How To Make Intuitive Eating Practical

One of the most common questions I receive is how to actually put intuitive eating practice into your real life. We can often get hung up on the rules and restrictions of diet culture that we feel lost without them and unsure of how to move forward on our intuitive eating journey. Today I am here to give you practical advice for implementing intuitive eating into your everyday life.

Key Takeaways

If you are looking to include the practice of intuitive eating into your life you should:

1. Relearn how to listen to your body and brains signals instead of outsourcing your decisions
2. Become more mindful about the way you are eating and separate from your food distractions 
3. Tackle one intuitive eating principle at a time and find a solid support network to help you through them
4. Plan your meals in a way that serves and excites you and will fit into your regular life with ease

You Were Born an Intuitive Eater

Intuitive eating may sound simple, but it’s not easy. In short, intuitive eating is just eating! You were born an intuitive eater, sensing when you are hungry and what satisfaction feels like. However, the way you have been socialized has shaped how you interact with food, to the point where many of us don’t know how to trust and listen to both our brains and our bodies.

Intuitive eating is about simplifying your eating habits and guidelines so that you can find the overlap between listening to your brain and your body to make intuitive eating decisions.

Practical Advice for Implementing Intuitive Eating in Your Life

Building healthy habits is the key to changing your internal landscape when it comes to food and learning to listen to your body’s signals. You don’t need to be mindful 100% of the time, but even a small amount of awareness can be powerful when embracing intuitive eating. 

Starting from a place of mindfulness, taking it one principle at a time, and planning your meals in a way that fits in with your lifestyle are all great ways to start checking in with yourself and selecting your food choices based on a more internal approach.

Which of my tips have you tried? What have you noticed? Share your thoughts and experiences with me in the comments on the episode page.

 

In This Episode

• Why you need to unlearn what you have been taught about food and get back to basics (3:48)
• How I choose to define and explain intuitive eating to others (9:07)
• Tips for changing the framework in which you interact with food on a daily basis (16:25)
• How to make intuitive eating more practical for your everyday life (20:55)
• Cooking advice to help you simplify your eating and make intuitive eating work for your schedule (29:18)

 

Quotes

“We have become so accustomed to interacting with food in that way, that when we present intuitive eating as eating without all of the rules, and restrictions, and regulations, and calculations, and computations, and logging, and everything, it kind of breaks your brain a little bit.” (6:08)

“Here is how I sum up intuitive eating. It is where you use both your brain and your body to decide what to eat.” (10:29)

“In mindful eating, what we are really trying to do is to build awareness of what we are doing, because a lot of our eating is very automatic.” (22:53)

“You are not a short-order cook… and you shouldn’t have to be one in order to make intuitive eating work for you. Remember we are trying to simplify things.” (30:47)

“It is okay to repeat meals, it is okay to use convenience items, it is okay to use dry goods from your pantry, it’s okay to use frozen foods. We have to let go of some of the stigmas around that stuff.” (35:41)

 

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