Photo: Mara ~earth light~

“Close your eyes and follow your breath. If your mind wanders off, just come back to your breathing.”

Some of us are familiar with this type of encouragement being voiced during a guided meditation session. Developing awareness about our sometimes entertaining and exasperating stream of thoughts is one benefit of a meditation practice. To experience the peace, joy, and well-being found in the present moment, we can simply follow our breath and allow our thoughts and feelings to fade into the background.

Like meditation, the practice of intuitive eating allows us to become familiar with a host of vital body signals, which most of us overlook, override, or suppress. Returning to our breath helps us regain clarity in meditation. Similarly, our body’s hunger signals offer centering in our eating life. If you are interested in experiencing a radical sense of wellness in the relationship with your body, then intuitive eating is for you.

Listening to Your Body Gets Results

I discovered intuitive eating in December 2007, as it was the top result of a web search for “listening to your body.” I soon learned that intuitive eating is a non-dieting approach consisting of a set of 10 guiding principles. These principles help create a healthy relationship with food, mind, and body. The originators of this approach, Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA, provide a holistic path to wellness in their ground breaking book, Intuitive Eating.

Here are the 10 Principles:

• Reject the Diet Mentality
• Honor Your Hunger
• Make Peace with Food
• Challenge the Food Police
• Respect Your Fullness
• Discover the Satisfaction Factor
• Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food
• Respect Your Body
• Exercise–Feel the Difference
• Honor Your Health–Gentle Nutrition

You can get an intuitive idea about what will be explored within each principle based on the headings alone. Or, you can read a description of each of the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating.

My mission is to help increase awareness and adoption of this sustainable approach to getting off the giant hamster wheel of dieting. I will offer some insights into the discoveries and challenges that may emerge on your personal intuitive eating journey, and will address the number one question posed by the non-dieting curious.

Eating as a Self-Discovery Practice

Eating is one of the most basic methods that we use to care for ourselves. Therefore, our eating behaviors have a critical impact on our sense of well-being. Through practicing intuitive eating, we become familiar with the unique sensations that our body offers when physically hungry.

Photo: BruceTurner

Each of us has heard and felt gurgles or growls, and may have experienced faintness or a sensation of hollowness in our stomachs. While investigating my unique body hunger process, I discovered a growing sensation of heat in my abdomen immediately before I’m hungry. Previously, I had no awareness of that indicator.

Interpreting your unique body signals helps you optimize your ability to respond properly to your body’s needs. Being clear about your true hunger signals allows you to know when you are truly hungry versus when you are using food to meet or suppress deal with emotional needs. Knowing your true hunger will help you minimize overeating. Additionally, this process helps reveal your own distinctive experiences of satisfaction during and after you eat. The signals for when your remarkable body wants to move and express itself will also become much clearer.

There are invaluable and numerous insights on the intuitive eating journey. What wonders will you discover? Start practicing and let your body take the lead.

Moving Beyond Fear

Of course, the shift into a life beyond dieting has its challenges and pitfalls. Many people have fears of uncontrollable weight gain should they liberate themselves from the controlling diet mentality. However, according to Carol Munter & Jane Hirschmann, authors of Overcoming Overeatingand When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies,weight gain is actually the last stop on the dieting/binge cycle. In effect, people diet, rebel and binge, and then gain the weight back.

A fundamental transformation in my awareness occurred when I began to understand the dieting/binge cycle, and my ability to care for my body was enormously improved by reading When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. I didn’t actually hate my body. It was my ability to care for myself that was underdeveloped.

Avoiding a Tricky Trap

One pitfall on the intuitive eating path occurs when some people misinterpret the 10 principles as a strict set of rules and then turn the process into another diet. As a result, rebellion arises and intuitive eating gets thrown into the pile with all of the other “been there, done that” diets.

Photo: helgasms!

Remember that it is impossible to fail at intuitive eating. Why? As you continue to practice, you get a clean slate with each new meal. You can always simply come back to honoring your body’s hunger and fullness signals.

I began my intuitive eating journey with the intention of “finding balance”. I had lived for decades with a chronic fear of gaining weight and noticed that I did gain easily. So, finding that sweet spot of not losing or gaining was good enough for me.

Like any person living in this weight obsessed culture, thoughts of “losing weight” do surface regularly. When thoughts arise in meditation, we notice them, sometimes name them, and let them go. I remind myself that “weight loss” is just another thought and I come back to my hunger and fullness signals. Any time I eat in a non-intuitive way, I know that I have an opportunity to come back to my hunger and fullness signals at my next meal.

Consistency over perfection is an attainable goal. Making peace with food and your body is possible.

An Answer Revealed

So, what’s the number one question voiced by those curious about a non-diet approach?

“Does intuitive eating really work?”

What people are really asking is, “will I lose weight?” Authors and practitioners in the non-dieting field will tell you that your body will find its “natural weight.” Some of their clients have lost weight, some have gained weight, and some have experienced no change in weight at all. My answer to that question is that you will experience a variety of life-enhancing results from practicing intuitive eating.

Dieting creates an ongoing war between your mind and your body. Ultimately, when you choose to end that war and make peace, you will discover that only your body can reveal the answers. In response to your growing ability to care for your body in nurturing ways and to respect and honor its signals, your body may choose to shift sizes. Dieting forces a shift. With intuitive eating, you allow your body to determine if and when a size shift happens.

That’s radical wellness.

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