It’s tough to stick to a healthy diet, folks, even in the best of times. It can feel nearly impossible when you’re stressed or busy. So, when we’re in this situation, it’s tempting to try a new diet to help ourselves eat better and even lose weight. But let’s be honest: that almost never works! We get frustrated or tired of the diet’s limits, and a lot of the lost weight comes roaring back.
If you’re tired of the diet train, there’s a model that may be for you: Intuitive Eating.
What is the Intuitive Eating Model?
Designed by dietitians in the 1990s, this model was meant to help people who struggled with yo-yo dieting to reconnect with their bodies and unlearn the dieting habit. One of its core principles is the rejection of the diet mentality, especially the rejection of an industry that is often selling products under the guise of weight loss for health.
What are the main principles?
In addition to rejecting diet culture, the Intuitive Eating Model has nine other principles, including eating when you are actually hungry rather than overeating or not eating often enough, not having any “off-limit” foods that may tempt you to binge, and looking at foods in terms of their nutritional benefits and not as simply “good” or “bad” foods.
Discovery of satisfaction in food is another principle in this model. Many people, according to the model’s authors, will eat things but not feel satisfied by them, leading to overeating. Instead, the model urges people to discover what foods actually satisfy them. Other principles include learning when you actually feel full, dealing with stress and emotions in healthy ways instead of with food, and learning how to respect your body as it is rather than focusing on what the media says you should look like.
Last but certainly not least in this model is movement. The model encourages people to exercise for reasons other than losing weight, such as mood improvement, more energy and increased strength. Movement under the Intuitive Eating model means everything from working in the garden to hitting the gym.
If you’ve had struggles with diets off and on, you’re certainly not alone. While diets can work for some people, they often end in failure for others. Consider trying the Intuitive Eating model to boost your nutrition and improve your relationship with food in general.
