Sick of being told what to eat? Try the anti-diet

When you were a baby and young child, your relationship with food was natural and easy. You ate when you were hungry. You stopped eating when you were full. And you didn’t give your food choices a second thought. You listened to your body.

I’m guessing somewhere along the way you lost your natural ability to just eat. Most of us do. We eat too much or too little. We think about food all the time instead of just during mealtime. We count calories or eliminate entire food groups.

Suddenly, eating is serious work that we have to put a lot of thought into. To put it bluntly, eating becomes exhausting. But it doesn’t have to be. You can let go of oppressive dieting rules and learn to eat intuitively again, just like when you were young…

8 simple steps that make eating fun again

About 25 years ago, registered dietitians Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole published a book called “Intuitive Eating.” They felt that diet culture was becoming toxic, so they developed a simple (but not always easy) way to rehab your relationship with food, so eating was fun again.

Their book was popular when it was first published. But it’s experiencing a surge of popularity again today. Why? Because people are sick of diet “do’s and don’ts.” They’re sick of extremes. They just want to eat.

Now, as most of us know, it’s easy enough to say you’re going to “eat until your full” and “listen to your body.” But it’s a heck of a lot harder to practice. The minute someone offers you a second slice of homemade cheesecake your mind overrides your body and says, “Yes, please!”

So, how do you retrain yourself to eat intuitively? Here’s what Elyse and Evelyn suggest:

1. Embrace satisfaction

When you deny yourself foods you crave and foods that “hit the spot,” you never truly feel satisfied. Elyse and Evelyn recommend allowing yourself satisfying foods when you’re hungry because it helps you make peace with food. If you’re satisfied, you’re less likely to eat when you’re not hungry. If you’re unsatisfied, that bag of Cheetos calls your name loud— hungry or not.

2. Say sayonara to your scale

Intuitive eating doesn’t require weekly weigh-ins. In fact, Elyse and Evelyn want you to forget about your weight completely. We’ve all been trained to believe that being super skinny is attractive. But that’s part of the toxic diet culture that inspired Elyse and Evelyn to write their book in the first place. Most of us aren’t naturally as skinny as the “ideal” we’ve been bombarded with most of our lives. And that’s okay. Love your body right where it’s at and stop striving for something else. When you do, it’s amazing how relaxed and happy you’ll feel.

3. Never say never to any food

Elyse and Evelyn don’t want you to cut out any foods. None of them. Why? Because once you tell yourself you can’t have something, you only want it more. They also believe cutting out certain foods triggers a primal response in our brains. It makes us think our “survival” is in jeopardy because we’re being “starved.” This makes us overeat in the name of “survival.” If you currently have a list of foods that you don’t eat because you think they’ll “make you gain weight” or “they’re unhealthy,” Elyse and Evelyn suggest you rank them from “scariest” to “least scary” to eat. Then one day, a couple of hours after a meal, pick a food on your list and allow yourself to eat as much as you want (you can start with the least scary one if it helps). This allows you to let go of the emotional baggage you have around certain foods and puts all food on an emotionally equal playing field.

4. Learn to love your hunger

Elyse and Evelyn say you should “honor” your hunger. What does that mean, exactly? Instead of viewing hunger as the enemy, you view it as something that deserves respect. The feeling of hunger is necessary for your body’s survival. Without it, you’d starve. So, don’t think of hunger as “bad.” Recognize the service it’s providing your body. Also, learn to pay attention to the unique signs of hunger in your own body. They’re different for everybody. For you, they could be a growling stomach; a sensation in your throat, esophagus or pit of your stomach; feeling sleepy or lethargic; a headache; or something else completely.

5. Become more aware of fullness

Once you’re an old pro at recognizing your body’s hunger signals, start paying more attention to its fullness signals. This means bringing more presence to mealtimes. No more scarfing down a sandwich as you scroll through news stories on your phone. You can’t pay attention to your fullness if your mind is absorbed in something else. So, when you eat, just eat. Don’t do anything else. While you’re eating, take time to pause and notice how your body feels. You can check in with yourself during the middle of a meal or a few times throughout the meal to see what your current level of fullness feels like.

Related: The many benefits of ‘mindful eating’ and how to start

6. Fight back against old mental habits

If you’ve been thinking about food or your weight as “good” or “bad” for a long time, it’s hard to stop. That means you’re going to have to stay strong in the face of old thoughts that tell you to feel guilty for eating ice cream or that cow’s milk is toxic or that French fries will make you fat. When those thoughts come up, choose not to accept them. You can say the word “No!” out loud when you think one of those thoughts if that helps. Or just quickly shift your attention to something else.

7. Find a new way to process emotions

Eating to relieve stress or sadness is common. But it doesn’t help you cope with these emotions in any real way. And it usually means you’re eating when your body isn’t hungry. Let another habit fill in for food next time you’re feeling emotional. Call a friend or family member to chat. Take a walk in nature. Meditate. Read a good book. Talk to your pet about your feelings (I know that sounds weird, but they’re surprisingly good listeners J)

8. Tune into all your body’s signals

Your body is great at telling you what it wants. So, don’t just pay attention to its hunger signals. Pay attention to all its signals. If you feel sleepy, get more sleep. If you feel stressed, set aside more time for fun. If you feel antsy, go for a run. Your body’s main goal is to attain balance and health. So, listen to it.

Hopefully, these steps will help you tap into your body’s natural ability to eat intuitively again. It’s not easy to reprogram your brain after years of toxic diet and beauty advice. But if you’re able to stick to it, you’ll feel the heavy weight of oppressive diet culture fall right off your shoulders. And that will make you feel lighter than you ever felt — even at your skinniest.

Editor’s note: The key to successful weight loss is your passion to be healthy. But if keto and other pop-up diets are too restrictive for you,  just get back to the basics: Learn how part-time health nuts are doing it by following just 7 basic fundamentals that cover ALL the bases… My favorite is #7: Indulge occasionally! For the rest, click here!

Source:

1. Intuitive eating: The anti-diet, or how pleasure from food is the answer, say its creators — CNN Health