What Is Intuitive Eating?

For those who want to lose weight, there is an incredible number of diets, most of which have strict restrictions and drive the body of a person who is losing weight into extreme stress.

To a modern person who is at least somewhat interested in the topic of a healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition, the media provide a lot of information about when, how and what you can eat. For those who want to lose weight, there is an incredible number of diets, most of which have strict restrictions and drive the body of a person who is losing weight into extreme stress. It is on these premises that the theory of intuitive eating was born.

 

For the first time, they started talking about it in 1970 in the USA at the Thame Weiler retreat center. She helped overweight women and children rebuild their relationship with their bodies and lose weight without dieting. Later, the idea of ​​such nutrition was taken up by psychotherapists and developed as a new feminist concept. The focus of intuitive eating is not on meeting thinness standards, but on how to become healthier by listening to your own desires.

In general, the following 10 rules of wise nutrition can be distinguished.

1. Without diets.

 

No special eating regimens, as well as prohibited or permitted foods. Even those that are commonly called harmful, with intuitive eating, they are not. This gave rise to the myth of permissiveness, and you can often find records on the Internet that, having switched to this way of eating, people began to eat only fast food and quickly gained weight. But this contradicts the next rule.

2. Listen to your body.

This recommendation means that you need to learn to perceive the messages of your own stomach and brain. There is no need to divide meals into breakfast, lunch and dinner. You can eat when you want and what you want. But there is not a single organism that constantly requires one fried potato and donuts. Pretty soon he will want an apple, corn, chicken broth or pineapples, reflecting in his wishes the need for certain substances, minerals, vitamins.

3. Stop counting calories.

 

As soon as a person begins to think about how many kilojoules he will absorb by eating a slice of pizza, the body immediately falls into a stressful state due to guilt.

4. Learn new recipes.

This will bring joy and help not only to eat, but to explore the world of cooking as an art. Moreover, you often want products that are incompatible at first glance, and then it turns out that there is already a proven way to cook them together.

5. Get familiar with the feeling of hunger.

 

When there is an awareness of the optional eating by the hour, it will be possible to get hungry. And it is this feeling that should precede each meal. This approach will not only help you lose weight, but also significantly save time on cooking and cleaning the kitchen after it. Many mothers will object that this will not work with children, they need a regimen. But mother of three daughters and co-author of Overcoming Overeating, Jane Hirschmann, taught her girls the same way. All of them are at a healthy weight. Almost everyone can remember how they were tormented by obligatory porridge in the morning and soup at lunch, it is this breakdown of natural eating hours that then leads to an endless circle of overeating and feeling guilty about it.

6. Learn to distinguish between emotional and physical hunger.

Perhaps the only real prohibition against intuitive eating extends to meals due to a bad mood. You can not seize a quarrel, resentment, sadness or sadness. It is when a person extinguishes negative emotions with chocolate or sandwiches that overeating begins, which leads to weight gain. It is better to go in for sports, because physical exercises also give the release of hormones of joy - endorphins and distract from bad thoughts. Also, the muscles will tone up.

7. Feel full.

 

Even if there is still half a plate of food left, but satiety has already come, you need to stop. Perhaps in an hour you will want to eat again, but at the moment the body has had enough.

8. Don't reward yourself with food.

Often people who are trying to lose weight believe that they deserve a treat after some achievement in sports or at work. This, by the way, also comes from childhood upbringing, when parents rewarded children for good behavior with food.

9. Accept your body.

No need to run on the scales after eating or measure your hips. With intuitive eating, you should simply let go of the situation and finally allow yourself to be sometimes hungry or full. So, gradually, you can learn to feel other desires of the body, for example, to find out its real need for sleep, comfort, sports activities, and even clothing.

10. Don't punish yourself with food restrictions.

 

In fact, this is the flip side of food rewards. If something failed, this does not mean that now you need to starve. Or if overeating did happen, then you should not eat anything for a day in the hope of compensating for the previous act.

The main idea of ​​intuitive eating is that food is only food, and not a lever of pressure on one's own psyche, a way to control oneself or others. You need to take food when there really is such a desire, as children and animals do. None of them eats up for the future and does not try to be thinner than he is.

Tell us your secret to look great and feel your best in the comments to this article!