Let me ask you this: Do you ever think, “Maybe this won’t work for me? Maybe I’m not cut out for this whole intuitive eating thing.” Do you wonder if maybe there’s something wrong with you that won’t allow you to eat intuitively or to have self-control around food or to be able to make wise nutrition decisions that honor your health?
What this boils down to is a lack of trust in yourself. And understandably so. There are dozens of ways that we are taught not to trust ourselves around food. Let me give you some examples.
If, as a child, you were told that you had to finish the food on your plate before you could have dessert, you were taught to override your body’s hunger and fullness signals in order to earn your dessert. This not only taught you to disconnect from your body, it also taught you that dessert is a special food that must be earned through compliant behavior.
You can see where this is a problematic way of thinking.
Another way you have been taught to not trust your body is through the current day use of things like smartwatches and Fitbits, and apps like MyFitnessPal, things that teach us that we must rely on external data rather than internal signals from our bodies.
There’s also the analog version of this where we would track calories and points, and add up the food we’ve eaten throughout the day, trying to stay within some type of prescribed limit, whether that came from something like a diet, such as Weight Watchers or Noom, or even a medical professional, like a dietitian who said you need to stay under X number of calories per day. Or maybe it was something that you created yourself where you’ve decided that you need to stay within a certain calorie range, or a macro range or points if that’s the system that you’re familiar with. We do these things because we don’t trust ourselves and our instincts to accurately guide us towards what we need with food. So we cling onto these external ways of trying to control what we eat, and how much we exercise.
Here’s the thing…
Even the best, most fine-tuned calculation of your caloric needs is still an educated guess. Plus, our bodies are not robots, so they don’t need the exact same amount of calories or macronutrients every single day. There is going to be variability in what we need, depending on a lot of factors. Because of that, our bodies’ own internal signals are going to be the most accurate way to gauge what we need. Those signals are something you were born with, and they still reside within you. Even if you have spent years (or decades) disconnected from them. I want to give you hope, and to show you how to reconnect with the signals, so that you can trust yourself with food, so that you can trust your body to know what to do with the food, so that you can trust your wisdom to know how to honor your health, and your nutrition, and so that you don’t have to cling on to all of these outside rules and numbers anymore. That’s what the intuitive eating process can offer you.
It takes time, and there is a lot of learning and un-learning to do. That’s why the very first module in my course Non-Diet Academy is all about the mindset work of ditching the diet mentality. I want you to deeply understand why the dieting approach backfires 95% of the time. It’s not a flaw within you that is causing dieting to not work. There’s not something wrong with you when you find yourself sneaking down to the kitchen in the late night hours to sneak some cheese out of the fridge or a handful of cookies or crackers out of the pantry. That’s happening because of biological and psychological reasons that make you a normal human being.
In this podcast episode, I am going to break down some specific examples of what it looks like to rebuild trust with your body.
I am going to explain to you what other people did in order to trust themselves again with food, and to embrace this non-diet approach to living, and to embrace intuitive eating. I am going to show you how real life people just like you, did this, and what that journey looked like, and what were the action steps that they took. So that you can start to
1) Have hope that this is indeed possible for you
2) See how it happens
3) Hear what it’s like when you come out on the other side.
They were scared that this wouldn’t work for them, just like you might be feeling. And you know what? It worked out. That doesn’t mean it was easy, or that they didn’t have challenges, but what you can see here is that it’s possible. And if it’s possible for them, it just might be possible for you too.
Resources Mentioned in Episode:
Let’s get connected!
Join my FB Group Intuitive Eating Made Easy
listen & subscribe on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Deezer | Google
Looking for more support on your journey to food freedom and body acceptance?
- Join my Facebook group & community “Intuitive Eating Made Easy”
- Take my FREE quiz “What’s Your Unique Path to Food Freedom?”
- Save $120 on HelloFresh, my fav food delivery service!
- Check out my course, Non-Diet Academy
+ view comments . . .