Is Intuitive Eating Intuitive?

Here's the thing - intuitive eating is a skill! Intuitive eating does not come naturally. In this episode I will explain what intuitive eating is and why or why not it might not be right for you. 

If you have questions, or topics that you want to hear about, head over to our Instagrams https://www.instagram.com/bayleethedietitian/ or https://www.instagram.com/brianna.dietitian/ and send us a DM! You can also follow the podcast https://www.instagram.com/mocktailminutes/

Featured Mocktails: 

Liquid IV

Click play, sip back, and be empowered.

Transcript

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Brianna 0:22

Hello everyone and welcome back to this week's episode of Mocktail Minutes. This is Brianna. Today I am drinking one of the Sugar-free Liquid IVs, the peach flavor. They were on sale at Costco, but also I just feel like Liquid IV has been doing a really good job of making me feel hydrated lately. So that's what I'm having. Today I'm gonna be talking about why intuitive eating may not be. For everyone. And caveat, I'm not against intuitive eating. I know a lot of intuitive eating dieticians. I know a lot of people who are intuitive eaters and they love it, and it changed the relationship with food. I love that. But I am, I'm continuously having this conversation with some of my clients. Like I just, I don't know what to eat, how to eat. It's always on my mind. Blah, blah, blah. And I feel like just telling someone who has a lot of food noise and who doesn't really know how to balance meals and who doesn't know how to tell if they're full or they're hungry, just oh, eat when you're hungry or eat. Do it intuitively can be a little bit more stressful and not helpful. If you are gonna be. Someone who wants to be an intuitive eater, learn more about it. I highly recommend that you work with a dietician, but also a dietician that is a certified intuitive eating counselor. So these are people that have gone through like the steps of learning the steps of intuitive eating. They know how to help you implement it, et cetera. Because intuitive eating isn't just oh, if you're hungry, eat or oh, you want pizza? Yeah, go eat it. It's a lot more in depth than that. And you want someone who can walk you through all the steps. 'cause it really is like a progressive thing. So I'm gonna first go through, let me pull it up. There are 10 principles of intuitive eating. All of them are fantastic, but I'm gonna go through 'em and then I'm just gonna talk about why it may be for you or it may not be for you. So one is gonna be reject the diet mentality. Two. Honor your hunger. Three. Make peace with food. Four. Challenge the food police. Five. Respect your fullness. Six. Discover the satisfaction factor. Seven. Honor your feelings without using food. Eight. Respect your body. Nine. Exercise. Feel the difference. And 10. Honor your health. I feel like sometimes people forget the honor your health part, like that is a principle of intuitive eating. So they're not just gonna say, oh, go eat three cakes in a sitting because you intuitively want that. They're not, because that's not honoring your health or respecting your body. But again, it is a, it's a flow that you go through. So I like intuitive eating for some people, but again, for me, I. I have to tailor, and I've learned this, the more I go along is you have to tailor yourself to provide nutrition information to people the way that they need to hear it or how they need to hear it. Like for example, I'm, I have a new client and she was working with a previous dietician. She loved that dietician. She learned a lot. She was like doing great, but she's the only thing is she just keeps telling me, eat when I'm hungry. She's I'm a little bit overwhelmed by that because I always feel hungry and I wanna lose weight, and I just have a lot of food noise in my head because of it, which makes sense. So even if my goal is to get you to intuitively eat and have you to have that relationship with food, I can't always teach from that place. I have to teach it in a way that makes you feel comfortable and allows you to kinda grow. In your knowledge and competency, I don't know if that makes sense, but sometimes, and this is totally fine, there's a lot of dieticians that niche down and they just wanna do intuitive eating and that's great. But if you're someone who doesn't know how to intuitively, or that like really stresses you out, dieticians should be able to change how they're presenting this information. But I always say like dieticians are like therapists. It's really hard to find good ones and it's hard to find someone that you mesh with to be completely honest. Like all dieticians out there are great, but they might not be great for you. Just like I know I have worked with some clients and they're like, oh, I am not a great fit for them, and that's okay. That's okay. That. So intuitive eating is really great for you. If you have a history of an eating disorder, extreme restriction, extreme diet mentality, which it's I feel like I'm talking to everyone between the ages of 20, 25 and 45, but if you're someone who's just I can't. Have a relationship with food that's about numbers or about measurements or anything like that. This is gonna be for you because intuitive eating is not using calories to like measure things or not like telling you eat a certain amount of grams of protein. They're not going to give you that data, like they really are teaching you how to build your plate in a way that meets all those principles without. The typical dieting mentality, and it's technically, if it is not for someone who wants to lose weight, can you lose weight with intuitive eating? Yes, you can just you can lose weight with pretty much anything. But intuitive eating is not a weight loss solution. It's not supposed to be. It doesn't claim to be. So that caveat, if you're someone with a history of an eating disorder, you're somebody who. Doesn't really wanna lose weight, you just want to improve your relationship with food and your body. Great. And again, like with anything, there's nothing saying that you can't do other things and then go learn to intuitive eat, and vice versa. There's a lot of people that do intuitive eating. They gain a ton of knowledge, respect. They get, they break ties. The bad relationship ties of food, and then maybe they're ready to implement some other type of things that previously would've seemed extremely restrictive or dieting, because now they have a different relationship with food, but it's very personalized. So the reason why I say it's not for everyone is because if people knew how to eat. I would not have a job. Okay. I would not have a job. And funny thing is I went into dietetics being like, I love nutrition, I love working out. I know exactly how to do it. I'm gonna go get a degree so that I can prove to people I know how to do it. And while getting my degree, I learned I didn't know shit. I was like, wow. Interesting, right? So people just don't know how to eat. And your relationship with food, your mealtime habits, all of that are largely dependent on how you grew up around food, your mindset around food. Like your rituals around food. Are you someone who's used food as a reward? Are you someone who every, family event, there's food? Are you someone from a clear your plate type family? Or are you going to eat all that type family? People don't really know how to eat. And again, your relationship with food goes very deep. And this is why sometimes it feels like we're in a therapy session when we talk 'cause we're really unlocking like, why the heck am I doing that? Why every time I'm upset with work, am I going and eating the whole. Thing of Oreos, like, why am I doing that? There's a reason you're doing it. It's not a willpower thing, it's the tie that you have with food and you've used it as a reward. And honestly, food feels good. Anyone who tells you that food doesn't make you feel good is an idiot because it is scientifically proven. Yes, it does make you feel good, and when you're emotionally eating, you just wanna feel good, and food is a way to do it. The problem is you don't feel good after, and likely it goes against your goals. So with that being said. You need to understand what food does for you, what the different macronutrients are, what are micronutrients, what do they do for my body? What the heck is protein? What does protein do for me when I put it on my plate? What are carbs? The different types of carbs other than I just don't eat carbs and they're bad for me. You have to learn all these things because we're not taught that, it's not like we have a class in school that just breaks all this down for you. So you need to learn what do these all do for me, because that kind of helps you. Rewire that thinking in your brain about what is good, what is bad? Because you're confidently like applying things like you confidently know, I know protein does this. I'm, I get to pay attention to what this does in my body. Again, not to say intuitive eating doesn't do this. It does, it just does it differently. So it is normal for you to not know how to eat it is I can't, if I had a dollar for every time someone was like, I just want to eat like a normal person. I would work a lot less because I've had a lot of money. People want to just eat normally and they don't know how, and it's not a you fault. So if that's you and you feel overwhelmed, that is why, because you are being told to do something that you don't have a skillset to do. That's why if you've been stressed out and you've been trying to intuitively eat and you feel like it's not working for you, you can try something else. That is okay. A lot of the things that I do, I will call like informed intuitive eating. I'm not trying to steal the phrase intuitive eating. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm not claiming to teach you how intuitive to be. I'm not, but I'm trying to teach you like this is what different nutrients do in your body. Now, do with that what you will. Okay. And that takes a while to get to that is something that's like you've arrived at. The finish line, that's not something you're doing in the beginning. So I'm walking you through it. It's baby steps. It's how do I get there so that way I know how to build my plate and I know how to manage my weight and I know how to manage my blood sugar and all those things. Because you've learned how to do that, then you will feel confident. And I'm gonna tell you, even when you have arrived to that finish line, it is very normal to still have some days where you're like. Is that okay? Was that good? Wait, what am I doing? That's normal. You're gonna have that. It's not a, like once you've arrived there, you just will never ever have another bad thought about food. That's, I wish, but that's not how it works. But the goal is to have mostly good thoughts around food. Feeling confident in what you're eating, knowing what it's doing in your body, knowing why, wait, why am I so much more hungry today than I was yesterday? Like being able to understand the reasons for that and how to tweak it so that you feel good and you can just eat normally and move on instead of second guessing yourself all the time. So I hope this made sense. I wanted it just to be like a short and sweet. I wanted to hop on 'cause I think it's Tuesday and I've had this conversation like four times this week. If you are getting the message of just eat when you're hungry and that is stressing you out. It's because you need to have a little bit more education around food and you need to work with somebody who is gonna help you out with that. And again, maybe you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know, I think I'm ready just to jump into intuitive eating. I don't wanna really think about food as like numbers or have like hardened rules or I just, I need to get that outta my head. Fantastic. I've known people who have done great with it, but. It's not for everyone, and that's okay. And if you're working with a dietician or a nutritionist, a dietician I'm not gonna go down. I'm not gonna go down a rabbit hole. If you're working with a dietician who is trying to apply certain principles. To your goals that are stressing you out. Feel be confident and just say, Hey, that stresses me out. I do not get it. If, maybe you feel hungry all the time, like leptin resistance is a thing. Having imbalanced blood sugar is a thing. Having a, emotional eating problem, all of those are a thing and it's gonna impact. When and when you feel hungry and how hungry you feel. And so maybe you are not the candidate to do that. If your blood sugar is going up and down all day, I'm gonna tell you right now, you're gonna be hungry all day. And it's not because your body is needing nutrients, it's because of that blood sugar spike and crash, same with leptin resistance. You can have a beautiful meal that's perfectly balanced, good portion, eat the whole thing and still feel hungry. In those cases, again, letting them know, Hey, I don't think I'm someone that can do that. And hopefully you're working with someone that's okay let's tackle this from a different, from a different perspective. But knowing there are dieticians out there who are like, this is how I teach. Take it or leave it and know that maybe they're not the right one for you. So hopefully this was helpful. This was like a quick one, but I just wanted to remind you guys that just eating when you're hungry. Is a much larger and complex and harder thing than people make it sound. Okay? So hopefully you guys enjoyed this. Hopefully there's somebody out there who has been struggling with this that feels validated and okay, I'm not doing something wrong when just told like. When you're hungry. Okay. Anyways, I will be back. Next week with a brand new episode. So if you guys have certain topics that you want, let us know at mocktail minutes. On Instagram, we are trying to figure out some good like guest speakers to come on and talk about different things to give you variety, but knowing what you guys wanna hear makes that so much more easier. If you have any ideas or requests, drop 'em over at mock till minutes. But until then, I hope you guys have a fantastic week. Bye.