Intuitive Eating – Know The Benefits And The 10 Principles

We are all so subjected to losing weight and maintaining a healthy body that we tend to lose the grip on what’s good and what’s not. Intuitive Eating puts a stop on that for you and motivates you to eat healthy and eat the amount necessary to keep you satiated without any kind of compromise whatsoever.

If you have been struggling with your diet and the kind of food that you are consuming, you can effectively change that with the process of intuitive eating. Not only does it have an overall better impact on one’s health, it also drives for a healthier lifestyle as well.

By the end of this article, you will know everything there is to know about the intuitive eating benefits along with the principles of it as well.

What is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive Eating is nothing but a form of understanding with food and your body that lets you understand the hunger cues, and handle them accordingly without starving yourself with a very strict diet.

This was created by two dieticians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in the year of 1995 to combat the harsh side effects that the process of dieting brought along.

It is predominantly a non-diet approach to help align your food intake with cue to the body signals all throughout. It has an overall amazing approach to the overall body and wellness of an individual, thus preventing the problems associated with the prospects of weight loss or the accessory.

Does Intuitive Eating Work For Weight Loss?

With the prospects of intuitive eating in check, the one question that lingers around in everyone’s mind is whether or not the same does have beneficial impacts in helping with weight loss.

The prospect of intuitive eating was theorized with the thought of promoting weight loss but to help with a healthy well being of an individual.

If you have been struggling with weight gain, intuitive eating can help you with that to an extent.

Given that you are eating well in this and getting the nutrition that your body needs, it is most likely that your body will have a well performing metabolism which is definitely going to further help in promoting faster weight loss without any kind of negative impacts on the body.

So, when you ask whether or not intuitive eating helps with weight loss, the answer is yes, it does.

10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

With the prospects of the basics of intuitive eating out of the way, the next thing in line to explain is the principles behind this process.

It isn’t necessarily an easy one but it is important to ensure that you do keep each one of them into consideration because that is what matters at the end of the day.

1. Reject the Diet Mentality

The very first and possibly one of the key principles when it comes to intuitive eating is to completely reject the diet mentality. This is what has been found to have massive negative impacts on one’s good will and such.

If you have consistent urge to diet with hopes that it might help with the weight loss quick and easy, it is time that you do change that mentality completely. Until and unless you completely ditch the notion that there is a diet that would work out for the better, you can’t possibly embrace this form of eating and well being completely.

2. Honour Your Hunger

Overeating is mainly triggered when we don’t eat the optimal amount of food that our body needs. In order to keep the same in check, it is best suggested to ensure that keep your body fed well through the process with the necessary levels of carbs and energy. When you reach the peak of the overdriving hunger, every single fleeting choice of eating is irrelevant.

It is important that you do pay attention to this to ensure to build trust with the food as well as yourself.

3. Make Peace with Food

We often tend to subject ourselves to such rough course when it comes to food and that is exactly something that you need to change without any more thoughts put into it.

Give yourself an unconditional permission to eat without putting on restrictions to your diet. That is what causes the problem in the first place. When you subject your mind and tell it to abstain from a particular food, which is where the problem arises from.

It is best suggested to ensure that you do take the time out to keep the prospects into consideration and avoid forcing yourself to not consume a particular food because that is what makes you crave the said food even more so.

4. Challenge the Food Police

We all have that food police in our head that screams at us with a big NO when we are trying to meddle around with things all the more. This is exactly where you intervene and take control to prevent further issues caused to it.

This is where the unprecedented problems associated with food come into play with respect to dieting and such. Challenge yourself and tell that you are not going to fall for it because that further causes you to move forth through the unhealthy road of dieting that your body doesn’t necessarily require.

5. Respect your fullness

Yet another one of the factors that does play an important in the process of intuitive eating is to respect when you are full. Observe for the signs that depict that you aren’t hungry anymore.

It is important that you respect the signals and don’t overdo the same. If required, pause during the middle of the meal and ask yourself how full you are. Respect the food through the process as well.

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor

The satisfaction through the eating process is one of the factors that not many people realize and pay heed to. The Japanese people tend to promote pleasure as one of the goals associated with healthy living.

When you eat what you want and that too in a favourable environment, it does become a lot easier for you attain pleasure while eating the food. Doing this also ensures to make you satisfied with the food that you are consuming, thus further helping you drive a better satisfaction rate and eating a lot less than what you normally would.

You are also more likely to eat a lot less because you will feel like you have had enough with the same.

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food

It is important that you find ways to nourish, and distract as well as resolve your issues without the inclusion of food into it. This might see like a lot at times, but it is important for an overall well being that you have been aiming for.

We experience a fury of emotions throughout our life ranging from anxiety to stress and depression. Each one of these emotions do come along with its own string of triggers and food isn’t the answer to them, contrary to what many people might believe.

It can distract you from the problems for a short period of time or even end up causing a temporary sense of relief for you but the same won’t necessarily help you in the long run. In the long run, it won’t do any good at all and on the contrary, would end up causing further chaos and even contribute to weight gain because of the emotional eating that you are indulging in.

8. Respect Your Body

With a mass following around with the body positivity, it is important that you start respecting your body above all. It is important for you to respect your genetic blueprint that you have been blessed with.

Much like how you wouldn’t be able to fit your feet in a shoe smaller than your size, the same is applicable when it comes to the body size as well. When you start respecting your body, you will experience the benefits of it on your mind and emotional well being as well.

It is very hard to let go off of the diet mentality if you can’t even accept yourself for who you are. You will definitely have unrealistic expectations from your diet, thus further degrading the same all the more.

9. Exercise—Feel the Difference

Yet another one of the factors that does play an important role in this is the fact that one should have an active lifestyle. It doesn’t mean that you need to have a militant lifestyle and exercise regime; just a simply low intensity active lifestyle works just fine.

Instead of narrowing your focus down on just the prospect of losing weight, focus on ensuring that you do focus on how amazing it feels to have an active lifestyle altogether. If your sole focus is on losing weight and shedding off the excess calories, chances are that you won’t be able to appreciate the impact that the exercise brings along.

If the only motivation that you have when you wake up is to lose weight, it is not going to be doing any sort of good to your health and the will to lead an active lifestyle.

10. Honour your Health

The last but not the least of the principles is to honour your health just the way it is. Focusing on nutrition helps ensure to take care of your overall health without many impacts on your daily routine.

It is not necessary to eat the perfect diet for you to be able to get the best of impacts on your health. You just need to focus on eating healthy and eating well throughout. You won’t have any kind of deficiency with just one or so type of lack of nutrients. This is why it is important that you do focus on keeping your health in check without any further issues all the more.

Benefits Of Intuitive Eating

With the principles sorted out, next up is talking about the intuitive eating benefits that you didn’t know about.

Some of the benefits of the same include:

1. Sustain Weight Control

Many people who have successfully lost their weight tend to have this thinking that dieting is the only way to go about with the process of weight loss, that there’s nothing else to it.

When there is a constant weight gain again following the weight loss, people have the tendency to again blame the diet for not working. Altogether, it has been found that the case is not all that easy.

Owing to the fact that you are cutting out some of the foods that you love eating, chances are that you are going to end up eating more of than what you should. It is thus important to ensure that you stick to a healthy eating habit than forcing yourself to eat just about anything.

Intuitive eating helps you achieve the same with the kind of diversity it brings along with the food that you are consuming.

2. Improves Digestion

Yet another one the benefits of intuitive eating is the fact that it helps promote digestion. The main reason is because you are only eating when you are feeling hungry, thus allowing your stomach to empty completely.

This is actually amazing because when you are eating every hour or every two hours, you fail to provide your stomach with the enough time that’s needed for the process of digestion.

Owing to the fact that you are practicing body awareness, chances are that you won’t have to compromise on the digestion process altogether.

3. Controls Appetite

Yet another one of the importance of intuitive eating that one needs to keep notes on is the fact that it helps in controlling your appetite.

Eating the perfect amount of food that would help keep your appetite in check and even help around with the maintenance of the hormones in the body that are related to hunger and satiety.

Indulging in intuitive eating has been found to have beneficial impacts in helping with the regulation of your body’s desires for having more food, thus cutting to the chase and helping in maintaining the necessary appetite that your body needs to keep going on.

4. Gain Better Health and Satisfaction

We are all conscious about the food that we consume through our life, hoping that the same doesn’t end up making us gain weight. While the same is a constant string of challenge that we experience, it has been found that the intuitive eating helps combat that.

If you have been inclining towards intuitive eating, chances are that you will experience an onslaught of better relationship not just with your body but also with the way you are handling your overall eating and diet.

It is a myth if you think that intuitive eating makes you eat like a whale just because you are open to eating anything at any time of the day. It is completely untrue and if you want to make better changes, it is important to ensure that you adhere to this because it is bound to bring you all the happiness and satisfaction when it comes to your body and your eating habits.

5. Stress Management

Several studies (R) (R) have shown that intuitive eating has a lot of beneficial impacts in handling the emotional well being of an individual. When you are eating food that makes you content and won’t hinder with your thought process, chances are that your state of mind would be a lot tame in comparison.

The main reason that people believe is because of the fact that when you indulge in intuitive eating, you are more likely going to enjoy the meal instead of having your focus on the weight loss or the diet aspect of the same.

6. Reduce Risks of Eating Disorder

If you have had an unhealthy relationship with food, intuitive eating can most definitely change that for good without any issues whatsoever. Owing to the fact that you start respecting your food and your body in the meanwhile as well, the same does reflect on building a healthy relationship with the food instead of risking the problems associated with eating disorder.

When you eat intuitively, you are more likely going to honour not just the food but also the body’s desire to eat the food that’s placed in front of you.

7. Weight Loss

When it comes to intuitive eating for weight loss, the same does pan out to be very effective altogether for weight loss. If you have been questioning its efficacy for weight loss, studies (R) have found that the people who indulged in the intuitive eating have been found to have a healthier BMI in comparison to the ones who don’t.

Additionally, intuitive eating has also been found to manage the stress levels and regulate the levels of cortisol (R) in the body which further helps in preventing unnecessary weight gain, thus helping in weight loss.

8. More energy

When your body is supplemented with the necessary amount of food and the nutrition, chances are that you will experience the best strain of energy within yourself as well.

Getting more calories into the body ensures to keep the same in check and prevents it from getting worse than it has to be. The correct amount of nutrition as well as the vital metabolic processes helps in maintaining your health even more so.

How To Start Intuitive Eating?

Given that Intuitive Eating is more of a emotional process than a physical one, it is important to ensure that you do indulge in impactful ways that can help kickstart the process without making it seem

Let us take a look at some of the best steps to get started with this, shall we?

1. Let the Satisfaction Reel in

We often tend to consume food with a motive of either maintaining a diet or to simply just lose weight. It is important that you let go off of either of them and simply just align your mind to actually being content and satisfied with the food.

Knowing that you are placing your satisfaction and your pleasure with the food first helps make your body feel better about the situation as well which is an added bonus. It is important to ensure that you take the time out to appreciate the food and make up your mind to start being satisfied with the food rather than forcing things down.

2. Eat When You are Hungry

One of the most important steps to get started with intuitive eating is to eat when you are hungry and avoid eating when you are satiated. The faster you realize the connection and the feeling, the easier it becomes for you to handle the prospects of the intuitive eating.

Stuffing your body doesn’t include in this which is why it is necessary that you understand your body signals and prepare your body accordingly as well. This is what makes all the difference otherwise.

3. Maintain an Active Lifestyle

When you are getting started with intuitive eating, it is important that you do pay close attention to the prospect of the maintaining an active lifestyle mainly because of the fact that it has contributing factors to the same as well.

Pairing good eating with an active lifestyle helps ensure to bring around amazing prospects of well being for your overall body. This further does help in bringing forth better impacts in keeping up with the process which you wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

4. Avoid Emotional Eating

You need to train your mind to understand for a fact that emotional eating never results in anything good for your health. It might seem like it will but it technically doesn’t.

If you are getting started with intuitive eating, it is necessary that you do stop with the emotional eating because it won’t result in anything good for your health.

It does no good to your body and rather ends up affecting the overall digestion and the accessory process all the more.

5. Set Realistic Goals

If you have been on a diet your entire life, chances are that you are going to experience excessive prospect of difficulties in starting out with the intuitive eating if you can’t keep control on everything. It is important to ensure that you set realistic goals when it comes to the same. It is necessary that you set realistic goals rather than going full out just the first time around.

Take small steps and don’t rush through because you are posing yourself up for a disappointment if you do.

When it comes to intuitive eating, it is important that you know the basics and proceed along accordingly. The process is never as easy as it seems and it is thus best to take your time with the process and do things the right way rather than rushing through the process.