Intuitive Eating: Let Your Body Tell You When it's Time for a Meal

PEOPLE OUT THERE who are trying to cut down and lose those extra pounds -- How many diets have you tried so far? How many months did you try them for? Did you lose any weight? How long where you able to maintain that reduced weight? How did it make you feel when you gained back those pounds you lost? I have heard people tell me that they were really angry at themselves for gaining back the pounds they lost. Some of them are even depressed and have lost all hopes of reducing weight at all. So what is the solution?

This is where intuitive eating could greatly help you out. Intuitive eating is based on the principle that our body gives us cues for when to eat and how much to eat. All we have to do is listen and respond to these cues.  The originators, Evelyn Tribole  MS, RD and Elyse Resch MS, RD, FADA and the supporters of this approach say that it this is a much better way to attain a healthy weight rather than keeping track and restricting your calories.  For example, its 12:00 and its lunch time. You had a heavy breakfast and not really feeling hungry. But you eat lunch at 12:00 everyday and you want to have lunch at the same time today too. What do you do in such a situation?

Most of us (including me) like to stick to our 'usuals'. But think about it….Your body doesn’t need food right now so its not giving you cues for hunger. Its just your habit that makes you want to eat at that particular time. Even if you are eating a very healthy salad, its better to wait till you are hungry and then eat your lunch. Another part of intuitive eating is to follow cues about fullness. Eat no more than your body tells you to. So eat when you are hungry and eat only till you are full. Sounds simple? May be, but it takes a while to get a hang of this concept and really follow it. But everyone of us can do it. All you need is motivation to healthfully lose weight and a resolution to be mindful of your eating habits.

Some of the basic principles of intuitive eating:

1. Reject the Diet Mentality. Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.
2. Honor Your Hunger. Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.
3. Make Peace with Food. Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can't or shouldn't have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing When you finally “give-in” to your forbidden food, eating will be experienced with such intensity, it usually results in Last Supper overeating, and overwhelming guilt.
4. Challenge the Food Police. Scream a loud "NO" to thoughts in your head that declare you're "good" for eating under 1000 calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created . The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the Food Police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.
5. Respect Your Fullness. Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you're comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor. The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence--the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you've had "enough".
7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food. Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won't fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you into a food hangover. But food won't solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You'll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating. 
8. Respect Your Body. Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel better about who you are. It's hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape. 
9. Exercise--Feel the Difference. Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it's usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time.
10. Honor Your Health--Gentle Nutrition. Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel well. Remember that you don't have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It's what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts.

These principles are from Evelyn's and Elyse's book on 'Intuitive eating'. The 3rd edition is being released on August 7, 2012. Check out their website for more information on intuitive eating and other resourceshttp://www.intuitiveeating.org/ .

In addition to these principles, I need to emphasize 2 more things here

• Chose healthful foods to eat when you are hungry- Make this a lifestyle and not just as a means to lose weight. 
• Exercise and Exercise and Exercise

Be mindful of your body's cues, chose healthy foods, exercise and be happy!

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Srilekha Karunanithi of Kirkland is a Master's student in Nutritional Sciences at University of Washington who is training to become a Registered Dietitian. Her master’s program focuses on the influences of diet on health and how positive dietary changes help in the control and prevention of many diseases.