If you’ve been in the fitness game for a while, chances are you’ve tried a fad diet or two. Even if you haven’t, we’re willing to bet you’ve at least become accustomed to tracking macros or some other heavily structured nutrition strategy.
There’s nothing wrong with using hard numbers or rules to build your nutrition strategy, but after a while some people may find it mentally tiring to do so. In some cases, placing so much value on simply following a strict plan may impact a person’s mentality when they break said diet.
Another option that some dieters may find more emotionally rewarding than a highly-structured plan is intuitive eating. It’s not necessarily a plan, per se, but it’s a different way of viewing the food you eat, according to Alana Kessler, MS, RDN, who specializes in teaching clients to use an intuition-based approach to eating.
“Intuitive eating is less about the food that you eat and more about being attuned to yourself—mainly how you feel, what you want to eat, and why you want to eat something,” she explains. “It’s an attitude around your relationship with your body and your relationship to food and your ability to trust yourself enough to know when and why you want to eat.”
Now, don’t take that to mean “eat whatever you want, healthy or unhealthy, whenever you want.” At its roots, the goal of intuitive eating is to trust yourself to self-regulate and hold yourself accountable for what you eat without exterior rules and restrictions.
Kessler points out that this style of eating does require you to have some background knowledge on things like food portions and the way different foods make your body feel. Everyone’s different, so it takes some experimenting over time to see how your body responds to different foods and macronutrients.
For that reason, intuitive eating may be better suited to more experienced dieters than beginners. If you think it might be a fit for you, keep reading for the basics of eating intuitively.
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<p class='slide-count'>1 of 6</p><img width="1109" height="614" src="/uploadfile/2024/1220/20241220115146458.jpg"><p class="photo-credit">Flotsam</p>Eating intuitively doesn’t mean forgetting about nutrition.
Again, intuitive eating isn’t a diet plan in the traditional sense the way keto or paleo are. Rather, it’s a mindset surrounding food. But that doesn’t mean eating whatever you want regardless of nutritional value.
Instead, you need to understand how to eat healthy, pay attention to how foods make your body feel, and learn what it means to feel satisfied without overstuffing.
“If you don’t know your portion sizes, you’re not in tune with your hunger cues, and you only know what it feels like to feel stuffed, then you will gain weight when you try to “intuitively eat,”’ Kessler explains.
She stresses knowing the difference between feeling satisfied with what you’ve eaten and feeling “full.” You have to hold yourself accountable, be mindful as you eat, and take those cues from your body.
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Intuitive eating isn’t an exact science, and it allows flexibility
When Kessler teaches intuitive eating, it’s not handing out specific guidelines to follow. Instead, there are basic principles you should be mindful of.
We’ve already covered the fact that eating until you’re stuffed all the time can’t be justified with, “But, I’m intuitive eating!” Kessler suggests making it a point to eat until you’re about 70 percent full.
Some more beginner-oriented diets will provide exact times or an exact number of meals to eat. With intuitive eating, it’s fine to plan, but it’s more important to get in touch with your body’s hunger cues.
“For example, if you are hungry at 11 o’clock, but you told yourself you’re going to eat at 12:30, have maybe half of your lunch when you’re hungry at 11,” Kessler suggests. “Then in an hour and a half, have the rest of it.” Splitting meals is just one way to make sure you feel satisfied throughout the day.
The important part is understanding the nutrients your body needs, and it can take some time to get it perfect.
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It sounds basic, but it’s nuanced and in reality, more of an advanced strategy.
There’s no exact amount of experience you need before you try to eat intuitively instead of, say, track your macros in a spreadsheet. That said, it’s more advanced than it sounds because it’s a very nuanced strategy.
By the time you try it out, you should already know what foods make you feel best and what macronutrient balance works best for you and your goals. And Googling “best macros for weight loss” won’t necessarily cut it, since everyone is different.
“You also have to know how food responds to you because it doesn’t always, you know, it’s not always the same for every person.” For all you know, you’ll have to raise, not lower, your carbs while you’re cutting. But you should know that before you dive into intuitive eating.
Eating foods that make you feel good also shouldn’t mean doing things like eating an entire pint of ice cream when you’re stressed. Allowing yourself a reasonable serving isn’t out of the question, but Kessler suggests considering what the underlying cause of that stress is and taking other measures, like exercise or meditation, to help relieve it.
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It won’t work if you don’t hold yourself accountable.
“Intuitive eating is not restricted but it’s highly, highly accountable,” Kessler explains. “When you’re self-regulating, sometimes people don’t put the same value on things because they’re doing what a plan would typically do for them.”
She describes it as a “higher consciousness” practice rather than a restrictive one because it does require a lot of attention. After all, if you don’t pay attention to what your body is telling you, you’re sort of missing the point here.
“You need to be accountable for yourself and how you feel,” Kessler says. “Ask yourself, ‘What do I want, and why do I want it?’ If you just start eating whatever you want and you don’t know any of those things, you’re going to blow past all the boundaries.”
And yes, there should be boundaries. The difference is you’re the one setting them, they should center around feeling good and satisfied with the food you eat, and no one on the outside is going to remind you about them.
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You can still form a more specific meal plan as you apply the principles of intuitive eating.
It may sound like you’re going through the day figuring it out as each meal comes, but that isn’t necessarily the case. To give clients an idea of what eating healthily looks like, Kessler likes to break meals down in the form of a plate with five sections.
Three of the five sections in that plate should be non-starchy vegetables, whether that’s cooked vegetables or leafy greens. One section of the plate should have a starch—either in vegetable or grain form. The last section is, you guessed it, protein.
Depending on your weight, height, and gender, you’d fill in your portion sizes within that structure. If you make sure to eat this way for at least a meal or two daily, it’s a good place to start that’ll guarantee you get some good nutrients in as you fill in the blanks throughout the rest of the day.
And forget about “breakfast, lunch, and dinner” foods. If you want your first meal to be brown rice, pasta, and a salad, there’s no reason not to do it. Especially with intuitive eating, it’s about gauging the ingredients your body wants.
As far as mealtimes, you might also want to set some standards for yourself, setting goals to eat each meal before a certain time of day can be helpful. Then, you won’t forget to eat if you’re working or busy throughout the day.
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Intuitive eating can align with your goals, even if those goals involve losing weight.
One of the benefits of intuitive eating is it can help athletes or people who have started to feel very restricted by dieting reframe it as a more positive experience. It often goes hand in hand with body positivity, or viewing your body in a positive light no matter its shape or size.
With that in mind, intuitive eating may sound like something that would conflict with say, competing in a bodybuilding show or another sport that typically involves a heavily regimented and restricted meal plan.
The reality is that it can fit pretty much any goal, according to Kessler. The thing is, if it’s a goal like competing in a bodybuilding show, it has to be a goal that’s truly important to you. Then, the emotional reward of reaching it should be what keeps you feeling good as you restrict your diet en route to it. The key to staying body positive is remembering that your physical body isn’t all that matters.
“Being body positive can mean you’re willing to let go of some of the physical results for a more emotionally satisfying experience with eating,” she explains. “But there’s a physical body and there’s a holistic body, and body positivity is understanding that both have value.”
If your goal is specifically to be a bodybuilder, you need to really ask yourself if restricting your diet serves what you view as your higher purpose (i.e. winning a show). If that’s the case and you’ll be happier for it, restricting your diet can still fit in to the overall goal that intuitive eating and body positivity strive to accomplish.