Did you know that the industry that has you convinced that you need the latest meal plan, workout, powder or pill is a $60 billion industry? This industry that has preyed on you to feel terrible about your body, that your body will never be thin or fit enough, making you ready to try “anything,” has stolen so much more than your money. It’s taken away your trust, intuition, respect and appreciation for your body.
Diets have been proven, study after to study, to NOT work. Research has shown that any weight loss that is achieved on a diet will be regained, along with an additional 5-10 pounds (or more). But that’s not all, every time you diet, you are lowering your metabolism. This is why weight becomes harder and harder to lose and you find yourself resorting to stricter and more depriving diets, only to be met with weight gain once again.
What if I told you that YOU were not the failure? The diet was. What if I told you that you could throw “willpower with food” out the window? What if there was an approach to food that you could eat what your body wanted and you could stop eating when you felt satisfied? The answer? Intuitive Eating.
“Intuitive Eating,” created and written by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch is an evidenced based, anti-diet approach to food. Intuitive Eating is a process of reconnecting to your body and using your body as the guide with eating. This enhances the mind and body connection. The principles of Intuitive Eating help you to examine your relationship with food and your body. This relationship has often been damaged from years of dieting and living in the very strong diet culture that we are in. You are taught to disconnect from your body, to follow what “the plan” says, not what your body says.
Working through the process and principles of Intuitive Eating, you look at what diet rules you are following and how that impacts your relationship with food and food choices. You become aware of how connected you are to your body in regards to hunger, fullness and satiation, how certain foods make you feel, as well as how you use exercise and self-care in your life. You look at how the diet mentality has impacted how you see your relationship with yourself and your body. You examine how you may use food to numb your feelings. Becoming intuitive with food, increases your intuition with yourself as a whole. You become much kinder to yourself and create better self-care habits.
Intuition with your body is something that has always been there. We are born with it. Diets create a mistrust and disconnection with yourself and body. Finding your way back to self-trust and self-reliance with food can be a scary, messy journey. But one worth taking to discover that you, in fact, are the expert of your own body, no one else.
