Listening to your body’s hunger signals to guide what you eat can be an alternative to restrictive diets. Is it a good way to lose weight? Our Healthy Skeptic serves up the answers.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Intuitive eating is an alternative to restrictive diets that relies on listening to your body to guide what and when you eat. Is it worth a try? The pros and cons ahead on this episode of The Healthy Skeptic.
Intuitive eating was first introduced in a book by two dieticians several decades ago.
In recent years the concept has become popular on social media thanks to growing awareness that weight-loss diets often eventually fail and can lead to emotional and physical harm.
The principles of intuitive eating include:
-Reject everything related to diets and dieting.
-Don’t deprive yourself of foods you enjoy.
-Eat when you feel hungry.
-Pause to listen to your body’s signals that you’re full.
-Find ways other than food to cope with negative emotions.
-Accept your body the way it is, recognizing that that we come in all shapes and sizes.
-And enjoy eating.
Some studies suggest that intuitive eating may lead to improved body image and emotional well-being… and decreased binge eating.
While intuitive eating is undoubtedly helpful for some people, it isn’t right for everyone. And it has some limitations, including what critics say is an oversimplified view of hunger cues and what drives us to eat.
For example, many processed foods are designed to trick our brains, making us crave them and continue scarfing them down even if we’re not really hungry. In this case, our internal signals may be unreliable.
Likewise, seeing enticing foods can trigger feelings of hunger. These “external” hunger cues can be hard to distinguish from internal ones.
Also, intuitive eating’s lack of structure may lead some people to up their intake of unhealthy foods.
Above all, it doesn’t teach followers how to form long-term eating habits that are key to having a healthy body and weight. Still, intuitive eating can be a good first step toward that goal, by helping people get of the diet merry-go-round and develop a healthier relationship with food… and themselves.
For more on weight loss, check out my book “Supersized Lies,” which reveals why standard advice often fails and what actually works to keep weight off.
Helping you be a healthy skeptic, I’m Robert Davis.