Intuitive nutrition is all you need to know.
Intuitive nutrition is a non-diet-related approach to nutrition, in which internal signals are more important than external diet rules. The lack of a diet means that the emphasis is on promoting a healthy lifestyle, a better body image and a healthier relationship with food. To help you choose food, intuitive eating helps you get back in touch with internal signals such as hunger and satiety, cravings and how we feel after eating. Intuitive eating also helps to abandon the rules of the diet, such as what, how much and when to eat, so that you can better respond to your gut.We were all born intuitive eaters. Think of babies who cry when they need to eat, stop when they are full, and cry when they need to eat again. There is no timetable for their behavior (unfortunately tired parents!). They may eat more one day and less the next, but it all balances out. You may also notice that their preferences change: one day they eat tons of fruit, and the next day all they need is pasta with butter. But if you think about it, they get all the nutrients they need.
As we grow up, we are introduced to the rules of the diet. We are forced to finish eating clean, even if we are hungry, or vice versa, they take away the plate if we still want to eat. We are told to eat some foods and limit others. We also learn that some bodies are valued more than others, and tell that changes in the way we eat can make our body more or less valuable. When this happens, we move away from using internal signals and start listening to external signals about what, how much and when to eat. This can cause undesirable eating behaviors, including dieting, restrictions, overeating, emotional overeating, and obsession with food. Intuitive nutrition is a counterbalance to this. It teaches how to return to the usual diet.
In short, intuitive nutrition is normal human nutrition.
Who can try intuitive nutrition?
Anyone with any body can try intuitive nutrition. Jokes aside. There are no qualifying factors or prerequisites that need to be met. You don't have to have problems with diet or weight loss or struggle with various eating disorders. However, if you suffer from a diagnosed eating disorder, it can be very useful to work with an eating disorder nutritionist who is also trained in intuitive nutrition. If you have a food allergy, dietary restrictions or diseases, they can be observed and kept within IE.
What are the benefits of intuitive nutrition?
There are over 100 studies -and many more ongoing -that look at the benefits of intuitive eating. Positive health benefits with significant association include:
* Reduces total cholesterol and LDL
* Increases self-esteem
* Improves body image
* Gives more satisfaction from life
* Improves well-being
* Lowers the level of eating disorders
Why is intuitive nutrition popular?
Let's start with a brief description of the dietary culture. Even if you do not adhere to a certain diet, it does not mean that you are not tied to the world of dietary culture. It's easy to get lost in this belief system: to get lost in the idea that being thin means healthy, that losing weight gives you a higher status in society, that some ways of eating are bad and others are good. Yes, this is a serious verdict, but it is still difficult to recognize all the insidious ways that diet penetrates into our lives.
Recently, more and more studies on the harm of diet and deliberate weight loss have become popular. Those with an "overweight" BMI have the lowest risk of death and chronic diseases among all BMI. So why are we still dieting? Why do we still crave skinny bodies and stigmatize others? Food culture.
The fact is that in addition to the harm caused, the broader picture is this: diets don't work. You could say, "But I lost weight on a diet," and that's probably true. However, it's probably also true that you couldn't keep the weight off. So, did the diet really work? No! Studies fully confirm the fact that diets are not sustainable. Studies also show that two-thirds of dieters gain more weight than they lost on the diet. And any health benefits achieved in the short term are also short-lived. In fact, as noted above, a diet can lead to negative health consequences.
Most likely, you've been on a diet before (or tried a diet disguised as a "lifestyle program"), maybe even tried several different diets. As mentioned above, you've probably lost weight. But it was so difficult to stick to the diet that you stopped sticking to it, gained weight again and, perhaps, developed some eating disorders along the way. After a short break, you thought that another diet might be better, and you start the process again. This is called the yo-yo diet, in which you constantly follow a diet and do not follow it, which often leads to cyclical weight changes (so-called weight loss and recovery over and over again), which can harm both physical and mental health.
The diet is also usually associated with strict restrictions, often both in terms of quantity and types of food. When we don't get enough calories, the brain releases a chemical called neuropeptide Y, which makes you crave carbohydrates. So, after a period of restrictions, our survival mechanism kicks in, causing a breakdown. Clinically, this means: "to eat in a discrete period of time an amount of food that is definitely more than what most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances." There is also usually a feeling of loss of control. Subsequently, you may feel extreme guilt and shame and promise to "achieve more" (in other words, limit yourself more) the next day. This is a cycle that limits overeating, which many dieters struggle with and do not follow a diet. At this point, many feel that they have reached the "bottom of the diet" and can no longer tolerate it.
This is where intuitive nutrition comes into play.
Intuitive nutrition is a solution that allows you to avoid yo-yo dieting, weight change and a cycle of limiting overeating. In fact, the first principle of intuitive nutrition is the rejection of dietary culture - the rejection of the idea that the next diet will be successful, and the rejection of the fact that weight is the main thing for health. Intuitive nutrition is a counteraction to harmful and stressful behavior that a diet requires. Instead, it helps you get back to what instincts you were born with to eat, listen to your body, let go of external rules and find lasting peace with food.
10 principles of intuitive nutrition
Give up the diet
Throw away diet books and magazine articles that give you false hope to lose weight quickly, easily and permanently. Get angry at the food culture that promotes weight loss, and at the lies that make you feel like a loser every time a new diet stops working and you gain all the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger on the fact that a new and better diet or nutrition plan may be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from rediscovering intuitive nutrition.
Respect your hunger
Maintain the biological nutrition of your body with enough energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise, you may cause an initial urge to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. The ability to respect this first biological signal creates the basis for restoring confidence in yourself and in food.
Come to terms with food
Make a truce - stop fighting for food! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you cannot or should not eat certain foods, this can lead to a strong feeling that develops into uncontrollable cravings and, often, to overeating. When you finally "give in" to forbidden food, the food will be felt with such intensity that it usually leads to overeating and overwhelming guilt.
Challenge your Food rules
Shout loudly "no" to the thoughts in your head that declare that you are "good" if you consume a minimum of calories, or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. Banishing the food rule that you have in your soul is an important step towards returning to intuitive nutrition.
Discover the satisfaction factor
The Japanese have the wisdom to consider pleasure as one of the goals of a healthy lifestyle. In our desire to observe a food culture, we often lose sight of one of the most basic gifts of existence - pleasure and satisfaction that can be found during meals. When you eat what you really want, in an attractive environment, the pleasure you get will become a powerful force that will help you feel satisfied and contented. By giving yourself this experience, you will find that you need exactly the right amount of food to decide that you have "enough".
Feel your saturation
To respect your satiety, you need to believe that you will give yourself the food you desire. Listen to the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Pay attention to the signs that you feel comfortably full. Pause while eating and ask yourself what the food tastes like and what your current hunger level is.
Deal with your emotions in a gentle and proper way
First, realize that restricting food, both physically and mentally, can in itself cause a loss of control, which can feel like emotional overeating. Find kind ways to comfort, nurture, distract and solve your problems. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom and anger are emotions that we experience throughout our lives. Everyone has their own trigger, and everyone has their own pacification. Eating won't fix any of these feelings. It can calm down for a short time, distract from the pain. But eating won't solve the problem. In any case, eating because of emotional hunger can only worsen your well-being in the long run. Eventually you will have to deal with the source of the emotion.
Respect your body
