Intuitive Eating: Dieting the Easy Way

Marjolaine Mercier January 2, 2018 Eat Well, Health, Weight Loss

WHERE TO START ?

Becoming an intuitive eater requires a complete reconciliation with your body. When you diet, you’re battling against your body, but with intuitive eating, you tame it and learn to trust it by listening to it and respecting its signals. More concretely, this means some behaviors will have to change. Sentences like “finish your plate if you want dessert”, “no wasting” and “you shouldn’t eat in between meals” lose their meaning because these criteria are external to the body. You have to give yourself permission to snack if you feel hunger, and break the pattern of finishing your plate even when you’re satiated. To become an intuitive eater, you listen to your body, the real expert!

THE BASICS: KNOW YOUR HUNGER

Real hunger is accompanied by sensations like a void in your stomach, a tugging, gurgling. This means your body needs food now, but not necessarily a large amount. You need to differentiate between hunger and “wanting to eat”. The latter is not characterized by physical signs like hunger and doesn’t intensity with time. You might want to eat through boredom, because you’re sad or stressed. When you eat in these situations when hunger is not really present, the body stores the excess calories as body fat. The best thing is therefore to eat when you feel a medium hunger, which will respect the body and its needs. Eaten too much? No need to feel guilty, simply wait for hunger to appear before eating next.

SATIETY

When we eat, the stomach fills up bit by bit and sends, at a precise moment, signals to the brain to let it know it’s full, that it has received enough calories. Hunger has gone, satisfaction has been attained, but without feeling heavy, we’re satiated. We can even feel “light enough to run.”

Here are a few tips to stop eating before being “too full:”

• Take the time to chew and taste your food
• Take a break half way through your plate to sense if the intensity of your hunger has diminished
• Eat slowly and in a peaceful place to detect the lessening of taste and interest when satiety is attained

In brief, real hunger indicates your body is requesting food and satiety indicates that the quantity of food consumed is sufficient.

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Author

Marjolaine Mercier

Marjolaine holds a Bachelor in Nutrition (Université Laval), a Certificate of Psychology (UQAM), and has trained in Gestalt Therapy (IQGT). She's currently completing a Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition (Cornell University). She's the founder of Clinique M Nutrition on the Montreal's South Shore, and co-authored the book Ménager la chèvre et manger le chou" (March 2018). Whether in individual consultation or conference