This is my second post in my series on my approach as a nutrition counselor. To see my first one on my Health At Every Size (HAES) approach, go here.
Intuitive Eating: the concept and principles
Much of the work I do with my clients is based around intuitive eating, an increasing well-known framework for creating a nourishing relationship with food and movement. I think intuitive eating comes across as being quite simple – it’s just about paying attention to hunger and fullness cues, right? Well, that is a piece of it – but it’s actually quite complex and can take a long time to rediscover and implement. (Rediscover because we are all born intuitive eaters!) Intuitive eating is a comprehensive and dynamic concept that involves not only instinct, but also our emotions and our thoughts. In short, intuitive eating is all about reconnecting to your body’s wisdom by listening to your bodily cues, paying attention to your emotions, and thinking rationally about food, eating, and movement.
Intuitive eating is broken down into ten principles; I won’t list them out here, but if you’d like to read through them head over to the intuitive eating website. The purpose of the ten principles is two-fold: first, to cultivate attunement to bodily cues and inner wisdom, and secondly, to remove obstacles getting in the way of that attunement. For example, the first principle is “reject the diet mentality.” Dieting is one of the main disrupters to our ability to listen to our bodies. By learning to reject dieting in its many forms, we are working to remove a huge obstacle getting in the way. The second principle, “honor your hunger,” is about cultivating one’s ability to tune into the bodily cue of feeling hungry. The rest of the principles work in similar fashion by removing obstacles and cultivating attunement.
Intuitive eating in practice
In my practice, intuitive eating is a framework I always come back to. If my practice were a batch of cookies, Intuitive eating would be the sugar. No sugar, no cookies, though sugar of course isn’t the only component. (HAES, which I talked about in a previous post, would be the flour! A random analogy but I think I’ll keep running with it in future posts 🙂 )
I’m a huge fan of practical, hands on work – and Intuitive eating has so many practical applications. I jump around the ten intuitive eating principles as fits the flow of my client sessions and the values of my client. Through the intuitive eating lens, we may explore emotional eating, lingering dieting tools, or what fullness feels like, for a few examples. Intuitive eating pretty much shows up in all my sessions in some form or another. This is due largely to the fact that Intuitive eating is well supported in the research as not only improving one’s relationship with food, but also leading to improved health outcomes (it is very much tied to HAES in that way).
The end goal of all this work is increased satisfaction with one’s eating experience. Dieting takes things away, food rules set the stage for guilt, but the purpose of intuitive eating is to create that sense of wholeness around your eating experience. In short, to have a relationship with food that brings joy and nourishment, which is what Mentha Nutrition Counseling is all about!
Resources
-Are you an intuitive eater? Take the Intuitive Eating Assessment Scale quiz, adapted from research studies, to find out.
-Want to see the research? Intuitive Eating has been picked up by many researchers, with at least 100 (very positive) studies looking at the topic. Here is an updated compilation of all the studies from the intuitive eating website.
-Read the book! It goes through each of the ten steps and has loads of case studies and tips.
–This workbook came out recently, and I actually really enjoyed reading through it. It is super practical, which I love, and it asks some really good questions. It would take a while to work through all the content!
