How to Refocus if You Feel Lost or Stuck With Intuitive Eating

Katy here, and welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body. This episode is a sister episode to the one before it, Episode 139: The 3 Things I Wish I Could Tell You Before You Started Intuitive Eating. If you haven’t listened to that one yet, I want you to go back and listen after this one. It doesn’t matter which order you listen to them in, but I do want you to hear both because they tie into each other.

This episode is about how to refocus, and what to focus your energy on, if you’re feeling lost, stuck or confused with intuitive eating. Given that this is a framework for eating, and an approach towards food that doesn’t have rules to follow, it’s easy to feel like you’re floundering or treading water but like you’re not getting anywhere.

We certainly don’t want to turn the 10 principles of intuitive eating (from the book Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch) into a set of rules, because that’s not what they are or how they’re intended to be used. They are principles, and mindset shifts, that allow you to remove what they call “attunement disruptors” that are getting in your way from being able to listen to your body and eat like a normal person who has never had any issues with food (which is a rarity in the world we live in).

That’s what people say to me so often – that they just want to be able to eat normally, but they’ve lost touch with what that even means because of all of the things they’ve heard that we should and shouldn’t do with our eating, and all of the diets they’ve followed, and all of the crazy things they’ve done to try and lose weight. It sounds so simple, but it’s actually a really loaded question to ask, “What even is normal eating anyway?”

For help with this, we are going to use principle 6 of intuitive eating, “Discover the Satisfaction Factor,” as our guiding force. That’s essentially what this episode boils down to, because if you focus on this one principle, all of the other elements of intuitive eating will fall into place. You’ll see what I mean by that in just a moment. And as a reminder, in the episode prior to this we covered principle 3 which is “Make Peace With Food” and why it’s so important that you are intentionally doing the inner work to rewire the way that your brain thinks about food, so that you can be chill when you have a box of ice cream sandwiches in the freezer, or a bag of Cheetos in the pantry. Those foods don’t have to call to you or make you feel powerless around them. The lingering judgments, guilt and fear that you’re holding onto with these types of foods will keep you stuck. I’m not saying that we throw nutrition out the window or pretend that eating Little Debbies all day is healthy (of course it’s not, but neither is eating kale all day – we’ve got to have variety and balance, right?). I’m saying that when you *actually* make peace with food (which again is literally the name of principle 3 of intuitive eating) then you will be better able to listen to your body, to honor your hunger and fullness, AND to make decisions that support your health. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive in terms of how it plays out, but trust me it works. The labeling of food as good/bad and healthy/unhealthy is quintessential diet mentality, and diet mentality is what got you into this mess in the first place. Hence, we are taking a very different approach.

So back to how to refocus if you’re feeling lost or stuck…

We’re going to recenter ourselves by using principle 6, satisfaction, as our anchor or our North Star. It’s going to guide us towards what we need to do and what we need to focus on.

Satisfaction as the “hub” of intuitive eating – why you should focus on this if you are feeling lost or stuck
Using FLEXIBLE STRUCTURE to refocus yourself, with satisfaction as the goal. (Write these steps down…)
- 1) Create a consistent eating schedule for yourself. Set alarms or put your meals and snacks in your calendar if you need to.
- 2) Practice the Powerful Pause before you eat.
- 3) Pair together carb, protein and fat. Think about what you want, what your body needs, and what you have available to you.
- 4) Be curious about what you’re thinking, feeling or needing outside of food when you find yourself wanting to eat in the absence of hunger.
Let’s come back to satisfaction as our hub.
- Also includes the EXPERIENCE of eating – plating, lighting, sound, environment
- Comfort food is a beautiful thing!
- Connection with others
- Food is more than just a vehicle for getting nutrients into our bodies. We have taste buds for a reason, and we eat in connection with others for a reason.
CTA: Masterclass – Why Intuitive Isn’t Working for You (And How to Fix It)
- It’s happening Mon, July 29 from 6-7pm CST, and it’s totally free. We’ll be meeting on zoom and once you sign up I’ll send you the link. If you can’t make it live, you can still register, and everyone who is signed up will automatically get the replay the next day.
- We’ll be covering…
  - The most common mistakes people make with IE (so you can identify if you’re making any of them)
  - The ESSENTIAL mindset shifts you need to make in order for this to work
  - Troubleshooting where you’re getting stuck – and how to fix it so you can create new momentum and move forward
- To prepare for the masterclass I have a little homework for you. (And even if you’re listening to this in the future after the masterclass has passed, this is still a massively valuable exercise, so I still want you to do it.) You’re going to get out a pen and paper and do a complete brain dump and write down everything that you feel friction around with your eating right now. It doesn’t need to be pretty, or in complete sentences, or have proper grammar. Just put pen to paper and let it flow out. List it off as bullet points. By “friction” I mean the things that make you feel frustrated with your eating, where you feel confused, the things that you hate doing, the ways you wish you ate different or things felt different. It might be that you hate cooking and you have no clue what to make for dinner, or you’re sick of having the same snacks over and over, or you feel like you’ve given yourself permission to eat the foods you used to avoid but now you feel unbalanced and unhealthy with your eating, or you are tempted to go back to dieting but you also know that doesn’t work, so now you feel stuck because you’re not so sure about this whole intuitive eating thing but you also don’t actually want to diet again. Maybe you feel friction because your partner is still stuck in the diet mentality and you are on very different wavelengths with food and he makes you second guess yourself constantly, or you have a health condition and you want to do what you can with nutrition without it becoming the diet mentality but you’re not sure how to do that. There’s no right or wrong here, I just want you to put pen to paper and let your frustrations and your friction points flow out of you. THESE are the things we’re going to be working through and addressing in the masterclass.
- Again, it’s happening Mon, July 29 from 6-7pm CST, and it’s totally free. You can sign up at nondietacademy.com/julymasterclass.
  - If you can’t make it live, no worries, I’ll of course send out a replay be
  - cause I totally get that this doesn’t work for everyone’s schedule, and you might be at work, or on vacation, or at your kid’s swim lessons, or you’re in a different time zone so it’s the middle of the night. No problem, as long as you’re registered you’ll get a copy of the replay sent out the next day and you can watch it at your leisure.
  - HOWEVER, there are perks to showing up live. These masterclasses are so much fun when we have that live energy in the room, and when you can ask questions and get them answered in real time. So as a special bonus for everyone who attends live you’re going to get a guide called Body Image Breakthrough: 52 Weekly Actions of Body Kindness and Respect that will Transform The Way You Feel About Your Body. That’s right, it’s an entire year’s worth of weekly actions and journal prompts that are going to change the way you think about and exist in your body over the next 12 months. It’s one of the juiciest bonuses I’ve ever given out and I cannot wait for you to get your hands on it. The people who have gotten this in the past RAVE about it. And it’s my gift to you for showing up live.
  - The other perk to showing up live is you’ll have the chance to get coached by me during the masterclass in our Q&A section where we are going to troubleshoot where some of you are getting stuck, and why IE isn’t working for you, and come up with an action plan to help you get unstuck.
  - SO…Before you forget, go grab your spot righ tnow. You can register at nondietacademy.com/julymasterclass. All you have to do is enter your name and email and I’ll send you all the details.

That is all for today. Thanks for listening to this episode, and don’t forget to listen to the previous one if you haven’t already. And in case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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