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Welcome back!
We are so glad you are joining us on this journey! Nutrition is an essential part of our lives, yet some of us spend so much of our lives having a negative relationship with food and our bodies. In this newsletter, we hope to bring you information that promotes a non-judgmental relationship with food, exercise, and your body, while providing valid nutrition information from registered dietitians.
In this letter, we will be introducing Intuitive Eating (IE) and it's first five principles according to Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition, by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
Missed last week's letter? Click here for the letter on Stress and Our Health.
This week's letter is written by our Nutrition Team at WashU Dining.
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What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating includes the unconditional permission to eat when hungry and what food is desired. It includes eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, and relying on internal hunger and satiety cues to determine when and how much to eat.
Most humans are born with the instinctual ability to eat intuitively. For example, babies will cry when hungry and pull away from a breast or bottle when they are full. Overtime, some individuals may lose their instinct to eat intuitively. Some reasons for this include ignoring natural hunger and fullness cues, dieting, restricting foods we enjoy, and learned eating habits, such as finishing your plate at every meal or using food as a reward.
Practicing intuitive eating has a number of benefits such as increased satisfaction with food, a greater love for our body, increased feeling of self-worth, and less intrusive thoughts about food and our bodies.
Intuitive eating has 10 principles. In today's letter, we are focusing on the first five.
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Principle #1: Reject the diet mentality.
Keep an open mind to new ways of thinking about food and movement. Controlling and self-monitoring your body leads to a toxic relationship with yourself and lowers self-esteem. Shifting away from tracking, weighing, counting, or mirror checking leads to a more purposeful and connected way of living.
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Principle #2: Honor your hunger.
Providing enough energy to your body each day and eating every 3-4 hours supports a pleasant experience with hunger. Waiting too long to eat between meals and snacks leads to intense hunger and overeating experiences.
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Principle #3: Make peace with food.
Letting go of guilt and shame around food is key to calm the restrict/binge cycle that occurs with dieting. To start, plan to include a few pleasurable meal or snack foods that you truly enjoy each week. This can help reduce feelings of deprivation that drive overeating.
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Principle #4: Challenge the food police.
Our culture and family of origin often tells us certain foods are “good” or “bad”. Work to create a non-judgmental voice with food that asks “how does this food make me feel?” versus judging it’s quality or quantity. The less you judge your food choices, the more you strength your ability to listen to your body’s cues.
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Principle #5: Respect your fullness.
As you practice eating with regularity and choose a variety of foods that both nourish you and bring you pleasure, your fullness becomes more distinct. Practice pausing in the middle of your meal to check in with fullness, and continue eating until pleasantly full.
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