life. Babies and young children eat when they are hungry and stop eating when they are full. What they don’t want, they don’t eat. Although it sounds very simple, it is more complicated for adults.

Phrases that are repeated to children such as “if you finish everything, you will be bigger” or “if you are not good, you will not have dessert” influence our perception of “good” and “bad” food, and above all it that we attend more to those messages than to those that the organism transmits to us.

Then, when we are adults and we seek help to improve our diet, we often find ourselves with diets based on prohibitions, abstinences and mathematical calculations, which continues to distance us from the signals from our own body. Not surprisingly, it has been statistically proven that most diets fail or have high relapse rates and, in the long term, even lead to more weight gain and even eating disorders.

An intuitive diet, on the other hand, is based on the assumption that the body “knows” what is the right amount and the right food for him. If you listen to your body and interpret hunger signals correctly, you will automatically eat healthier.

Get back to intuitive eating with these 10 tips

Relearning to eat intuitively is a process. The objective is to eliminate the prejudices that are conditioning our diet to observe what our body’s response is to each food. At some point you will reach the point of correctly interpret your body signals and you can enjoy meals without thinking too much about it. To reach this goal, the following ten principles of intuitive nutrition will help you.

1. Reject diets

Weight loss diets abound like sand on the beach, if you’ve already tried some of them you’ll know, so be done with them for good. The assumption that ignoring your body’s needs in a disciplined enough way will pay off is incorrect. In fact, the opposite is true. To eat healthy, it is important to listen again carefully what foods, and associated with them, what nutrients your body craves.

2. Respect your own hunger

If you’re hungry. And yes, that is perfectly normal, because food is essential. Eating only salad all day while you dream of other dishes and then, at night, when you are starving, stuffing yourself with chips or chocolate, is not good for your figure nor for your physical and mental health. Your body needs the confidence that it can have access to enough good food. at all times.

When you remove the bans, you can eat when you have a man and stop eating when you feel full or when your common sense tells you that the amount you have eaten is enough.

3. Make peace with “bad” foods

Desiring above all what they tell you is not convenient for you is logical, it is a psychological phenomenon. The most famous example to demonstrate this reality happens when they tell you: “Don’t think about pink elephants now.” What are you thinking about? Of course, in pink elephants.

The principle works the same way with supposedly “bad” foods. The more you ban yourself from eating pizza, chocolate ice cream, and soda (or whatever), the more you’ll think about it. Desires arise and are established that could not exist without prohibitions. Give them a chance and you will see that you do not want to eat chocolate ice cream in the morning, at noon and at night.

4. Challenge the inner critic

A character inside you says learned things like “no more carbs after 6pm” or “dressing the salad is fattening.” Do not listen to him. The negative stress that it generates in you leads, in most cases, directly to a hunger spiral and causes the opposite of what you really wanted to achieve.

5. Feel the feeling of satiety

There is a balance point which falls somewhere between voracious appetite and complete fulness. The goal is for the pendulum that goes from one side to the other to describe a short path, from an appetite that is not compelling to you to a pleasant fullness, away from the feeling of bloating or satiety.

To get it, pay attention to the feeling of hunger and eat a little, just enough to make you feel full. People who are in touch with their own needs and react in time to their feelings of hunger or satiety do not fall into the “red zones” of the hunger scale.

6. Experience moments of pleasure

A meal that you really want, that is celebrated and enjoyed with every bite, will be more satisfying. than a meal that you force yourself to eat, no matter how healthy they tell you it is.

To really enjoy the food, take your time, don’t let other things distract you and feel every bite.

7. Separate feelings from food

Eating out of boredom, loneliness, sadness, or frustration is not uncommon. It is about emotional hunger, because food is capable of producing sensations similar to affection. Sugar, for example, causes dopamine to be released, which makes you happy in the short term. So it’s not uncommon for us to reach into the candy drawer when we’re feeling anxious for whatever reason. Unfortunately, the feeling of well-being doesn’t last long, and afterwards you feel even worse, because your emotional needs are still not met.

Distinguishing between emotional hunger and true physiological hunger It is one of the keys to intuitive eating.

8. Appreciate your body

Diets are often directly related to derogatory judgments about outward appearance by comparing it with beauty ideals that are, in fact, unattainable. We are all different and that is good. After all, no one would ask you to wear a size 36 shoe with a size 40 foot. Therefore, do not ask yourself to wear a size that your body is not made for.

Acknowledging your reality, and not only that, but being proud of it, is a necessary step to connect with your intuition. The movement of the “body positivity” (search #bodypositivity on your favorite social network) can help you.

9. Move and feel good

Sport and exercise are part of a healthy diet. You can hear that everywhere, however, forcing yourself to do an exercise that just doesn’t feel good isn’t going to be successful in the long run.

The most important thing about exercise is that it be fun, that it motivate you. It doesn’t matter if it’s long walks, a bike ride or high-intensity workouts at the gym. Find the sport that makes you feel good, start slowly and gradually increase the pace.

On the other hand, psychophysical disciplines such as yoga or tai chi, which combine postures and movements, breathing, relaxation, and a meditative attitude, are highly recommended options for improving your relationship with your own body and opening yourself up to its messages.

10. Value your health

Trusting your intuition doesn’t mean you don’t need to know anything about nutrition. Everything you know will help you a lot. Knowledge in nutrition will tell you in which foods are the nutrients you need and which foods are problematic. From that general knowledge, your intuition will have a wide margin to move.

Nutrition will help you Understand the messages your body is sending you. For example, if you feel your energy drop just an hour or two after eating and you feel hungry again, it is very likely that you are consuming too many quickly absorbed carbohydrates (bread and other products made from refined flours) and not enough. fiber.