Long gone are the days of extreme keto, juicing, paleo, or whatever else diet that the internet has chosen to glorify for a certain period. Now, dieticians on TikTok are choosing to remove the toxic diet culture and, instead, promote an intuitive eating mindset to their followers.
Intuitive Eating
The concept of intuitive eating is fairly simple – it is building a healthy relationship with food, listening to what your body needs, and avoiding restrictions at all costs. Once you are able to have that connection, your body will be able to tell you what nutrients you need and when to stop eating when you are full. You may be thinking that everyone should already be eating this way. Unfortunately, diet culture has engraved its way so deeply into this generation and many ones before it to a point where an intuitive diet does seem like a new and strange concept.
It takes a long time to take yourself out of these habits and to unwind such a complex relationship with food, but the hope is that encouraging this mindset will at least help children growing up now to not have to deal with it in the future. It is about not forcing your children to finish every bite of their food if they are too full, not encouraging cheat or “guilty pleasure” meals because it emphasises that food can be bad for you and not to judge eating habits of others even if it is not at the “normal” eating hours of the day.
Practicing Intuitive Eating
In order to start practicing intuitive eating in your day-to-day life, here are some helpful tips to start getting into that mentality –
- Listen to your body when it is hungry
Did you just finish your entire plate of dinner but still feel hungry? Wait for 30 to 60 minutes, drink some water, and if you are still hungry, go make yourself another plate. It means that you are not consuming enough food. Eating less can lead to binging later, so it is better to just give your body what you want.
- Similarly, listen to your body when it is full
Before getting up to grab a snack, just take a moment to listen to your body and check if you are really hungry or if you are just feeling bored. Pause between bites and check if you are feeling satisfied enough. Forcing yourself to finish a plate of food is just the same as throwing the rest away since it is still considered a waste if you are not enjoying it.
- Stop treating food as a reward or guilty pleasure
Eating a piece of cake should not only be done when you are in need of a reward or if you are hiding in shame and eating it alone at night. You can still have cake on a boring Monday afternoon just because you felt like it and not feel guilty about it. Changing this concept of thinking can also help prevent binge eating in the future.
- Respect your mind and body
Just because you are eating whatever you want, it does not mean that you can ignore everything else your body needs. You have to be mindful that you are consuming enough nutrients, vitamins, and exercising gently so that you are also honouring your health.
- Be gentle and forgiving with yourself
Make an effort to stop treating weight gain as a bad thing. Weight gain does not mean that you are an unhealthy person for the majority of the time, it can be due to happiness, life changes, medical conditions, and more.
Remember, if you are eating enough every single day that you do not feel hungry, the weight you gain as a result just means that you are growing into the body that you were always meant to be in.