My Thoughts On Intuitive Eating
What the frick is intuitive eating? Haha, I feel you. When I first heard of this absurd term, I thought it was some new age thing where you have to meditate before a meal or something. Thankfully, it is NOT.
Intuitive eating is a philosophy and practice for you to listen to your own hunger and fulfillment cues. In order to do this, you need to really tune in to your body and be able to differentiate between your physical hunger and your emotional hunger.
Physical hunger is your body screaming at you because it needs nutrition in order to continue to function. Symptoms of physical hunger usually involves exhaustion, irritation, stomach pangs, or belly rumbling.
Emotional hunger usually happens when you find yourself incredibly stressed out at work, if you are bored, or sad, and whatever else that drives you to eat.
I find that with physical hunger, I don’t care what I eat at that point – I JUST NEED FOOD! However, when I am emotionally hungry I often want to eat something specific like having a bubble tea or a bag of chips. These are more commonly what people call “comfort foods” because it soothes you. So rather than follow some sort of meal routine, you can recognize that feeling of hunger and eat.
On order to make this work, you do not need to portion your meals and instead eat until you are full. So rather than sitting at home chowing down with Netflix playing on your phone, you need to actually sit down and pay attention to what you are eating and how you feel. It is far too easy to divert your attention to anything that will mask how your body is feeling.
Mind you, WHAT you eat is also very important. Don’t smash a bag of chips and expect your body to tell you it is full. You need to fill your body with actual nutrients from a balanced meal for this to effectively work. Otherwise you will be hungry in no time and wonder why you are always starving.
I prefer using this method of eating and I have been practicing it for over a year now. Previous to this I had been on 4 meals a day evenly spaced out and it was a struggle for me because I hated that they were all evenly portioned and I never felt satisfied. It also bothered me that I was eating at very specific times during the day and it didn’t always work with my schedule.
By intuitively eating, I can have 1 huge meal and then eat 1 or 2 smaller ones and be absolutely satisfied for the day. If you are wondering, I do slip up here and there because I am only human. However, I continue to keep this practice and remind myself that sometimes I could just be feeling emotional and therefore I don’t actually need to eat.
I challenge you to this: Take one day to practice intuitive eating. You will need to ditch the entertainment and just focus on when you are starting to feel full.
If you’d like to know more about, and start taking responsibility for your own health, fitness, and wellness, please reach out to Crux Fitness Richmond for any of your personal training needs.
