I have been doing intuitive eating for over a month now. You can see my first post about it here.
My basic rules are, eat when I’m hungry, stop when I’m full and be flexible if I’m in the middle. As well as that I’m just trying to practice basic portion control.
Doing this I’ve lost 10 pounds in 34 days, going from 237 pounds to 227. I’m very happy with this, even though my primary motivation is to have a healthier sustainable relationship with food, not to go on a weight loss journey. I’m especially happy because while I’ve leaned towards more healthy options I haven’t restricted myself at all. I’ve been enjoying cake and biscuits which is nice!
Here are the things I’ve learnt and things I’ve started doing.
- Intuitive eating is not intuitive!
I’m getting used to it, but intuitive eating has not been a massively intuitive experience to start! I will find that I am suddenly hungry and then won’t be 10 minutes later, or I’ll feel hungrier than I did despite just having a large meal. If I literally ate when I was hungry and stopped when I was full, my eating would be erratic, difficult to manage and I would be eating twice as much as what I need.
I’ve adopted some general attitudes around this to get around the confusing signals my stomach has been giving me. First is that, if I feel a hunger signal, that means I am hungry, even if the signal goes away. Secondly, is that after I have eaten something, it can take 20/30 minutes for my stomach to actually update my hunger level.
If I eat something and 20/30 minutes I’m still hungry, I will eat something else, but if I eat how much food I thought I needed and feel hungry immediately after, I will wait and see if it settles down.
I am still learning how to manage the normal rhythm of hunger and satiation.
- Exercise is awesome for inducing appetite
I’ve read some people saying that there are studies which show exercise inhibits appetite. This may be true statistically for all I know but it certainly isn’t true for me! I definitely feel hungrier the next day if I’ve exercised. To be honest this is pretty good motivation to get moving, I like eating! And so it’s nice to have a big appetite and enjoy what I’m eating. Importantly I am not “burning off” what I had for lunch. I eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full. It’s just that exercise complements what I’m doing.
- It’s not about tricking your body
Celery is great. I love celery! I don’t want to trick my stomach into thinking I’ve had food by eating celery. I’m not trying to trick my body into thinking I’ve eaten when I haven’t or try and suppress natural feelings of hunger.
- Snacks are great!
Snacks are amazing, fruit, nuts, seeds, peanut butter, and hummus are all awesome. They are especially helpful if I have not eaten quite enough for a meal and need to top up an hour or so later. Having snacks available makes me feel comfortable to practice portion control without worrying about not having enough to eat.
- It’s hard to stay out of a diet mentality
Despite specifically starting this journey to have a healthier relationship with food and not as a weight loss journey, as soon as the pounds started shifting off it has been so hard to stay out of that mentality. I have to remind myself I am not calorie counting. I have to stop myself figuring out how many calories I “burned” during a swim and how well that matches up to what I last ate. I have to stop myself from worrying when the scales go back up and I have to make myself a commit that I am not going to try and eat less just to lose the fat a little quicker. I am incredibly more conscious about my body now because it is quickly changing, and I feel fatter because I am more conscious of what I look like in the mirror.
- A healthy relationship with eating takes time
There’s no way around it, I’ve spent an awful lot of time the last month thinking about food, exercise and weight loss. While it has been a really enjoyable experience and I’ve been loving all the great food I’ve been eating, it is a lot, it is a lot of time energy and thought. Doing this has brought up a lot of anxieties around eating and weight I didn’t really realise I had. I think I might’ve been masking a lot of my disordered thinking around food and weight by keeping myself full all the time. It is a big adjustment and I think whilst there’s nothing wrong with enjoying myself I do think the healthiest thing is that my excitement cools down into a set of comfortable habits, rather than stays at this level of intensity.
- Food is a genuine joy in life
It’s really hard to explain my happiness to finally have found a relationship with food where I feel like my body is getting healthier but I also feel nourished. As I am writing this I am excited for the strawberries I will eat when I get hungry, I am going to have them with some ricotta and some chocolate. But I’m also happy that I feel satiated, I feel like I have had enough and that my body has what it needs.
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