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Intuitive eating: What a registered dietician wants you to know
Right now, the idea of starting a diet and/or exercise plan may seem like a no-brainer. Not only because of lockdown, but because dieting is the dogma we’ve grown up with. Ever since Jane Fonda slipped on her leotard-and-leggings combo, we’ve been sold the desirability of shrinking our bodies so much that it feels simple and scientific.
‘In fact, we all live in diet culture,’ says registered nutritionist Laura Thomas PhD. ‘We get caught in this cycle of the idea we are flawed and that the solution to that is to diet. The system is rigged to make us think we’re not good enough.’
Even if we never formally diet, we overthink and worry about food. Maybe, like me, you’ve felt shady about polishing off the M&S Luxury Belgian Chocolate Assortment? Have you skipped a meal to feel thinner? Tried to run off calories? Felt you couldn’t go out for the night because of your weight? Or, perhaps you have a list of foods – maybe sugar, wheat, cake – that you avoid.
What if our whole medical model of weight loss is wrong? And what if our diet culture beauty standards are trapping us into unhealthy eating behaviours? Enter the growing anti-diet movement. Leading this revolution in the UK, via social media, are Thomas, registered associate nutritionist Pixie Turner and registered dieticians Helen West and Rosie Saunt of The Rooted Project.
They’re all educated and qualified to work in the NHS, as well as dedicated to nutrition myth-busting. ‘Research has shown diets do not work long term,’ says Turner. Think about it: the global diet industry – worth an estimated £136 billion – only exists because people like us keep going back to them. Because, the truth is, diets don’t work 80% of the time.
‘Diets usually end with weight rebound, and possibly binge eating, food obsession and/or exercise compulsion,’ says Thomas. When we restrict food, our bodies send us a huge message: ‘Eat!’ When West informs her patients that this is the case, ‘it typically comes as a huge relief.’
The idea that diets work if you just have the sticking power, means that women often beat themselves up about being a failure, when it’s the diet that’s failed them, not the other way around.’
WHAT IS INTUITIVE EATING?
So, if diets don’t work, what might? Enter Intuitive Eating – invented in the 1990s by US dieticians who saw their patients coming back with all the weight regained. The title makes it sound like the ‘eat what you want’ diet, but Intuitive Eating is an evidence-based programme.
Intuitive Eating doesn’t have the simple appeal of a diet, because you have to work on your thoughts, beliefs and behaviours, not just eat to a plan. Part of the Intuitive Eating process is about self-compassion, a kind way of treating ourselves, plus there’s mindfulness in there, too, to help you learn to read your body.
HOW DOES INTUITIVE EATING WORK?
Like an eating plan, the goal with Intuitive Eating is a healthy diet, but it isn’t the nutrition-focused definition. It includes, ‘having a variety and balance of different foods over time,’ says West, ‘But also having a healthy relationship with food – so you can eat without food taking up space in your brain or causing emotional distress.’ That’s why the what-to-put-in-your-mouth part comes at the very end; you need to do the mind stuff first.
INTUITIVE EATING FOR WEIGHT LOSS
‘One of the first questions people ask,’ says Turner, ‘is whether they’ll gain weight with Intuitive Eating. People are scared of letting go of weight loss as their primary goal.’
Evidence shows that, in time, your weight will settle within your body’s biological set point, ‘A small range at which you eat intuitively without restraint and move in a way that feels good for you,’says Turner. ‘And just think what you have to gain in terms of freedom and flexibility, and not being obsessive about food, weight and exercise,’ says Thomas.
HOW TO START INTUITIVE EATING
This is a snapshot of how registered nutritionist Laura Thomas PhD teaches IE. Think of them as guidelines, and not as replacing one set of rules with another.
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: DITCH THE DIETS FOR GOOD
‘How much time do you spend thinking about what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat?,’ says Thomas. If you have any off limit foods, cheat days, meal plans, rules about how much, what or when to eat, counting, tracking… it’s a diet. And diets have side effects: bingeing, slowed metabolism, loss of muscle mass, rebound weight gain, food obsession, disordered eating, shame, guilt and anxiety when they inevitably fail. And finally, loss of your innate hunger and fullness cues, which brings us on to principle 2…
Exercise: Write a list of what happened when you’ve dieted.
Use two headlines: 1) Expectation and 2) Reality
Expectation: Will be very good and follow diet to the T.
Reality: Felt deprived and overate ‘bad’ foods.
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: RECOGNISE YOUR HUNGER CUES
‘People think getting hungry is a bad thing,’ says Thomas. ‘But it’s your body sending you a message.’ It’s the biological drive to eat.
Imagine a fuel gauge, where zero is empty and 10 is stuffed to bursting. Five is neutral, neither hungry nor full. If you wait until 1 or 2 to eat, you will most likely end up rebound eating, which can feel out of control. As a suggestion (not a rule!), try to eat when you’re a 3. Thomas also suggests three meals a day, plus two to four snacks - but again, do what suits you.
EXERCISE: Work out which sensations signal hunger for you
Mood: hangry, irritable, cranky, snappy, moody, low?
Energy: fatigue, sleepy, sluggish, blah, meh, listless?
Head: achey, light-headed, dizzy, poor concentration, distracted?
Stomach: gurgling, gentle rumble, emptiness, stomach ache, hunger pangs, gnawing?
Body: shaky, quivering, low blood sugar, salivating?
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: PRACTISE BODY NEUTRALITY
If you don’t feel able to love your body exactly as it is, a great way to begin is with body acceptance. ‘It's unrealistic to think we can go from hating something to loving it overnight; body neutrality means we can care for and respect our bodies, without necessarily being in love with them,’ says Thomas.
EXERCISE: Your zero fucks day. Write down, in detail, what a day would be like if you gave zero fucks about what you looked like, how much exercise you did, or what you ate. Now reflect: what was it like not to be consumed with food or body image issues? Plan to do some of your zero fucks activities.
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: GIVE YOURSELF UNCONDITIONAL PERMISSION TO EAT
Finally, all foods are allowed, no more food guilt. Sounds scary? In fact, it reduces the likelihood that, after a stressful day, you’re going to eat all the biscuits. ‘I'm not saying foods don't have different nutritional properties. What I’m saying is, when you draw a boundary around a food, what you’re saying to your brain is: Eat me! Eat me! Eat me. It’s the forbidden fruit effect.’
EXERCISE: What’s on your bad list? Write a list of the foods you restrict or feel bad about eating. Can you stop thinking of them as good/bad, health unhealthy, real/fake, clean/dirty, junk food/health food?
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: NEUTRALISE YOUR INNER FOOD CRITIC
There’s usually a niggling part of your brain still saying, ‘you can’t have that’ or ‘that’s not healthy’. It thinks in all or nothing terms: if you eat sugar, you will get fat! ‘But balance is over time not a single meal,’ says Thomas.
EXERCISE: Each time your food critic judges a food, reframe it with three counter arguments. Eg: your food critic says ‘don’t eat the cookie’, you reframe: 1) It will satisfy my cravings so I can stop thinking about food. 2) No one single food can hurt my health and 3) If I’m eating a variety of foods, one cookie isn’t worth stressing over.
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: PRACTISE MINDFUL EATING AND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE
If you’ve been restricting for a long time, how can you know what you like? Did you eat raw cheesecake because it seemed ‘clean’? Would you prefer real cheesecake? ‘If we eat the food we really like, we’re much more likely, when we reach our point of fullness, to be able to say “I’m done”, safe in the knowledge we’ll able to eat that food in the future.’
EXERCISE: One mindful meal a day, where you eat slowly, no distractions. If a whole meal feels too much, start with one mindful bite.
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: FEEL YOUR FULLNESS
‘Often, people stop eating when they’re around 5, i.e. no longer hungry but not yet full. Then, an hour or two later, they’re hungry again. There’s nothing wrong with the feeling of fullness. Your stomach’s job is to be a reservoir for food. Try to eat until you’re a 7.’
EXERCISE: The mid meal pause. Take a little breather for about 10-20 seconds. This is not a commitment to stop eating. Check: Am I still enjoying this food? Is this food satisfying or might I want something else to bridge the gap between full and satisfied?
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: UNDERSTAND EMOTIONAL EATING
Emotional eating isn’t about being bad or out of control. It can be one of the coping skills in your emotional toolkit. And it’s often simply because you’re hungry. Have you eaten enough today?
EXERCISE: Make a shortlist of other accessible coping skills, maybe including giving a friend a call or going for a coffee. But also, if you need to turn to food, that’s fine too.
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: RETHINK EXERCISE
‘For a lot of people who come to me, diets and exercise have become interconnected. The evidence isn't strong that exercise leads to long term weight loss but there’s a lot of evidence it can improve our mental and physical health. And we know that being embodied - that feeling of being grounded in your body that comes from moving it - can help us feel better.’
EXERCISE: Start to uncouple exercise from weight loss by thinking about how movement feels. How do you feel on the days you walk or move more? What happens to your back pain, your mood, your sleep, your flexibility?
PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING: AIM FOR GENTLE NUTRITION
‘Gentle nutrition is thinking through how foods and different combinations of foods feel in your body.’ In each meal and snack, try to have: A fruit/vegetable, a higher protein/fat food (eg egg, fish, meat, pulses, nuts) plus a grain (eg bread, pasta, rice). NB: you don't have to eat perfectly every time!
EXERCISE: Before you eat, ask yourself: What do I want to eat? What’s going to taste good? How’s this going to make me feel? What’s going to feel good? After you eat, reflect on how the food made you feel.
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