5 Tips to Start Intuitive Eating

1. Get to know your Hunger and Fullness

Listening and honoring your hunger is such a critical piece of beginning to trust yourself. If you don't eat when you're hungry for x y or z reason, you're telling your body "I dont trust you." We are looking to get back to body trust! Start taking stock into where you feel on the hunger / fullness scale pre meal, during the meal, and post meal. The key to doing this exercise, is to try to stay curious, rather than judgmental. Is there a pattern? Working with a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor can be a great resource to unpack this information.

2. Begin Acknowledging Diet Culture

Turn your ears up and and open your eyes to all the diet culture messages around you (overt and subtle). That radio ad for a weight loss center, that social media influecer talking about a diet they’ve tried, that magazine cover discussing someone’s weight changes – that is ALL diet culture. A great way to get started with this, is to give your social media a clean up and get rid of all the diet culture messages around you!

3. Explore Mindful Eating

 Work towards eliminating distractions (watching television, face-timing, scrolling instagram or facebook, etc.) while eating, at least to see how that feels. Are you more in touch with your fullness? How does the food taste? Are you enjoying it more? Slow down. How does this feel? This may not be realistic for all meal times, but try to choose one meal for a few days to experiment and try this.

4. Reject Food Rules

Create a running list of all the food rules you’ve created in your head. Do you not allow yourself dessert every night? Are carbohydrates only allowed at certain meals? Do fruits and vegetables have to be on every plate? As rules start to come up for you in your day to day, jot them down. Beginning to acknowledge these rules is a great place to start as we begin to challenge and reject them. Then working with a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor to break these beliefs down, would be the next step.

5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor

Eat what sounds good to you. If that feels hard in a moment, start considering the following: Does something warm vs. cold sound appealing? Something soft vs crunchy? Something dry vs. something juicy? How do I want to feel after the meal? How hungry am I right now? How do you want to feel after your meal? All of these thoughts help align us with our satisfaction factor.