An Introduction To Mindful & Intuitive Eating
If you are ready to adjust the way you approach food and eating, today’s article is for you!
In 1995 American Dietitians and nutrition educators Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Rech started a revolutionary process of changing the way people think and feel about food.
This process, known as Intuitive Eating, is all about listening to your body as the primary source of direction when it comes to eating to fulfill your needs from both a physiological and psychological perspective.
We say psychological because, as the new Food Guide suggests, food is about more than just nutrition.
It brings us happiness, it brings us together and despite being critical for good health, is so much more to so many of us.
Yet. in a world where we get SO much external messaging about what and how we should eat, this notion of quieting the outside noise and listening to our bodies can be more complex than it sounds.
For this reason, Intuitive Eating is based on 10 foundational and guiding principles.
Although we won’t be sharing them all in today’s article, the first principle is perhaps the most telling and most significant.
Intuitive Eating – Principle #1: Reject The Diet Mentality
What is the diet mentality? Well, it’s the pervasive notion that extreme, unsustainable and unenjoyable diets are the right way for you to approach food. Rejecting the diet mentality means abandoning the notion that the next fad or gimmick diet is for you and that a temporary or short-term change to the way you eat is a suitable solution.
Rejecting the diet mentality is your first step to success on the path to a better relationship with food.
Mindful eating is the next.
Mindful Eating – Putting Theory Into Practice
Mindful eating is a fundamental component of intuitive eating and enhancing your relationship with food.
It entails being truly tuned in to every aspect of your food from purchase, to preparation, to palette.
3 Steps To More Mindful Eating
1. Respect your hunger: It can be very challenging to eat mindfully if you don’t appropriately respect and acknowledge your hunger. For example, it is a wonderful thing to be hungry for a meal, but when you come to the table absolutely starved, it may become increasingly challenging to remain in the moment and to take it in and enjoy it in the same manner.
2. Take a second: When you come to a meal hungry, but not famished, you are able to enjoy a brief moment of reflection and appreciation before you start eating. Trying doing this before your next big meal and see how it impacts your overall experience.
3. Slow, small and steady: The 3S’s of mindful eating. Eat slowly, take small bites and enjoy your meal in a steady manner, aiming for at least 20 bites per mouthful of food so that you can really enjoy it.
One of the other key components of mindful and intuitive eating that we want to touch on today is the importance of separating food from feelings.
That’s exactly why the 7th principle of Intuitive Eating is to Honour Your Feelings Without Using Food.
The principle depends on acknowledging that emotional states that involve acute feelings of sadness, anger and anxiety are not best resolved in the long-term by food.
For many of us, this is easier said then done.
Fortunately, there are resources at our disposal to help.
Dr Judith Beck, for example, is an expert on cognitive behaviour-base dietary strategies and has developed a pair of very valuable emotional eating resources that, in tandem with guidance from a dietitian, can really help.
The sources can be found here – Emotional Eating Trap – and here – Escape Plan For Sabotaging Thoughts.
Final Thoughts
Mindful and intuitive eating are valuable and immense concepts in the field of nutrition and will continue to play a big role in shaping nutrition guidance for years to come.
Today’s article has offered a taste of how you can make the most of these concepts to improve your health and relationship with food.
Future content on our site will explore these topics in much greater depth.
We’d like to close today’s article with a quote from Tribole’s Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works that really puts everything into context:
“If you don’t love it, don’t eat it, and if you love it, savor it.”