Let's break down the basics first, shall we?

What is Intuitive Eating?

IE is a non diet, weight inclusive, and researched backed self care eating framework that revolves around 10 principles. The principles work by either cultivating or removing obstacles to body awareness. It recognizes that a person's relationship to food is just as important- if not more- than what a person actually eats.

Intuitive Eating honors your health by teaching you how to learn and respond to your own body’s cues- instead of the outside noise from the diet and wellness industry.

Where did IE even come from?

The year was 1995 (although the idea of eating intuitively as a concept started around 1970)...

Dieticians Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDERD-S and Elyse Resch, MS, RDS, CEDS-S were both working as nutritionists, helping clients to lose weight.  After several years in the business, they began noticing how all the weight loss methods they were using weren’t working.  And that the...

To find out how we got here, we've got to go into the past...

Larger bodies were deemed 'uncivilized' long before the medical and scientific communities began to label them as a health risk.

The correlation of weight and health started with the growth of the slave trade, European philosophers began cataloging physical traits they saw in different societies.  In an attempt to create some sort of 'evolutionary hierarchy', they labeled fatness as a marker for 'savagery' because it appeared more often in people of color, while thinness appeared more often in white people, men, and aristocrats.  Thus began the racist, classist, and sexist roots of weight stigma. 

Doctors, up until early 19th century, had seen weight gain as a natural process of aging.  But feeling increasing pressure from their patients who decided they needed to lose weight, and an emerging insurance business that started the use of the BMI scale (created by an ASTRONOMER almost 200 years ago) to...

There are so many reasons you might not feel hungry.

Sickness and stress are two big ones...

If you're a parent, you might be familiar with this conversation.  

When your kid is home sick, there's a good chance you talk to them about needing to eat even if they don't feel like they want to.

Because you know that we need food to heal, to grow, to fight illnesses and infuse ourselves with energy.

And although we freely give out this advice to our young ones, our friends- we're less likely to heed our own advice.

In light of the current state of medications meant for a medical condition being prescribed for weight loss, I've been thinking a lot about the feeling of hunger.

And how many reasons we might not feel hunger are directly related to the diet industry.

Much like people who don't feel hungry after bariatric surgery, people taking weight loss drugs face a possible similar fate; not being able to nourish themselves properly.

And potential malnutrition and illnesses that...

I've worked with thousands of clients over the years, and I can safely say that most of them aren't eating enough.

So what does that look like?  Ask yourself this...

What's missing?

Is it a certain MACRONUTRIENT?

Carbs, Protein, Fats?

Those are the big ones that are often left out of diet plans.

Is it QUANTITY?

Are you stopping yourself from eating to fullness?

Are you following serving guidelines on a package, or according to a calorie limit?

Is it SATISFACTION?

Are you eating 'healthified' versions of your favorite food- sometimes in excess of fullness- and still not feeling satisfied?

Are you choking down dry toast and avoiding pasta made from flour at all costs?

If you think following 'healthy' food rules is working, consider how much time you spend thinking about food OUTSIDE of your actual meal times.

And that maybe you're focusing on the wrong things.

Because when you eat according to what your body needs, your brain gets to think about other...

Let's talk about some of the 'health hacks' you do or have heard about from your trusted fitness professionals (although not this one ;)

 You may know by now that I spent a good decade deep in Eating Disorders...

And because I spent years throwing up or severely restricting- I thought that was THE definition of disordered eating.

 Maybe you do too.

 Or, maybe you already know what took me a long while to recognize: that distorted eating habits can be extremely destructive, and they don't have to involve binging, purging, and starvation.

 Some examples pulled straight from my past experiences- and maybe your current ones…

•  Filling yourself up with drinks to subdue hunger- like bubbly waters, coffee, tea, wine (the last one being recommended by a popular fit pro) 
•  Putting off breakfast as long as possible
•  Labeling a ‘healthy’ food as a free for all.  Like eating all the baby carrots you want (while also tuning out...

There’s so much noise when it comes to what we should eat, how to move, what it means to be ‘healthy’.

Most of it just blocks your body’s internal signals, its’ innate awareness of what makes you feel good and what doesn’t.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…

No one feels good eating pizza all the damn time.

But the diet industry makes you think that if you allow yourself to eat how you want, you’ll do is eat pizza all the damn time.

Nope.

Yes, there’s a process to undoing what diet culture has taught us for our entire lives. 

And it might take a long curvy road to get there.

But getting to the other side means a healthier and more enjoyable life than letting the scale determine your next meal.

(This post does not reflect the needs of those humans who follow a diet for diagnosed medical conditions)

An outcome that can happen for a million different reasons.

Some of the most common ones?

-Death

-Divorce

-Cancer

-Stress

-Autoimmune Disorders

-Undernourishment (purposeful or not)

-Depression

Less common reasons for weight loss:

-Seeing a therapist

-Increasing your vegetable intake

-Exercising more

-Getting more sleep

Healing your disordered eating

Research has continually proven there is no safe, sustainable way to lose weight.  And those that DO lose weight intentionally, 80% plus will regain that weight and more within 2 years.

And that lose/gain cycle is more harmful to a person’s health- everything from an increase in heart disease to a higher mortality rate overall- than just staying the same weight.

If you're privileged enough to do so, you can change your habits to improve your health- like the ones listed above.

But weight loss?

Not a healthy habit you can create.

And more often than not, it's an outcome you have no control over.

Since I know many of you are/will be dealing with a house full of candy- maybe for the only time this year- I thought it’d be a good time to talk about this.

First, it's important to note that the biggest predictor of binge eating is restriction. 

Second, no matter where you are on your path of having a healthier relationship with food, there's no morality in eating the whole bag (or more).  

AND there's likely a reason (especially if you're in camp only-once-a-year).  

Sometimes there's more to it- not just restriction, but lack of enough food during the day or week, high stress levels, not enough sleep, etc.

And sometimes, we just want it all and eating the whole thing is a conscious choice.

The thing that make both situations neutral is AWARENESS.  

Binging gives us an opportunity to look at the self care pieces we might have missed (like eating enough, sleeping enough, keeping stress levels in check).  

And figure out what we needed in that...

To be clear, I absolutely took part in and promoted these type of workouts at the beginning of my career as a coach.

It was heavily modeled at just about every gym I worked at (and anywhere you get your fitness).

And I understand the intention- making fitness fun .

Yet the impact of these workouts- associating fitness as a means to ‘make up for’ food- is more harmful than the workouts are entertaining.

The diet industry LOVES this time of year, and they have a script the follow…

It’s starts off by warning you of the dangers of the holiday season, sells you on meal and workout plans to keep you ‘in check’, and then REALLY dials in come January.

That’s when they capitalize off off of making you feel shitty for enjoying your grandmother’s pie or taking some time off your workouts.

SOME THINGS TO REMEMBER AS YOU SEE SHIT LIKE THIS IN YOUR FEED. Candy references soon to replaced by turkey, mashed potatoes, cobblers, etc...

FITNESS IS A LONG GAME....