Reclaim a Positive Relationship With Food Through Intuitive Eating

If you are like most people, when you think about eating healthier, the first thing that comes to mind is restriction and counting calories. But for long-term sustainability, Jennifer Gilliland, MS, RD, LD, CDE, PCC, ProMedica registered dietitian and professional clinical counselor, recommends assessing your mental and emotional thought process when it comes to food first. 

No matter where you’re at in your relationship with food, learning how to be an intuitive eater can have a positive effect. Intuitive eating calls you to abandon the dieting mindset of constant elimination or restriction of foods. Instead, an intuitive eater will make peace with all foods – never labeling a certain food as “bad” or banning a food or food group from their diet.

How To Practice Intuitive Eating

While intuitive eating might allow you to have your cake and eat it too, it isn’t necessarily a simple concept to follow. Intuitive eating doesn’t come with a recommended grocery list or diet plan. Rather, it requires you to listen to your body and your hunger cues. It may also require reframing some learned habits before you can truly be successful.

Reject the Diet Mentality

To begin, you must learn to reject the diet mentality. The reason why so many diets don’t result in a permanent fix is because they don’t require you to change your thoughts toward or your relationship with food. You may be able to cut out sweets for a month, but what is the first thing that you want when that month is over? Hazard to guess it’s not a salad with low-fat Italian dressing.

“Instead of telling yourself that you need to cut out a certain food or food group to be successful, tell yourself that every type of food serves a purpose in your meal plan – even those with minimal nutritional value when enjoyed thoughtfully,” Gilliland shares.

Get Rid of the Food Guilt

Gilliland recommends you stop telling yourself that you’re a good person for eating certain foods and a bad person for eating others. Even more so, stop telling yourself that you need to work off the calories that you ate that day or that you need to work out before you can enjoy a meal or snack. You need to eat regardless of what you’ve done that day. Your body runs on fuel, also known as food!

“Allow yourself to satisfy your sweet tooth, eat that salty snack or enjoy a slice of bread,” Gilliland shares. Instead of tracking calories burned versus calories consumed, find movement that you enjoy doing and do it every day. Try tracking your success based on how you feel rather than tracking success on your smart device.

Find Enjoyment and Satisfaction in Food

We are meant to enjoy food, but sometimes that’s hard to do with all the distractions and things demanding our attention. Try to get in the habit of eating without distraction – food itself is entertainment enough if we allow it to be.

Put down your phone, turn off the TV and step away from your work. Do whatever you have to do to be able to truly enjoy the food that you are eating and feel your fullness grow as you are eating it. It’s OK to not finish a meal. “You’re the only one who’s going to pay the price if you overeat. You can always box up your leftovers and save them for another day,” Gilliland stresses.

Learning how to be an intuitive eater can help you reclaim your relationship with food and improve your overall health for the better. Remember, you don’t have to do it alone. “Having someone like a registered dietitian help you develop new, lifelong habits can be super helpful to being consistent and committed to this new way of eating,” Gilliland shares.