iWe've been making loads of recipe videos lately, so instead of making food this time, let's talk about eating it
Food is the reason that some of us get out of bed, so happily in the morning.
It's the thing that nourishes us, it fuels us. It keeps us going. It's what warrants a midday break.
It brings us together.
It creates warmth a welcoming feeling of community and a sense of belonging.
It can bring back memories and transport us to faraway places.
It brings happiness,
comfort, and
sometimes,
struggle. Sometimes it can be a real struggle whether to eat this food or that. That food is bad,
but this food is good
Maybe just one bite of that food. I mean, it's not a big deal. It's just one bite.
Shit, I think this food is gonna have to be forbidden from here on out and it might be time for a diet.
The diet mentality isn't something that affects only people who have or do follow diets,
It also affects anybody who puts conditions on the way that they eat like saying, for example,
I can only eat that food if I then go and exercise afterwards.
That's the diet mentality, or I can't eat that food because it's too high in carbs or fat.
That's the diet mentality.
Dieting or limiting certain food groups, or even just labeling foods as good or bad is pretty
characteristic in people who struggle in their relationship with food. And let's be honest
Calorie counting or carbon fat restricting or keeping track of our weight, these things just make us feel
pretty miserable. It could make us reflect on our own self-image really harshly.
People might be using diets because it might be the only tool they've ever known to lose weight.
But most often people who lose weight on a diet gain it back plus more within the first five years.
Diets don't just mess with us
Physically, it also messes with us mentally and emotionally and I think that can be so much more harmful. And to be honest
I really don't like to talk about weight on this channel having worked as a dietician myself,
I do understand the importance or the connection between
managing body weight in relation to certain health conditions.
But aside from that I think that discussions about weight are what fuel the diet culture and that diet mentality
I think it's so much more important to focus our attention on creating a healthy and trusting and nourishing
Relationship with food. I think this practice is what over the long term brings us to a healthy and optimal weight,
But just as a positive side effect not as the primary focus.
Now what if I was to tell you that the anti diet or the solution to maintaining a healthy weight if
That's what you're looking for. But more importantly to create a healthy mindset in relationship with food
What if I told you that you already knew the answer to that since the day you were born?
Because as babies we used to eat incredibly in tune with our hunger and fullness.
When a baby is hungry it
Cries for food and if you've ever seen a baby who's being pressured to drink or eat when it's full you'll see the little one
push away that food with force.
But over time we kind of lose this innate ability to tune into ourselves and maybe that's because of a few different reasons
Maybe we've learned so you finish our plate even when we're feeling full or maybe our lives are pretty chaotic and we're constantly chasing either
deadlines or kids and that's making us neglect our body signals or maybe because we've learned that food can
Soothe us and distract us when we're feeling emotional.
So it's only natural that we've kind of lost touch with our inner child, but we can relearn to eat intuitively
So the whole concept of intuitive eating was first presented by two
dieticians who study this and they made it their life's work a lot of the information that I'm gonna be sharing today comes from their
Audio book called intuitive eating. Before we dive in Ido you want to thank audible for partnering with us on today's video.
But we're gonna chat more about them at the end, for now
I just want to say that the whole concept of intuitive eating it is a process that takes time
These are not quick fix solutions, but if you do keep at it with time
It shows a lot of promise people who follow intuitive eating notice more body appreciation and self compassion,
Trust, and higher self esteem and
Eventually, a lot of people also find a gradual return to a balanced and healthy weight if that's something that's important to you
So let's kind of dive into a couple
Principles of intuitive eating and then I'll share some resources with you that I hope will help to guide you along the journey
You might have heard of the expression before what gets measured gets
Managed, I personally love the expression. I think it holds very true,
and I think it's expressions like this one that encourage some people to measure their weight or to track their intake by counting calories or
Macros one thing that's important to know is that these tools help us measure external variables?
And so that means that often it's not helping us stay in tune with what's happening inside of our bodies.
If anything they might even make us neglect those inner signals.
But I do get the allure of using tools because they give us a sense and a feeling of control.
They let us know whether or not we're making improvements. So instead of tracking our weight or calories
There's another tool that we can use to manage our intake and it's a tool I personally think is a lot more powerful
So one of the key principles of intuitive eating is to listen to our body signals
For hunger and fullness and a tool that we can use to measure this is the hunger and fullness scale
So essentially it's these numbers from zero to ten where zero on the scale is intense
uncomfortable hunger kind of when you feel empty and totally famished and then ten on the scale is when you feel
Uncomfortably full like painfully to the point of maybe even feeling sick
So let's first start with the hunger side of things
Sometimes if you ask somebody, you know
What does it feel like to you when you feel hungry?
The answer you might get is something like I feel irritable or lightheaded or dizzy
these
symptoms indicate that that person might be at a one or two on the scale and when you're in that state what kind of foods
Do usually crave because usually I find it's the most sweet or deep fried rich dense
Indulgent foods that we can get our hands on and because we're so hungry
We're more likely to scarf down the plate eating really quickly and that can often swing us to a nine or ten on the fullness
side of the scale and this
Yo-yoing between zero and ten is often what we see in people who binge and restrict these higher and lower values
They just bring us feelings of discomfort. It doesn't feel very nice to be so hungry and then to be so full
So the proposed solution here is to eat when you're feeling a gentle or polite hunger
Which is usually about three to four on that scale. When we eat would we feel a gentle hunger we tend
To be more rational with our food choices, maybe even making more wholesome food choices because we're not so famished
We also then tend to eat more slowly
We really take our time to enjoy the food as a result were more mindful, able to tune in and recognize
When we're starting to feel comfortably full which tends to be at around the six to seven range on the scale.
Which is where we would also
ideally want to put a pause on eating and
We might not always follow it and stop there and that's okay
the most important thing is that we start to
understand the fullness and what it can feel like to be
Comfortably full. if you come from a history of dieting you might have learned to suppress those feelings of hunger and fullness
You might not even feel them anymore. That's completely normal and natural. It is possible to relearn it, but it does take time
So to guide you, we've created a free downloadable PDF
The link is in the description box for that
But it's something we're going to delve into a little bit more at the end of the video.
Another one of the principles of intuitive eating, which is my favorite is to make peace with food and that's just kind of
Encompassing getting rid of this feeling of guilt and shame and fear around eating especially when eating foods that some people might call
Unhealthy or bad and at pick up limes,
We really don't like to look at foods in such a binary way when we tell ourselves that we can't have a certain food it
Makes us mentally more preoccupied with that particular food a little bit more obsessed with it.
It gives it power power that it really doesn't deserve.
But if we instead give ourselves permission to eat any food, to be at peace with it those foods start to lose their allure.
So the idea here is to give yourself permission to eat anything,
So long as you're staying a tuned and by attuned I mean just what we've talked about listening to your body eating when politely hungry
Stopping fun comfortably full before we kind of go further
I feel like I need to say that I
was SO skeptical about this point when I first learned about it because I felt like it was just promoting a
Junk food diet and that with that kind of permission without any boundaries or restrictions that it meant that you would lose all control
But the exact opposite is true.
I remember the first time I decided to give the concept a try I bought chips and chocolate to bring home.
Foods that I had previously not let myself bringing home at all, and to be honest the first few times I did overeat them,
but even still I kind of mustered up the courage to trust the process and I kept bringing them into the house and then at
Some point, I don't know maybe a few weeks maybe a few months later
I was sitting on the couch and I was in the mood for a snack and then I remembered that we had two bags of
chips and four chocolate bars in the pantry.
But then I realized I also wasn't in the mood for those things and I kind of wanted an orange
Instead. The chips that were once so exciting were things that I kind of got exposed to over and over again
And I kind of just habituated to it.
So when we make the doughnut as emotionally equivalent as the apple, for example, the doughnut loosens its grip over us
It makes the food emotionally neutral by allowing the foods to be there by permitting ourselves to have them.
Maybe we will over eat them at first but eventually,
that novelty wears off and it gives us the permission to actually taste the food for what it is and
Judge, if we're even in the mood to have it at all.
so our motto here at pick up limes is that food is there to nourish the cells but also to nourish the soul and like a
toddler we no longer need to think about what we should be eating or feeling guilty about what we've just eaten we can just enjoy
The pleasure that we get from food and when we're satisfied just move on.
So these are just some of the principles of intuitive eating there's ten guiding principles in total.
I first read the book intuitive eating by dieticians Elise Resh and Evelyn Tribble when I was in university
and then I refreshed my knowledge of it by listening to the audiobook version and it's an incredible audio book (very grounding) with loads of
Exercises to prompt reflection and better understanding of the concepts. They cover things like not using food as a reward or punishment
They discussed challenging the food police. They cover body image topics.
so if you're looking to delve deeper into
Intuitive eating. if eating is something that you have or do struggle with and you feel like you could use some extra support
You're essentially going to have two dietitians
Explaining and exploring the concepts with you guiding you through the whole process.
So if you're interested in learning more or checking out the audio book for yourself,
You can get it for free or any other audio book that you'd like plus a 30-day free membership of audible by visiting audible.com.
Forward slash pick up limes or check out the link in the description box below. And audible members now get one free audiobook per month
less to free audible originals. And the other resource
I wanted to let you know about is the one I've mentioned which is the downloadable PDF that we created
It's completely free the link for that is also in the description box below
And essentially it's just a tool that you can use to check in with yourself
Especially before and after meals to see what number you're at on that hunger/fullness scale
There's also some other questions in there to help you kind of just become more in tuned more mindful
So I hope that you find it helpful. I'm curious what you think about the whole concept of intuitive eating
Is it something that's new to you? Have you learned of it before?
Do you think you'd be willing to give it a try?
Do you have any
Reservations about any of the kind of topics and things that we explored.
I welcome you to share that in the comments below if you enjoyed today's video it always means a lot when you take a second
To give it a thumbs up. Thanks a lot for watching pick up lines signing off. We'll see you in the next video
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