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Intuitive Eating

Normalizing eating patterns and developing a healthy relationship with food.

One definition of insanity is to keep trying the same thing over and over again, and keep expecting a different result.

I had all the books. I went to OA meetings. I researched all the web sites. I made up complicated spreadsheets to graph my progress. I had diet software on my computer. I memorized the calorie count of my allowed diet foods. I had lists of forbidden foods. I made plans... oh did I make plans. I was an expert dieter. I knew everything about dieting, except how to make a diet work over the long haul.

Mot diets tend to bypass a couple of essential components for long-term recovery from Binge Eating Disorder (BED): proper nutrition, and more importantly, a healthy relationship with food. Without those two things, any weight that is lost on a diet will return. Neither of these two essential components can co-exist with a diet that restricts foods or entire food groups, is temporary, or that doesn't provide the body with all of the nutrients it needs for optimum physical and emotional well-being. Most diets encourage us to ignore or bypass our body's natural hunger signals. They serve to reinforce a negative relationship with food. They leave us feeling deprived. They can trigger or exacerbate depression and anxiety due to both biological and psychological factors. For me, diets were clearly not a life-long solution for severe obesity. They couldn't cure Binge Eating Disorder.

 A Healthy Relationship

Healthy relationships do not include compulsive elements or addictive-like behavior. They are a joy to experience. A healthy relationship with food would mean, at a minimum, that I'd eat when I was hungry and stop when I was full; that I was aware of and honored the hunger and satiety signals my body was giving me.

Somewhere along the line, I lost touch with these signals. I'd eat when I wasn't hungry and didn't stop when I was full. I ate for the wrong reasons. I couldn't separate my emotionally driven cravings from the true hunger signals the body sends naturally when it needs to be refueled.

A Different Road

Since obesity was the most obvious symptom of my disordered eating, I assumed that dieting was the way to fix my problem. Society tells us so all the time. We are expected to be able to go from compulsive overeating to seriously controlled eating, in an instant.

People with a normal healthy relationship to food don't have to deal with either of the extremes on this scale. They live comfortably somewhere near the middle, around 5. They intuitively know how to do this; it's nearly automatic. They don't feel guilty about what or how they eat.

I found out that I could learn to eat intuitively, but I couldn't learn how by dieting. Unless a doctor prescribes a diet for medical reasons, taking detours below the middle of the scale can foil long-term permanent recovery from BED.

Eating in the middle of the scale can produce spectacular and healthy weight loss. If we are starting at 10, five is a much more realistic goal and shorter distance to go to than 1. As I get closer to my healthy weight, the rate of loss is slowing down, but my weight and relationship to food, is "normalizing". This is the road less taken and the shortest and surest route to real recovery I've found.

Intuitive Eating

"Intuitive Eating" is the innate knowing of what, when and how much to eat for one's individual nutritional needs. Intuitive eating is free of obsession. It's the instinctive self-regulation of food intake that we are all born with.

With intuitive eating, there are no "good" or "bad" foods. There is no "on a diet" or "off a diet". There is nothing to feel guilty about. Our self-esteem can remain intact while we engage in the process of reconnecting with our innate wisdom—learning to honor our body signals.

Some of the key components of learning to eat intuitively are:

  • Reject the diet mentality. There are no rules to break, no good foods and bad foods.
  • Make friends with food. Food is an asset for recovery not something to battle against. Give yourself unconditional permission to eat and enjoy it.
  • Keep the body well-fed so extreme hunger or lack of proper nutrition doesn't trigger overeating.
  • Find constructive non-food-related ways to cope with the feelings and stressors that you tend to eat over.
  • Practice honoring your health so you make primarily health promoting food choices.
  • Practice mindful eating. Eat slow to allow time for your satiety signals to reach your brain. Pause throughout your meals and get in touch with your feelings.
  • Incorporate gentle exercise into your lifestyle. Besides the obvious improvements in physical and mental health this brings, it also helps us get in touch with our bodies; how they feel and what they need.

When we give ourselves permission to stop dieting and focus instead on healthy behaviors, we can regain not only our physical health, but our self-esteem—our lives. By defining success in terms of increasing awareness, personal growth, and self-empowerment, a healthy weight can be achieved and maintained for a lifetime.

Perhaps the most important keys that helped me in becoming an intuitive eater was the idea of eating primarily whole natural foods. This led me to the habit of asking myself if what I was about to eat was something that was health promoting and life affirming. I knew that every bit of food I ate didn't have to be; it was the bigger picture that counted. Dumping the all or nothing, perfectionistic thinking that is built into diets and the idea of OA abstinence, was probably the next most important and indispensable part of my recovery.

Much if this web site is about my process of relearning/learning how to become an intuitive eater. It is a subject that I am quite passionate about, but probably not the best spokesperson for. I'm not a professional and I'm still in the process of recovering. I don't know how to present a concise view of exactly what intuitive eating means and how to achieve it. I've had to learn most of what I know about successful recovery, the hard way. This web site includes information about my failures, problems, and the extraneous issues I've had to deal with along the way which may lead to more confusion.

I've recently read a book that I believe is the very best book on this subject. It is written by professionals. It lays out a program that is intended to help people like me make peace with food, free ourselves from chronic dieting forever, and get to our healthiest weight—naturally. The ideas and processes described in the book fit very closely to the things I've found that work for me personally. I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you are serious about overcoming your disordered eating, consider getting a copy of "Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works" by By Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
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