There are always new trends and fads circulating in the wellness industry and a hotter trend right now is intuitive eating.

While considered “new,” intuitive eating is a concept that has been around since the very beginning of human beings, however, it’s something that so many of us have gotten far away from over the years due to a number of factors.

Tapping into intuitive eating can reveal a range of benefits for our health and relationship with food, it’s just a matter of doing some additional work to get there. 

What is intuitive eating? 

Intuitive eating is the act of eating mindfully. It means eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re satisfied. In fact, it’s something that is primal and is something that is supposed to come naturally to us. 

If you think about wild animals, they’re often never overweight nor do they overeat. They know when to eat when they’re hungry and they stop when they’re full. 

We can see the same thing in babies. When they’re hungry, we give them food, and if they’re not hungry, we cannot make them eat. It is something that is considered internal wisdom and is a factor that we already have within us.

Why is intuitive eating a challenging thing to do?

Well, there are a few reasons.

Unfortunately, over the years we’ve steered far away from intuitive eating ranging from things such as diet culture to how our food supply has changed.

With dieting often comes restriction which is something that is simply not attainable for our bodies. When we restrict, we often end up overeating causing us to gain weight, then restricting again to lose the additional weight, which results in an unhealthy cycle. 

Our food supply has also changed to prioritize sugary and processed foods over what is truly healthy for us. The food industry has identified that the foods with more sugar, fat and salt are addictive making it easier for us to want to come back to it and eat it. 

At the end of the day, factors like these have caused us as humans to get out of touch with what our body truly needs, making it much harder to tap into our body’s signals and identify what we want, when we want it.

Tapping into your body’s natural signals

To get back to the basics of intuitive eating, there are a few things we can do. Some of the upfront work might include taking some time throughout your day to check in with your body. Ask yourself things like:

  • “How am I feeling right now?”
  • “Am I thirsty?”
  • “Am I hungry?”
  • “Do I need to eat at this moment?”

Being more mindful is key because it is what is going to help create that connection about knowing what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat. 

On the other hand, a lot of the reasons why it can be difficult to intuitively eat stems from emotional issues. This may include working to break the cycle of cravings or eating food to deal with certain feelings.

Getting to the root cause of why you emotionally eat can be a large turning point in your wellness journey. This is where coaches like myself can extensively work with you to help you identify the root cause of your emotional eating and turn things around to get your body and mind to a state where intuitive eating comes more naturally to you. 

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Getting back to the natural state of intuitive eating takes some work, but the good news is that it is 100% within us all. We were all born like this and it can be something that we can get back to. The first step is just to start listening to your body and it will tell you exactly what it needs.