A new trend has emerged in food and nutrition, distinguishing itself from the traditional rhetoric of “good” and “bad” foods and caloric limits. This is intuitive eating which tells the consumer not to look externally but internally for dietary wisdom.
To understand intuitive eating, we must first understand diet culture. Diet culture promotes restrictive eating, demonizes certain foods, and encourages personal comparison to socially pre-determined appearance standards. Anyone who has ever undertaken a diet, especially a restrictive one, knows how all-consuming they can be. Measuring the days in calories, pounds lost/gained, and cheat meals can have devastating effects on our relationship to food. Also, diets often only result in short-term weight loss and are unsustainable. Beyond the negative physiological impacts of yo-yo dieting and restrictive eating, diets can encourage negative self-talk and diminish self-esteem [1].
It is important to clarify here that not all diets are necessarily bad. People with certain health conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) prescribe certain foods to avoid uncomfortable symptoms. Diets set in caloric restriction are necessary to help the overweight and obese reach a healthy weight and prevent the associated health risks. The issue arises when people who have no medical necessity to lose weight begin to view their bodies as “wrong” and need fixing. While a disturbed relationship to food and body image can affect everyone regardless of gender (eating disorders among men are underdiagnosed and undertreated [2]), women are systemically pressured to buy into diet culture in the form of low-calorie pink wine coolers. These are all intrusions into the delicate mind-body-food interrelationship; as such, the normalizing of diet culture has resulted in generations of people succumbing to disordered eating habits.
So if diet culture is the disease, could intuitive eating be the antidote?
According to a famous book on the subject, the ten significant tenants of intuitive eating are:
Rejecting diet mentality
Acknowledging and honoring hunger
Making peace with food
Challenge the food police - food is not strictly “good” or “bad”
Respect your fullness
Discover the satisfaction factor - make eating enjoyable by having good-tasting meals or sitting down with friends/family
Honor your feelings without using food – no more emotional eating!
Respect your body – recognize that it is in no way wrong, but is beautiful
Exercise
Honor your health – healthy overall food patterns [3]
Diets turn us against our biological cues to hunger, intuitive eating re-syncs food consumption with our natural hormonal flux and bodily needs, and our psychological need to enjoy food as a comfort. Those who have been entrapped into yo-yo dieting or struggled with disordered eating can be a challenge to undo years of indoctrination. However, the relationships we have with our diets and bodies are worth taking the time to fix, and intuitive eating is an essential tool to that end.
Reference(s):
Jennings, K.-A. (2019, June 25). A Quick Guide to Intuitive Eating. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/quick-guide-intuitive-eating.
Strother E, Lemberg R, Stanford SC, Turberville D. Eating disorders in men: underdiagnosed, undertreated, and misunderstood. Eat Disord. 2012;20(5):346-55. doi: 10.1080/10640266.2012.715512. PMID: 22985232; PMCID: PMC3479631.
Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (1995). Intuitive eating: a recovery book for the chronic dieter: rediscover the pleasures of eating and rebuild your body image.
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