{"id":10654,"date":"2023-01-21T03:33:30","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T03:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yogajournal.com\/?p=108593"},"modified":"2023-01-21T03:33:30","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T03:33:30","slug":"trying-intuitive-eating-an-expert-shares-mindfulness-practices-that-can-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/21\/trying-intuitive-eating-an-expert-shares-mindfulness-practices-that-can-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying Intuitive Eating? An Expert Shares Mindfulness Practices That Can Help"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In recent years, it\u2019s become pretty clear that weight-loss and other restrictive diets, for the most part, just don\u2019t work. You lose a few pounds. You hit a plateau. You gain the weight back. Rinse and repeat. But it\u2019s a cycle that we keep trying, hoping that this<\/em> time something will be different. In the mid \u201890s, a pair of nutrition experts <\/a>developed the \u201cintuitive eating\u201d model to address what they call the \u201cfailed paradigm.\u201d They wanted to turn the traditional approach to dieting on its head and release people from the fruitless cycle of dieting.<\/p>\n

Now, Jenna Hollenstein, author of Intuitive Eating for Life: How Mindfulness Can Deepen and Sustain Your Intuitive Eating Practice<\/a>, takes intuitive eating to another level by incorporating the principles of meditation practice. Here, she explains the connection between the two.<\/p>\n

What is the principle behind intuitive eating?<\/h3>\n

Dieting teaches you to fight with your biology and to trick yourself into not feeling hungry, to eat less than would actually be satisfying, to eat substitutes for the foods that you actually want. Intuitive eating is all about listening to your body to tell you what you eat, when you eat it, and how much you eat. They call it the \u201canti diet\u201d because with dieting, the what, the when, and the how-much are all prescribed.<\/p>\n

How did the Intuitive Eating model develop?<\/h3>\n

The originators of the Intuitive Eating<\/a> model, registered dietitians and nutrition therapists Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, were experiencing what all dieticians experience: You impart your wisdom to your clients. Clients take that wisdom about weight loss and behavior-change home with them. They sometimes lose weight. But they return later, having gained back that weight and then some. People are deeply affected by this psychologically. They think something is wrong with them or that they\u2019ve failed.<\/p>\n

So Resch and Tribole started poring over research<\/a> that looks at what happens when you restrict people\u2019s food. Over the years, researchers have observed that people who intentionally restricted what they eat\u2014or who were even thinking of restricting their food\u2014end up eating more and generally focusing more on food. It\u2019s both a biological response and psychological response to restriction. When we try to overpower our biology, there\u2019s a backlash. So putting people on a diet is trying to control the uncontrollable. We\u2019re trying to override an already innately wise body.<\/p>\n

What does intuitive eating look like in practice?<\/h3>\n

Dr. Tracy Tylka<\/a>, a psychologist who studies body image and eating behavior, characterizes intuitive eaters as people who eat primarily in response to biological hunger, who give themselves unconditional permission to eat, and who have ways of dealing with emotions that don\u2019t involve food. And they choose foods that don\u2019t just taste good, but feel good in your body.<\/p>\n

So you\u2019re eating primarily to meet your physical need for food\u2013less for emotional reasons or entertainment. There\u2019s no \u201cbetter\u201d food; there\u2019s no \u201cworse\u201d food. The carrot and the carrot cake all exist on an equal moral plane. You know that it\u2019s sometimes okay to soothe yourself with food, but you also have ways of coping with emotions that don\u2019t involve food.<\/p>\n

That seems counter to a lot of what we\u2019re taught about how we should approach our diet.<\/h3>\n

I think that those ideas came about because of this belief that the body can\u2019t be trusted. We\u2019ve become so fixated on this idea that something outside of our physical body knows better than we do, that we outsource the body\u2019s intelligence.<\/p>\n

The concept behind intuitive eating is that there\u2019s this continuous communication going on between body and mind. It says, \u201cOh, that sensation means that I\u2019m hungry.\u201d Then you ask yourself what you\u2019re hungry for and what will probably be most satisfying. And you give yourself the permission to sit and eat until your body starts to communicate to you that it\u2019s getting full and experiencing satisfaction.<\/p>\n

How does satisfaction come into play?<\/h3>\n

There are 10 principles<\/a> of intuitive eating and one of them is \u201cdiscover the satisfaction factor.\u201d When the third edition of Resch and Tribole\u2019s book came out in 2012, they put satisfaction right in the center of all the other principles. By doing so, they also sort of radically positioned pleasure as really important to connecting with self regulation.<\/p>\n

Connecting with pleasure and satisfaction helps clarify what\u2019s overeating and what\u2019s undereating. If you\u2019re not reaching satisfaction, you might be undereating. If you continue eating beyond the point where you are satisfied, you could be overeating. But who decides what enough is? It\u2019s the individual.<\/p>\n

How did the connection to meditation come in?<\/h3>\n

I was working with my meditation teacher, Susan Piver<\/a>, and I started connecting the dots between intuitive eating and meditation. With intuitive eating, we are working with the reality of our biological needs. Meditation<\/a> helps us work with the reality of our emotions and our relationship with discomfort and pleasure.<\/p>\n

So both practices\u2014meditation and intuitive eating\u2014are ways to reconnect with the wise body?<\/h3>\n

Yes, and also to work with things as they are. Our culture is so obsessed with making things better. Optimizing. Knowing the exact amount of different nutrients we\u2019re supposed to be taking in. Stocking the fridge with the superfoods<\/a>. We\u2019re always trying to be better, always healthier.<\/p>\n

Intuitive eating is a way of reconnecting with something that was never lost, but that just sort of went to sleep. And that\u2019s interoception<\/a>\u2013that ability to perceive, in real time, what\u2019s happening, and make decisions based on the sensations in your body.<\/p>\n

It is the anti diet. You don\u2019t need anyone to tell you what or when or how much to eat. You don\u2019t need the experts. You don\u2019t need the programs. You don\u2019t need the special food. You don\u2019t need the modified foods because you possess that capacity to say yes, no, how much, or why. No, I don\u2019t actually need the peanut butter cup; I need to call my mom<\/em>. That discerning quality is where mindfulness really helps. You\u2019re aware of what\u2019s actually happening right now.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean you can never eat for entertainment or eat for fun or eat for soothing<\/a>. You can eat a fabulous meal and enjoy it. And when you get to the point of satisfaction\u2014a comfortable fullness after eating what you want to eat\u2014you can stop.<\/p>\n

What have been the outcomes of working with people who are practicing intuitive eating?<\/h3>\n

I think some aspects of it stick with people right away, but it is a practice that unfolds for the rest of your life. Sometimes people will work with me for a period of time, stop for a while, come back. I\u2019ve had people reject intuitive eating because that means their body reaches a weight that they\u2019re not comfortable with. I\u2019ve had clients initially reject intuitive eating for that reason, then go on to work in the larger anti-diet and fat liberation<\/a> field. I have to believe that there were some seeds of intuitive eating there.<\/p>\n

So intuitive eating is a healthy approach to eating, but you may not get skinny from doing it.<\/h3>\n

That\u2019s right. You might stay the same weight. You might lose weight. You might gain weight. But the fact is that some people will never be skinny. Some people are always going to be in a bigger body and other people are going to be in a thinner body. Part of why we know that the BMI is a crappy indicator of health is that there\u2019s no actual normative range across populations. Your body decides where it wants to be in terms of weight. And that\u2019s often the hardest thing for people to accept. It makes a lot of sense that somebody in a bigger body would want to be in a smaller body b<\/span>ecause for people in larger bodies, our culture is very hostile.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the suggestion that we all need to aspire for thinness that has created what people call the \u201cobesity epidemic.\u201d You know, if people could have just been respected in their diverse range of bodies and been encouraged to practice habits like physical activity, eating nutritious food, processing trauma, getting adequate rest, managing stress, connecting with people\u2013those basic human needs\u2013I think things would be very different now.  And changes need to happen on a much larger and systemic level\u2014with agriculture, pharma, and other businesses that benefit from people trying to fix their bodies.<\/p>\n

How does your mindfulness work add to the evolution of intuitive eating?<\/h3>\n

Mindfulness has been on the rise in terms of popularity in the last several decades, so people understand that it\u2019s a practice of paying attention in a certain way. Being present has always been a part of intuitive eating. Because you have to be present in order to connect with interoception. Your mind and your body have to be in the same place for your mind to say, \u201cOh, that feels like a sensation of hunger.\u201d I\u2019ve found that people who either have a meditation practice or start learning how to meditate take to the teachings of intuitive eating quicker. The two practices are very complementary.<\/p>\n

Why is that?<\/h3>\n

My meditation practice\u2014shamatha<\/a>, a type of meditation from the Theravada Buddist tradition\u2014reminds us how to feel. So we\u2019re honing interoception, because we\u2019re paying attention to and prioritizing feeling. Meditation also encourages us to stay with ourselves through any number of mind states, thoughts, and emotional states that we experience. So we develop a greater capacity to tolerate a range of emotions. And that makes us less reactive.<\/p>\n

If somebody is prone to emotional eating, for example, when an uncomfortable emotion hits, the response to eat happens almost automatically. But with meditation, it\u2019s almost like you can stretch time out. You recognize that this is a situation in which I could eat to try to change my state, but I\u2019m going to practice staying with myself. I\u2019m going to really figure out what would more precisely meet my actual need. What is my actual need and how might I tend to that?<\/p>\n

Why do you think incorporating mindfulness practice works?<\/h3>\n

I think that\u2019s because it stabilizes the nervous system. Of course, it\u2019s not for everybody. If you have unprocessed trauma, it might not be wise to sit down and quiet the body and pay attention to what\u2019s going on in the mind. But if you\u2019re in a place where you can do that, then you start to be both the feeler\u2014the person experiencing the moment\u2014and the observer. And that just gives you more choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Trying<\/figure>\n

Meditation to enhance awareness may be key to making the most of the \u201canti-diet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post Trying Intuitive Eating? An Expert Shares Mindfulness Practices That Can Help<\/a> appeared first on Yoga Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37,35,36],"class_list":["post-10654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ayurveda","tag-blogs","tag-yoga","tag-yogacourseware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogacourseware.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}