INTUITIVE EATING — what is it? + my experience

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Intuitive Eating.

A term we have all heard, especially if you are well-versed in the health and wellness space. For a long time, I didn’t understand this concept and quite honestly I had the wrong idea about it. I honestly thought intuitive eating was another word or concept that had to do with weight loss. But then another part of me saw intuitive eating as some excuse people would use in order to not feel guilty for wanting to eat donuts, fries, and ice cream all day. Both are so far from false. It has nothing to do with weight-loss and nothing to do with being a guilt cover-up.

Intuitive eating encourages you to recognize hunger, fullness, and thirst cues that your body is sending you and overall becoming in tune with your body. That is much easier said than done. Being in tune with your body aims to have a full sense of self — which if you know me, can be difficult. I often get uncomfortable trying to really lean in and study my body, mind, thoughts, and actions.

Now this post will mostly focus on intuitive eating however, living intuitively is something that is just as important, if not more important. Once you focus on one aspect, the rest will follow. It truly is a domino effect. Living intuitively is simply about listening to your mind and body’s intuition regarding everything in your life. In general, trusting yourself. This comes with much more practice, heck I haven’t even nailed this yet. It takes time!

Intuitive eating for me, has changed my eating habits, relationship with food, and my body composition. Now I am not saying body composition as a way to solely link this concept to weight loss. In my experience with intuitive eating I did lose weight, others will gain, some will stay the same. But that’s the case with adapting any new lifestyle to your routine regarding eating food. One of those 3 outcomes will occur. It’s simply just what happened when I started to incorporate intuitive eating into my lifestyle. Intuitive eating however, was not the only reason I lost weight, there is a whoooole lot more that went into that. Although this change did occur, it’s not the goal of intuitive eating AT ALL.

For me, in the past I was overeating as a way to cope with emotions, not because I was listening to my body. Other days I was restricting. Either way, in no way was I listening to my body. My body was confused all the time I swear tg.

Although some people have experienced this — this way of eating does not serve as some magical weight-loss plan or concept. In fact, you might as well go throw away your scale along with that idea.

When I say body composition, I am not only talking about the way my body looks, but also the way my body responds to the food I eat and how I feel after I eat a full meal, my digestion.

But Intuitive eating is unique to each person, if you have not yet already heard this (I’m sure you have), let me just remind you… EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT.

I cannot stress this enough. For so long I thought certain diets, plans, and lifestyles that worked for others would work seamlessly into mine. I have had amazing and quite honestly life-changing experiences from learning from others and incorporating lifestyle and diet (when I say diet, I’m just talkin’ about the food I eat, not dieting in a sense of restriction) decisions similar to theirs. That’s how most people learn, no? By gaining inspiration from others or doing their own research and seeing if that works for them! But that’s the important part — it’s totally fine to take inspo, advice, and adapt similar lifestyle decisions as others you admire but, DOES IT WORK FOR YOU? Are you happy, healthy, is your body responding well to these decisions? It’s a lot to think about tbh.

That’s where intuitive eating/ living intuitively comes in.

LET HER COME IN.

Please, listen to your body.

From personal experience, I have kept so many amazing lifestyle decisions in my life that I have learned from others, books, and documentaries because I know they WORK FOR ME! Not because other people do it, but because I know my body better than anyone:) On the other hand, there have been other lifestyle choices I have learned from others that I have completely thrown out the damn door.

For example, I used to think eating a meal replacement shake WAS A SUFFICIENT MEAL. Ha. Guys, I have come a long way. Like I really used to think a shake filled with just powder and ice was gonna make me ~sKiNnY~. Better yet, I thought they were healthy… what kinda world is this? To eat something that isn’t even real food and think it was good for my health. I’m laughing writing this because those shakes didn’t have one ounce of real food in them lol. In hindsight, when I focused on losing weight and restrictive eating with these shakes, they were causing me to gain weight due to my body being so damn hungry it needed to hold onto fat to function. It was exhausting.

You need food to live, have energy, and for your body to properly break down food.

I eat more than I ever have by eating intuitively and have never been happier. Some days I eat less than usual, because I simply am not as hungry as other days. I ditched the idea of only allowing myself 3 meals a day and I also have ditched the idea of NEEDING to have 3 meals a day to survive. What if my body rather wanted 2 meals and a snack? Then that is what I’ll have.

If I adapted something from another influencer and it was not aligning with my body, life, or morals I would stop doing whatever it was immediately. And that’s on listening to your body and having enough self respect to stop it no matter how trendy it is. And that’s what I did with those shakes. Yes, the shakes with the big fat colorful straws that girls drink to fill them up… instead of eating food. lol no shade, she’s me, I WAS THAT GIRL!

I think the most rewarding aspect I have gained from eating intuitively, is adapting a plant-based diet. When I first started this whole journey, I was literally slapped in the face with the realization of what meat and dairy was doing to my body. Constantly bloated, had horrible skin, sluggish heavy feeling, just so many unnecessary shitty feelings. I took it upon myself to slowly cut out the foods that did not make me feel good and brought in MORE of the foods that made me feel good. That’s intuitive eating, listening to what your body wants/needs. For me, it was adding in more vegetables, grains, fruit, legumes, and less processed animal foods that left my body in knots. This resulted in me just ditching the animal products overall because that wasn’t what my body wanted or what I personally want to consume. (cows are cute srry bout it, dont h8).

For me intuitive eating looks like this:

Am I hungry?

Am I bored?

Is my stomach growling from lack of nourishment?

Am I thirsty?

What food is my body craving / in the mood for?

What food did I eat today that may have caused this upset feeling?

What food did I eat today that is making me feel amazing?

Is my body in need of a good sweat or do I need to slow it down and stretch instead?

This doesn’t mean you can’t treat yourself though, I don’t want intuitive eating to EVER be associated with restriction. That is literally the exact opposite. You should never ever feel guilty about the food you eat.

It may be hard to believe, but giving yourself permission to eat any food your body wants, leaves yourself less likely to overeat, binge, and have guilty feelings around the food you choose to eat. Recognizing that your body was craving some fries and eating the damn fries, will serve you much more in the long run than ignoring these cues, followed by eating so fast you don’t even want to acknowledge the fact you’re eating some fries, God forbid!

Slow down, listen to your body. Soak it all up eating those fries. Eat slow and honor your body for sending you that hunger cue. And enjoy them, because fries are so damn good.

So, no. Intuitive eating is not about weight loss, or using it as an excuse to cover up guilty feelings, or walking around eating 10 tubs of ice cream a day. Instead, the goals of intuitive eating are learning to trust your body, to be at peace with food, and to improve overall health and your own wellbeing.