What they Won’t Tell You About Intuitive Eating That I Will

Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body, I’m Katy Harvey your host. Today on the show we are going to be getting real, spilling the tea as they say. This episode was inspired by a recent conversation I had with one of my previous Non-Diet Academy clients, and she told me that there were a few things that I was really honest and transparent with her about that she hasn’t heard in other intuitive eating spaces, and how much she appreciated me setting realistic expectations for her in this process. So essentially, I’m here to tell you the truth about some key elements of intuitive eating today, without sugar coating it. It’s easy for social media to paint a picture of food freedom being all about eating donuts and pizza and not caring what others think, and loving your body, and all this pollyanna stuff – but that’s not actually how it’s intended to work. We’ll get into all of that in a minute, but first…

You know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: Demonizing breakfast cereal

There’s all this stuff floating around on social media about how terrible breakfast cereal is, and how it’s junk and trash and all these other really harsh judgments against this food. Which is so fascinating to me, because it’s like, of all the so-called “processed” foods out there to tear down and pick apart, why is diet culture hating so hard on breakfast cereal? It wasn’t that long ago (ok, maybe it was like 20 years ago now) that Special K had convinced us to go on a diet where we eat a bowl of their cereal multiple times per day instead of eating real meals. 

Oh, how the tide has turned…

To understand how we got here I did a mini-deep dive on the history of cereal, and it’s actually kind of wild so buckle up, here we go. I got most of this info from an article by Angela Lashbrook on Refinery 29. 

Cold cereal, like the crunchy stuff you put milk on (not hot cereal like oatmeal or COW), was first invented in 1863 by a guy named James Caleb Jackson, this super religious vegetarian guy who ran a health spa. It was so rock hard that you had to soak it overnight which cracks me up. Then along comes this guy named John Harvey Kellogg (which is where we get the Kellogg cereal brand) and he came out with granola cereal. Kellogg was apparently another super religious vegetarian guy who believed that masturbation was the cause of everything from epilepsy to acne, and that changing your diet was the solution to this. Specifically, he believed that a person should be avoiding spices, flavors and sugar (so basically anything that makes food enjoyable and taste good). His brother Will Kellogg wants in on the biz and he’s not so rigid with the no sugar thing, and he convinced John that they should add a little sugar to their cereal so that people would actually want to buy it, and that’s how we got Corn Flakes.

Then in the early 1900’s we started getting more and more versions of cereal, including Wheat Chex which were developed by a company called Ralston Purina specifically for followers of Ralstonism which was a racist religious sect (and maybe a cult?) that practiced mind control among its members and the leader was trying to create his own Caucasian race. He also believed that men should do a practice marriage first by doing a trial marriage with someone old enough to be his grandmother, and this dude created his own language. He sounds like a real gem. Really disturbing stuff. 

Then right around the time of WW2 cereals like Cheerios took off which were embraced as an easy and convenient breakfast option, because we had men fighting overseas, women in the workforce and then a simultaneous rise in mass marketing and advertising, including mascots like Tony the Tiger for Frosted Flakes.

Cereal became a staple breakfast option for kids, and I can remember eating cereal for breakfast almost every single day as a kid. I loved Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops, Golden Grahams, Cinnamon Toast Crunch – in fact, I still love cereal today and it’s often the snack I’ll have before bed. 

Cereal consumption peaked in the 1990’s and declined up until 2020 when we saw a spike during the pandemic, which is interesting.

Now we’ve got all this rhetoric online about how “bad” sugary cereal is and how we shouldn’t be eating it or feeding it to our kids. And you’ve got people making TikTok videos in grocery stores yelling at us about how toxic cereal is. 

Here’s my beef with this rhetoric – it’s overlooking the fact that cereal still has many nutritional benefits. If we look at what’s actually in it, what it’s being broken down into inside the body and how our bodies are utilizing it, it’s truly not something we need to be doing all this fear mongering around. Here’s what I mean:

• Cereal is one of the most fortified foods in the grocery store when it comes to vitamins and minerals. Fortification is when we add nutrients to a food. If you look at the nutrition label on cereal, you’ll see that most of it has a ton of added vitamins and minerals, and for people who have a hard time getting those nutrients from other foods this is great. Iron is a good example of a nutrient fortified in cereal that kids can struggle to get enough of, especially if they’re a picky eater. 
• Cereal is one of the main foods in our food supply that contains folate. This was done in response to how we realized that inadequate folate intake causes neural tube defects in babies and that most people don’t consume enough folate from food. It’s also why it’s imperative that pregnant women are taking a prenatal MVI because it contains folate to ensure they’re getting enough.
• Cereal can be a good source of fiber, depending on what type of cereal it is. Fiber is great for our guts and helps keep us regular, helps regulate our blood sugar, and can help with cholesterol levels. 
• Cereal tastes good. We should never overlook the value of pleasure when we’re talking about nutrition. Food is about more than the individual nutrients in it. It also is meant to bring us pleasure and enjoyment.
• Cereal is portable. You can pack dry cereal to take as a snack for yourself, or in the car for your kids when you’re running errands. Cheerios were a staple for my kids when they were little and we’d take them to church because they’d always want a snack and this was one that wouldn’t make too big of a mess. 
• You can put milk on cereal, and then you’re also getting some added protein, calcium and vitamin D. 
• It’s a good source of carbohydrate. Carbs themselves get demonized, but it’s important to remember that carbs are a nutrient, meaning they are necessary for the body. When I’m getting ready to go for an early morning workout, cereal is one of my go-to breakfasts because it’s easily digested energy for my body to use during that workout. 

And again, I’ll come back to what I said in the beginning. Of ALL the foods that could be demonized, why on earth are we picking on cereal so much? I don’t think we should be demonizing any food, but if you’re going to tear down a particular food I think it’s silly to pick cereal as the scapegoat.

So there you have it. Demonizing cereal is wellness woo. Cereal is fine. Eat it if you enjoy it.

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…Things they won’t tell you about intuitive eating that I will. 

• It’s normal to gain some weight in 1st 6 months and then it stabilizes
  • This might freak some people out, but I believe it’s helpful to know what to expect so that you can work through the fear and discomfort rather than freaking out and bailing on the intuitive eating process. In my experience, it’s pretty common to gain some weight in the first 6 months, which makes sense because you’re coming out of deprivation and you’re bringing back in those foods you weren’t letting yourself have, and you’re getting reacquainted with your hunger and fullness signals. It’s a lot to juggle, but your body truly will figure it out and you’ll find that balance and homeostasis with your eating and your weight if you give it a chance. As a loose rule of thumb, if you’re continuing to gain weight past about 6 months, there’s a good chance that something’s not clicking quite right, and we’d want to take a look at that to see where you might not be applying the principles of intuitive eating as they’re intended. If that describes you, feel free to reach out and shoot me a DM and we can chat. I can usually tell pretty quickly when I’m working with a client what’s not working and what we need to hone in on, and that’s the benefit of working with an intuitive eating dietitian who has done this for a while, because we have good spidey senses for things based on the work we’ve done over and over with other people, so we have a good sense of the pitfalls and mistakes that people tend to make, or the things that will trip people up. Plus it’s that thing where we all have our own tunnel vision with ourselves and we can’t see what we can’t see, so having that outside perspective can be really helpful. But to come back to the main point here, it’s normal to gain some weight in the first 6 months or so, and you’ve got to give yourself grace and compassion for that. It doesn’t mean that intuitive eating “isn’t working” if you gain weight. We’ve been so programmed by diet culture to gauge success and failure based on weight. Weight is simply a neutral piece of data from our bodies. And again, if you’re continuing to gain weight past 6 months – if you’ve been doing this for a year or 2 years, and you’re still experiencing weight gain, let’s take a look at that and get curious about what your body is telling us. It does not mean that you should go back to dieting, I promise you that. 

• Self-acceptance of your body happens slowly, and it’s normal to still yearn to be a smaller size on some days
  • It’s easy to look at all the intuitive eating stuff online and to hear people talking about how they let go of dieting and now they accept their bodies. I know this is hard to wrap your mind around, and especially if you’re seeing one thin white woman after another talking about how she accepts her body, and you’re not in a thin body, it can feel like they don’t know what they’re talking about, or it’s easy for them because they fall into society’s standard of what’s acceptable. (Elephant in the room, I am a thin white woman who talks about intuitive eating – and I try to be really mindful of how I talk about my body and body acceptance because I know it can come off as tone deaf for people who live in larger bodies.) We can’t have this conversation without talking about the fact that weight stigma and anti-fat bias are very real things. And it’s one thing to try to accept your body internally for yourself, but it’s another thing to have to exist in a fat body in a world that hates fat people. 
  • When it comes to self-acceptance of your body, it’s often one of the longest and hardest parts of the process. There might be grief work that comes with it. You may need to grieve the fact that you spent so many years (even decades) of your life dieting and trying to shrink your body, only to end up here. What I can tell you is that you will be glad that you worked on self-acceptance in the long run. It’s hard, and there absolutely will be days that you still yearn to be in a smaller body, but the further along you get in this work the more you’ll realize that you truly are worthy of love, acceptance and belonging in the body that you have on any given day. This is some deep healing work, because it’s not just about the appearance of your body. It’s about the deeply held beliefs you have about yourself and your worthiness as a human being. Be patient with yourself as you work on this. 

• Intuitive eating is not, “eat whatever you want, whenever you want.” That’s impulsive eating.
  • This is the #1 mistake that I see people making over and over again. If you’re taking notes, you’re going to want to write this part down, so grab your pen and paper or the notes app on your phone. The social media version of intuitive eating often makes it sound like we should just eat whatever, whenever, and call it intuitive eating and food freedom. Now, yes, you do have unconditional permission to eat what you want to eat, without feeling guilty. That’s absolutely 100% true. AND if you’re actually eating intuitively and listening to your body, you’re not going to be having a free-for-all with food. Listening to your body means honoring your hunger (which also means NOT eating when you’re not actually hungry), and honoring your fullness. It also means slowing down choosing food that’s genuinely satisfying and also makes your body feel good. If we’re just having a free-for-all with food we’re usually not paying attention to how our body feels. We’re only focusing on what tastes good. That’s not how intuitive eating is intended to work. Intuitive eating is about slowing down and being in tune with your body, your thoughts and your emotions, and making choices from a place of self-care and self-compassion – rather than just eating whatever pops into your head.

• My client said, “I don’t think anyone should start intuitive eating based on the book alone. Your Non-Diet Academy and FB group, along with my intuitive eating dietitian made all the difference.”
  • I’m not saying this to brag about myself or my programs, although I do obviously think Non-Diet Academy is pretty awesome. The part of this I want you to soak in is where she said, “I don’t think anyone should start intuitive eating based on the book alone.” In looking back on my own intuitive eating journey, I did it with just the book, and at the time podcasts, online courses and FB groups weren’t a thing. Intuitive eating dietitians also weren’t a thing that I had ever heard of, and even if I had I’m not sure that I would have been open to seeing one. I think my ego would have gotten in my way and I would have told myself that I am a dietitian so why would I need to work with one – which is so naive and short-sighted. I LOVE working with other dietitians as clients. We get to geek out and use our shared expertise to help them on their journey, and I wish I would have been open to some type of support like that. I have had numerous clients come to me and share that they wish they would have sought out coaching and support sooner, because they tried to figure out intuitive eating on their own for a couple of years and they ended up spinning their wheels. Definitely do read the book – I think that’s essential and foundational for understanding what intuitive eating actually is, but I also don’t think it’s sufficient on its own for most people to be able to find the peace and neutrality with food that they’re looking for.
    
• Healing your relationship with food is probably going to take years, not months.
  • I know that this might be deflating to hear, but I want you to pace yourself and have realistic expectations. I frequently see people online talking about how they’ve been doing intuitive eating for X months and they’re frustrated that they don’t have it all figured out yet. This is a byproduct of diet culture promising us quick results. That’s not how this works. If you’ve spent years (or even decades) dieting, trying to lose weight, going back and forth between restrictive eating and binge eating, and you have a stressful relationship with food – it’s going to take time to undo this. My client told me, “I’m so glad you tell people it’s a much longer process. I wish I’d known at the start to take it slow and gentle.” 
  • You might be wondering, “How many years are we talking? 1, 3, 5…10?!” I can’t tell you for sure. I would never lie to you about this, and I’m not going to sugar coat it. What I can tell you is that it’s a process of ups and downs, and truth be told you learn more from the challenges than you do when things are going well. If you can embrace this journey as one of deep inner healing and self-discovery you’ll start to see that you gain so much from the process, and it’s worth it to allow it to unfold at its own pace. Our relationship with food is often symbolic of the relationship we have with ourselves at a much deeper level. When we feel guilty about eating that slice of cake, or undeserving of eating that bagel, we feel that way because we don’t feel worthy as a person, as we are in that moment. I encourage you to give yourself the space to go at your own pace. 
  • Now, are there ways that you can speed up the process so it doesn’t drag on forever, and you don’t get stuck? Yes, absolutely. The process of healing your relationship with food and your body image will go faster if you have support, strategies and tools, and a way to get feedback on what you’re doing and what you’re struggling with and guidance on how to make adjustments or look at things differently. It’s kind of like if I wanted to run a marathon, I could research it online and come up with my own training schedule. But I’m probably going to have better success if I have a coach or someone who’s done it before who can help me figure out what shoes to wear, what to eat before and after a run, how many miles to run each week, when to take those energy gels during a run, how to prevent blisters and chafing, and how to improve my running form so I can be more efficient have better endurance. Similar thing with this process. It will go faster when you have support, and you’re much less likely to get frustrated and defeated and to give up if you have support. A lot of people give up on intuitive eating because they feel like it doesn’t work for them, when they could have worked through their challenges and roadblocks had they had the right guidance. So don’t give up on yourself or this process. It’s not easy, it’s not quick, but it absolutely is worth it, and I believe that in my soul.   

• You don’t have to eat exactly what you’re craving every time you eat. 
  • There are 2 pieces to this:
    • 1) The first is that sometimes when we eat food will be just ok, nothing exciting, just good enough. It will be a 3/10 instead of a 10/10, and that’s ok. I had a client once who had this lightbulb moment when she realized that she was doing what she called “emotionally NOT eating.” What she meant by this was she would be hungry and wanting to eat, but if the exact thing she was hungry for wasn’t available she wouldn’t eat anything. She had this emotional attachment to ONLY wanting to eat things that sounded good in the moment. Now, yes, when possible we want to eat what sounds good, and it’s great when an eating experience can be a 10/10. But that’s not realistic to expect every eating experience to be this way. Sometimes food is just going to be fuel, and we have to be flexible with that. My mentor used to give this analogy that it’s like you’re driving your car to work and you’re running late but you need gas so even though you don’t want to, you have to pull over at the gas station to fuel up. Sometimes with food it’s the same way. We have to fuel up with what’s available even if we don’t want to, and even if it’s not the food we would have preferred. This is part of taking care of our bodies and honoring our hunger.
    • 2) The second piece of not eating exactly what you’re craving every time is that just because you have a craving for a food doesn’t mean you have to immediately honor that craving. I know this sounds counter to intuitive eating, but it’s not. This is related to that impulsive eating thing I mentioned earlier. Let me give you an example. The other day I was catching up on some episodes of The Voice (one of my favorite shows), and there was a commercial for Burger King and the sandwich they were showing looked really good. I had the thought, “Oooh that sounds so good right now!” But that doesn’t mean that I needed to get in my car and drive to Burger King, or that I’m depriving myself if I don’t. If I truly wanted it, I could plan to get it sometime in the upcoming week. By the next morning I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore though. Just because something looks good, or sounds good, doesn’t mean you need to eat it immediately. Intuitive eating means slowing down and checking in with our bodies to see if we are hungry, and if so, what we are hungry for AND what’s going to make our bodies feel good and function well. 

I hope that this real talk has been helpful for you today. I know it’s not the “woo hoo” side of intuitive eating, but it’s important for us to have these authentic conversations about what it looks like to actually do this work to heal your relationship with food. There’s so much misinformation out there from diet culture and wellness culture – and there’s also a lot of misinformation about intuitive eating online too. I’m so grateful to have people like you who listen to this podcast and who are in my world who are dedicated to going deeper and sifting through the messiness of it all. 

If you are looking for some additional support, feel free to reach out to me via email, I’m at katy@katyharvey.net, or shoot me a DM on IG or FB. My inbox is always open and we can have a chat about what you’re struggling with and what you need some support on. I’ve got several ways we can work together in varying capacities and at various price points, so just reach out if you’re interested and we can figure out what would work best for you. 

In the meantime, as always, be gentle with yourself, and we’ll talk again soon!

Rate, Review, & Follow us! 

“I love Katy and Rebuilding Trust With Your Body .” <– If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more people — just like you — who are ready to finally discover peace with their bodies. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode!

Also, make sure to follow the podcast if you haven’t already done so. Follow now!