Intuitive Eating: Learning to Tune in Once Again 
By Amber Dwinell 
 

Intuitive eating is a dynamic mind-body relationship integration of instinct, emotion and rational thought. It is a personal process of honouring your health by paying attention to the messages of your body and meeting your physical and emotional needs.      - Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch

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Whether you are in recovery from an eating disorder or you are wanting to explore your relationship with food more deeply, the principals of intuitive eating may be helpful to begin your exploration.

 

I hope as you read this article you hold these words with a sense of compassion and gentleness. Being intuitively connected with your body’s physical and emotional needs can be hard, especially if you are in recovery from an eating disorder. I encourage you to send compassion to wherever you are along this journey. Just reading and absorbing this information may take strength- and this is enough.

 

When adopting an intuitive eating lens; we must first let go of diet-culture and resume control and trust of our own bodies.

 

Intuitive eating is the act of eating in accordance to our bodies hunger and fullness cues. It is an innate tool we all share, yet is often supressed at a young age. Babies cry when they are hungry and will intuitively stop eating when full. Our ability to listen to our body carries on through our early years until we are exposed to external rules and guidelines about food. Here our bodies must learn to adapt to our social environment e.g., cereal is a ‘breakfast food’ chicken is a ‘dinner food’.

 

Diet-culture tells us to alter our food choices with the goal of altering our bodies. Diet-culture tells us how to eat, when to eat and what to eat and so our bodies learn to let go of interoceptive cues around hunger and fullness to adapt to our environment. This is a survival tool. Our bodies have evolved for survival around times of famine, in these periods, it is unhelpful if our bodies send signals of hunger when there is no food available. This points to why our interoceptive cues can be inhibited during eating disorder recovery. It may take time for our body to begin sending these signals and for our mind to trust these signals once again.

 

Intuitive eating reminds us that only you are the expert of your own body. Intuitive eating breaks dieting patterns by encouraging us to tune in, listen and trust once again.

 

If you are looking to explore this concept more deeply I encourage you to reflect on the following;

• What tells me to eat?

• Do I have any rules around meal-times?

• Where have these rules come from?

• Have I always eaten like this/ have these rules always existed?

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I must acknowledge some amazing resources that speak to this concept beautifully;  Just Eat It- Laura Thomas; The 8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder- Carolyn Costin; The Intuitive Eating Workbook; Principles for Nourishing a health Relationship with Food- Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch.