Intuitive eating: What is it and How can it benefit you?

Intuitive eating: What is it and How can it benefit you?

Intuitive eating is where you regain awareness around your body's internal hunger, fullness cues and mindful eating

It can often get a negative response from people because they think " well if I eat intuitively, I will constantly have fast food/sweet treats for breakfast lunch and dinner"

But this is further from the truth, now in my experience on working with clients and myself there is a level where it isn't 100% intuitive as if you are someone who regularly binge eats/overeats/ extremely lean/ leptin resistance listening to your hunger cues will be hard at the start. So creating a regular eating routine is important to establish.

At the start of eating intuitively people tend to go all in with all the "off limit" foods as the excitement is there that they can have all of it whenever they want, and this is where people give up and start tracking again. But the novelty wears off after the first 1-2 weeks and you notice how it actually makes you feel and the choices start to change.

3 of the 10 Principles of intuitive eating that you can implement:

- Challenge the food police: When you tell yourself you can't have something, ask yourself why? Do you deem it as bad? Is this a food you fear you will overeat on?

- Honor your feelings: Start checking in with yourself and noticing any emotional eating patterns. (emotional eating is normal but becomes an issue when it is the only way to self regulate)

- Honor your hunger: If you are genuinely hungry and you have noticed you have not ate in a while then eat.

Some of these principles can be used whilst in a dieting phase and ideally should be in place before dieting, Some principles can actually be harder to follow when you are aiming towards a deficit.  But if you are consistently on and off the wagon, view foods as good or bad, can't control yourself around certain food, have preoccupation with food, binge or emotionally eat and struggle with adherence then the fat-loss goals may need to be put to the side whilst you first work on your relationship with food so you are then able to go into a deficit successfully.

*In some cases fat-loss actually occurs due to regular eating, little to no over/emotional eating

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