When embarking on our self-nourishment journeys, we must begin by asking ourselves how we currently view diet, food, and our bodies. Eating intuitively requires us to be open to our intuition and in order to do so, we often have to release much of our diet mentality that we’ve subconsciously cultivated over the years thanks to diet culture.
As such, it’s important to know how to deepen your awareness of how diet culture has influenced (and perhaps continues to influence) your relationships with food/eating and your body so you can start shifting towards more intuitive nourishment cues and practices.
Intuitive nourishment is not another diet: it is undieting at its finest because it focuses on nurturing a healthy relationship with food, eating, and self-care. It’s about embodying your body and being and knowing what you need to feel nourished.
It is NOT about following someone else’s specified rules or restrictions in order to be “successful” or “enough” per society’s idealized (and frankly arbitrary) standards.
Intuitive nourishment is about being able to know when you’re hungry and when you are satisfied. It is about recognizing what nourishes and depletes you. It is not about depriving yourself until you’re so hungry that you can’t think clearly or focus on anything other than food or needing to eat RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND OR ELSE.
Rather, it’s about being in relationship with the food you consume while holding the intention of receiving nourishment, satisfaction, and pleasure from your meal. You do this by paying attention to how the food that you’re eating makes you feel. The focus is not on weight loss or to shift your body shape in some particular way. It’s about FEELING good and eating food that encourages your ability to feel not just good, but great.
As an intuitive nourisher you will begin to attune to your body’s internal signals and cues, and by doing so you will support the nourishment of your whole body and being, which will support your ability to balance to your happy weight.
This is perhaps one of the reasons why diets don’t work. They set us up to feel like failures when we “can’t stick with” impossible restrictions that leave us feeling crummy, irritable and down-right unpleasant. We are not failures because we can’t stick to these diets… because the diets are actually the failures here!
A system that is depriving, that ignores your body’s innate intelligence and ignores your unique bioindividuality only guarantees a likelihood of weight cycling and an unhappy and unhealthy relationship with food and body.
I’m here to say no more of that if you please! Instead, let’s embrace and embody our inner intuitive nourishers.
So, how do we do that?
Well we start by learning how to shift away from what dieting has taught us.
Intuitive nourishment can feel like a challenging concept to embrace at first, especially if you have been in the throws of dieting for many years. The cycle of dieting and diet culture clouds our ability to accurately listen to and interpret our body’s signaling, partially because most (if not all) diets come with a list of rules that can be hard to shake once we’ve learned them.
That’s why I say that it is a journey (and not a quick fix) to find peace with food and eating.
Intuitive nourishment is a skill and a tool in your toolkit. My intention is to help you to embody your intuitive nourisher so you can make friends with food again.
SHIFTING THE DIET MENTALITY MINDSET
A great way to support your intuitive nourisher is to utilize a few helpful techniques to help you begin to shift your mindset away from the diet mentality and towards intuitive nourishment.
TECHNIQUE #1: Don’t categorize any food as off limits.
This might come as a shock at first, especially if you’ve ever taken one of my sugar detox classes or participated in any diet at all. There is almost always a good/bad food list - but not anymore!
I recognize that this goes against much of the common nutrition advice out there. But this approach is all about food freedom and in order to have that freedom you must give yourself the opportunity to experience the freedom of eating whatever you want when you want it.
I know, scary right? But the thing is, when we categorize a food as “off limits” what tends to happen? We inevitably end up wanting to eat what is forbidden! It’s kind of like telling a little kid to not touch something. Of course the kid wants to touch it! As soon as something is forbidden we want to rebel and do - or in the case of food, eat - that thing!
Now, I do want to be sure to say that if you have a known food allergy or sensitivity, it is probably in your best interest to not eat that food or at the very least identify your threshold of tolerance for that food. But this is your CHOICE. These foods aren’t forbidden, they’re just not ones you choose because they don’t make you feel good. And this leads us to technique #2…
TECHNIQUE #2: Listen to your body and being.
How do you know if a food doesn’t make you feel good? Your body and being will tell you. You just have to hone your listening skills so you can hear and receive the message.
By letting your body’s signals and cues guide your food choices and eating behaviors, you are of course going to more often make selections that make you feel good and help your body and being to function their best.
Your body wants what is best for you, but if you’re not tuned into the right radio station (or not listening) you’re going to miss the message being sent.
If you’re not used to doing this, you’re probably wondering how to start. The way you start is by checking in with yourself and how you feel throughout your day. You begin by understanding how hunger and fullness happen for you and what the signals for both feel like. This will help you to practice knowing when it’s time to eat or stop eating and to observe the patterns of your eating habits and behaviors.
An example of this might be missing lunch because of a busy day at work, only to find yourself ravenously eating everything and anything you can get your hands on by 6 pm. Compare this with days when you do take time for lunch and you find yourself comfortably hungry when dinner time rolls around.
TECHNIQUE #3: Embrace receiving pleasure from food.
There are two primary primal pleasures we experience as humans: eating and sex. They both give us pleasure in different ways for a reason; when something is pleasurable, we want to do more of it. On a biological level, the pleasure of sex means encouraging procreation and perpetuation of our species, while pleasure with eating means we will give ourselves the necessary sustenance to survive in order to procreate. Even though procreation is no longer a driving force for many of us, we still maintain these evolutionary drives for primal pleasure.
When we try to bully or fear-monger ourselves into following a restricted diet, or other eating rules and restrictions, the attempt is almost always accompanied by a loss of pleasure with food and eating. As such, I encourage you to give yourself permission to enjoy pleasure and satisfaction with your eating and food choices.
Yes, food is fuel, but it is SO much more than just energy: it is meant to be fun and sensual and enjoyable. It’s a symbol of celebration and community and how we express and show our love to ourselves and others. If we slow down and take the time to fully notice and savor our food, we will not only nourish our bodies and taste buds, but also our souls. And when we take this time for ourselves and our eating experiences, we are naturally able to both satisfy our cravings and regulate our eating. How cool is that?
TECHNIQUE #4: Practice relaxing into the uncertainty of the journey.
If we are in a constant state of stress because we can never know for sure what is lurking just around the next corner of our life, we will be in constant battle with ourselves in the life we are living.
The only certainty in life is that life is uncertain. Since there’s nothing we can do to change that (short of inventing a time machine or accurate fortune telling), why don’t we instead relax into the fact that we don’t know what’s coming and that we will meet it when it does come.
What’s the point in worrying or stressing about a future “what if” that may or may not even happen? All that does is rob the present moment of enjoyment. When you are stressed and in a state of worry, your body believes that you are in life-threatening situations RIGHT NOW, and it intelligently tries to protect you by allotting energy to your limbs and your lungs so you can fight, freeze, flee, or fawn.
This stress response down-regulates your metabolism, shuts down your digestion and ultimately promotes energy storage as fat cells, effectively contributing to weight gain.
So practice relaxing into your present moment as best you can, accepting that life is uncertain and knowing that you will show up as you need to in the future stress-inducing scenarios if/when they happen.
“But won’t I lose all control with my eating and just eat and eat and eat and never be able to stop?!”
This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions that I get from clients. And the answer is no, you won’t.
Here’s why: your body will tell you what you need and when you need it. In the long run, you’ll naturally make food choices that balance your nutrient needs and help to make you feel and function your best, all while holding space for honoring your cravings and energy needs. You’ll find that as you practice intuitive nourishment that you balance your eating to satisfy all of your nutrient, energy, and pleasure needs while enjoying fun foods and flavors along the way.
Because remember: part of the appeal with “off limits” foods is that they’re forbidden, so they of course become more appealing and alluring as a result. But if they’re not forbidden, that means you can have them whenever you want, which causes them to lose the urgency and energy driving you to want them in the first place. If you know you can have them whenever you want, then you can be more open to letting your body tell you when you want it.
Now I will say, the pendulum can and often does swing the other way at first when you first begin to intuitively nourish. It takes your taste buds 10-14 days to adjust and habituate. This means you’ll start noticing more enjoyment with new foods, flavors, and textures and subsequently more boredom with having the same thing over and over again. This practice of building trust with yourself and knowing your needs does take time, experimentation, and curious observation. But as you practice and proceed the power of those forbidden foods will no longer hold their sway over you.
Remember: practice makes progress NOT perfection! We’re not striving for perfection here, just sustainable, curious, non-judgmental practice.
The journey is an ebb and flow that we must ride along with. Somedays will look different than others - and that’s exactly as it should be! It’s a practice. A process. An experimental experience of feeling healthy, joyous, and totally at home in your own body. It’s a time of discovering the way and why of YOU and learning how to be who you are.
And here’s a hint: there is no right or wrong way to be you.
