How to Start Intuitively Eating

How to Start Intuitively Eating

Starting your journey with intuitive eating can feel intimidating. Maybe you've heard the term thrown around, or you've seen a friend embrace this approach, but you’re unsure of how to get started. Whether you're recovering from years of dieting or simply seeking a more balanced relationship with food, the practice of intuitive eating can help reconnect you with your body's natural hunger and fullness cues, allowing you to nourish yourself in a more mindful and authentic way. But where to begin? This article will walk you through practical steps to start intuitive eating, focusing on mindful eating practices, letting go of diet culture, listening to your body, and overcoming challenges that may arise along the way.

Before diving into these tips, it's important to understand that intuitive eating is a journey, not a one-size-fits-all solution. You’ll need time, patience, and self-compassion as you unlearn diet rules and relearn how to trust your body. Now, let’s explore how to embark on this path of listening to your body, embracing food without guilt, and creating a healthier relationship with what you eat. In your exploration of this topic, it is also important to know that intuitive eating and mindful eating can sometimes be used interchangeably. This is because intuitive eating involves bringing intention and mindfulness into your eating practice.

1. Intuitive Eating Practices

• Slow Down

  • Don't rush to eat food. Think about tastes, textures, and flavors when eating. Imagine the food providing nourishment to your body. Make eating a positive experience.

  • Avoid eating on the go (ex: standing in front of the fridge, or picking at meals while cooking). Sit down each time you eat.

• Eliminate Distractions

  • While eating while watching TV or going on your phone can be enjoyable, it can make it hard to eat mindfully. When you are starting to practice intuitive eating, it is best to eliminate distractions and focus on the eating experience. For each meal, make yourself a plate and bring intention to the eating experience.

• Check In with Yourself Often

  • Check in with yourself on your eating experience. Each experience can be a lesson. Do certain foods make you feel sluggish vs energized? Which foods bring you pleasure? Which foods have memories or emotions attached to them?

  • What does it feel like to eat when you are starving vs full? When you are full, why are you still craving certain foods? Do you tend to eat for emotional reasons such as boredom or anxiety? Does anything else help soothe those emotions other than food?

2. Ditch the Diet Mentality

• Avoiding Diet Talk

  • Since diet culture is so ingrained in our society, it can be hard to avoid. From family members talking about which new diet trend they are trying, to overhearing coworkers talk about how many calories are in the muffin they just ate. While we cant control others, we can control our own involvement in these conversations. Try to distance yourself from diet talk.

• Cleansing Your Social Media Feed

  • The pressures of social media can make it difficult to avoid toxic diet culture. Fitness influencers often promote fad diets and excessive tracking. On top of that, constant advertisements for different diet supplements that promise the perfect body can only make you more out of tune with your senses around eating. Do an inventory on your relationship with social media: is there anyone in your feed that makes you feel worse from viewing their content? Unfollow them. Is there anyone that makes you feel better? How much time on social media is positive to you vs negative? Start to be mindful and intentional about your online consumption.

• Educating Yourself

  • Reading books or listening to podcasts about intuitive eating can be helpful. A good place to start is “Breaking Free from Emotional Eating” by Gineen Roth.

3. Listen to Your Body

• Recognize Hunger Cues

  • What physical cues does your body give you when you are hungry? Do you feel grumbling in your stomach? Do you feel tired and lethargic? Do you feel shaky if you go too long without eating? What does it feel like to go too long without eating vs the right amount? Start to get to know your hunger cues to feel more in tune with your body and its needs.

• Honor Fullness

  • What cues does your body get when you are full? Does your stomach feel full? Do you feel nauseous? Do you feel satiated? What does it feel like to eat past the point of fullness? What does it feel like to eat and not be completely satisfied? What types of foods make you feel full quicker? Asking yourself these questions can help you to recognize your hunger cues.

• Differentiate Between Physical Hunger and Other Reasons to Eat.

  • Food and eating are deeply entwined with emotions. Recognizing this in yourself can be helpful on your intuitive eating journey. What other reasons do you eat beyond hunger and fullness? Which of these are pleasant (celebrations, eating for pleasure, eating at a social gathering?) Which of these reasons make you feel worse (boredom eating, sadness eating, anxious eating) What other coping skills can help? A good example of recognizing physical vs this is when you start to crave soup in the winter. Think to yourself, am I actually hungry for soup, or do I just want to feel warmth? If you are not hungry, but craving warmth, what other things can you do? Take a hot shower, get under a heated blanket, or have a cup of tea could be alternatives.

• Create a Positive Eating Environment

  • A positive eating environment is one that fosters mindfulness and enjoyment.. This can involve setting aside distractions such as phones or television during meals and creating a space where eating is a pleasurable, stress-free experience. Avoid eating on the go or standing up and take the time to set a place for yourself and sit down to enjoy your food.

Challenges in Intuitive Eating

1. Fear of Weight Gain

It is normal to be scared that listening to your body will lead to weight gain. We are trained to think that arbitrary “rules” around food such as restricting carbs or eliminating dessert will lead to weight loss. If you're someone who’s been stuck in a diet cycle for years, then you know that these rules can lead to binging and take you farther away from your health goals. Overcoming this fear involves shifting focus from external measures like weight to internal cues of health, such as energy levels and well-being. It requires trust that your body will naturally find its equilibrium when it's no longer restricted.

2. Dealing with Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is a common challenge, as many people use food to cope with emotions like stress, loneliness, or boredom. Intuitive eating encourages recognizing emotional hunger and encourages you to find alternative coping strategies. This process takes time and self-awareness, but with practice, you can better distinguish between physical hunger and emotional hunger.

3. Relearning Hunger and Fullness Cues

Years of dieting can disconnect you from your body’s natural hunger and fullness signals. Relearning these cues takes time and involves paying close attention to how your body feels before, during, and after eating. Trusting your body’s signals, even if it means eating more or less than you expect, is key to a healthy relationship with food and your body.

4. Social Pressures

Social settings often pose challenges for intuitive eaters, especially when friends or family members promote diet culture or make comments about food and body weight. Navigating these situations requires assertiveness, setting boundaries, and prioritizing your own health and well-being over external opinions or social pressures. It can also be difficult to intuitively eat when so much of social life revolves around food. Are you going out to dinner, but your body isn’t hungry when it’s time to order? The old you might order anyway and force yourself to finish your meal for the sake of not feeling awkward. The intuitive eater might just order a drink and explain that they aren’t hungry at the moment, or order something and take it to go without making a big deal of it.

Schedule a Therapy Appointment Now for Intuitive Eating in Philadelphia

Even after reading all of these tips for intuitive eating, you may still feel like your relationship with food and your body is an ongoing struggle. Seeing a therapist might be able to help you. If you would like more support on your path to a healthier relationship with food, please schedule an appointment with one of our trained clinicians. They can help shape and guide your journey with evidence-based approaches. Help is only a phone call away. Call (215) 922-LOVE, extension 100. You can also schedule an appointment at thecenterforgrowth.com/therapy/schedule-an-appointment. A therapist at the Center for Growth will be more than happy to help you on this journey. We have offices located in Society Hill, Philadelphia; Fairmount, Philadelphia; Ocean City, New Jersey; Mechanicsville, Virginia; Fayetteville, Georgia; and Santa Fe, New Mexico that offer in-person treatment. We also see clients virtually from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Mexico, Florida, and Georgia.