Many people dream of losing weight without significant food restrictions, and this has become possible thanks to new system, which is called " intuitive eating". Its basic principle is that the body knows what it needs to work properly, so you need to listen to your desires.
What does intuitive eating mean?
There are many examples when a person exhausts himself with diets and physical activity but does not achieve the desired result. This is due to the fact that the body simply protests such restrictions. The psychology of overeating and intuitive eating are directly interconnected, since this technique allows the use of all products in the quantity required by the body. Perfect option but it looks unrealistic. Suggested by Stephen Hawkes intuitive nutrition after he experienced it for himself. He claims that you can achieve results if you learn:
- recognize the signals of your own body;
- control your appetite;
- understand when hunger strikes and when overeating is felt.
Intuitive Eating - Principles and Rules
There are certain principles that help you learn to understand your body and lose weight:
- Avoid diets completely, as temporary food restrictions only give short-term results.
- Do not ignore, because the body may think that a crisis has come and you need to stock up for the future. In addition, it is important to understand that hunger and appetite are two different things. The principles of intuitive eating are based on fractional eating, and the serving should be approximately 200 g.
- No need to take food as the main culprit overweight. Do not scold yourself for the desire to eat sweets, because this is how the body signals a lack of glucose.
- Intuitive eating is based on recognizing feelings of satiety. Use a scale from 1 ( strong feeling hunger) to 10 (overeating). You should focus on the value of 5-6 points.
- Do not take food as the main joy in life. It is important to adjust to enjoying quality, not quantity.
- Intuitive eating, the rules of which are simple and clear, involves the rejection of stress eating and reward through food. Instead of a cake, it's better to buy a new dress, and from bad mood get rid of with the help of music and so on.
- Love yourself with all the flaws, because you can lose weight only with a positive attitude.
Intuitive Eating or Healthy Eating?
In fact, it is wrong to compare these concepts, since they are very similar. The thing is that many have the wrong idea about proper nutrition, because this is not a strict diet at all, but the principle when a person eats healthy foods. The best solution, according to experts, is intuitive eating, the menu of which is based on the principles healthy diet. The only clarification, if you really want to eat an unhealthy burger or chocolate bar, then do not deny yourself the pleasure.
Cons of Intuitive Eating
The disadvantages of this method of nutrition are insignificant, so it is worth noting the difficulty in compiling a diet. Its author does not offer a menu, so you have to do everything yourself, focusing on the existing rules and foundations balanced nutrition. Many, describing the disadvantages of intuitive eating, note that you should always have “favorite dishes” on hand so as not to lean on buns, fast food, and so on.
The Intuitive Eating System is designed for advanced and smart people who have a good understanding of their desires and so on. Another disadvantage of this technique is the lack of discipline, which increases the risk of breaking loose. The developer has not provided any restrictions on the time, frequency and amount of food, so there is always a temptation to break loose and eat something extra. In addition, there is no exact figure that people who want to lose weight should be guided by.
How to switch to intuitive eating?
Taking the first step is difficult, so to switch to intuitive eating, it is recommended to focus on the following rules:
- You need to eat at the table, protecting yourself from all distractions, that is, TV, the Internet and conversations on serious topics. All attention should be focused on food.
- Switching to intuitive eating means that you should sit down to the table only when you feel hungry, but when the first signs of satiety appear, you need to immediately get up from the table.
- Determine your taste preferences and before each meal, ask yourself the question of what you want to eat.
- Start moving more, and the result of intuitive eating will be even better. Choose a direction in sports that will bring pleasure.
Intuitive Eating Exercises
There are various tricks that will help facilitate the transition to a new menu. It is recommended to create a personal hunger scale. For this intuitive eating exercise, you need to draw or print a ruler, opposite which you should write different levels sensations, for example, "hunger", "full", "overeated" and so on. Opposite each gradation, describe your own sensations in the body. Throughout the day, it is important to constantly refer to this scale to determine the intensity of hunger.
Intuitive Eating Diary
Starting to eat based on your own feelings is not easy, because it is very difficult to get rid of thoughts about food. To give intuitive eating results, it is recommended to keep a diary, where you should write down the list of foods eaten and your own feelings while eating them. After some time, it will be possible to conduct an analysis to understand when the metabolism is active, when the food is digested for a long time and there is a feeling of heaviness, which provokes appetite even more, and so on. Keep recording the sensations, making adjustments.
Intuitive Nutrition for Weight Loss
It is worth saying that the presented technique does not help all people to lose weight, since not everyone is able to correctly follow the basic principles of intuitive eating. In addition, it should be noted that it is not suitable for people who are predisposed to set excess weight. For those who are interested in how to lose weight on intuitive eating, it is important to know that people who find good results achieve. Following the rules healthy eating Don't forget to treat yourself to something delicious.
Intuitive Eating Books
If you are interested in the presented method of losing weight, then it is recommended to read the following books:
- Svetlana Bronnikova " Intuitive eating. How to stop worrying about food and lose weight". The most popular book among people who want to find harmony in their relationship with food. According to reviews, the information presented in this work helps to understand yourself and your body and change your attitude to food.
- Evelyn Tribol: book " Intuitive eating. A revolutionary new approach to nutrition". The author of this work worked alongside the founder of this movement. The book helps to take a different look at your diet, learn to live intelligently and inspired.
- Dr. Mazourik Intuitive eating. How to ensure weight loss?". The author of the book own example talks about how he was able to change his eating habits and lose weight. The pages describe in plain language the mechanisms of hunger and satiety, as well as other rules of intuitive eating. The author focuses on the problem of emotional overeating.
IN Lately the issue of excess weight among people is being raised more and more acutely - mass obesity, like a kind of analogue of the bubonic plague, captures entire families, interfering with a full life and, most importantly, worsening health. But there is a way out - this is intuitive eating. It will help you eat right, while not denying yourself anything. Let's figure out how to get there.
How to Switch to Intuitive Eating
Intuitive nutrition by Svetlana Bronnikova
Intuitive eating originated in the United States and then spread throughout the world. She came to Russia not so long ago, but she has already found her fans among ordinary people and among nutritionists and psychologists. In Russia, Svetlana Bronnikova is one of the representatives of the intuitive eating methodology, who recently published a book on this principle of nutrition, the number of readers of which is increasing every day.
Svetlana Bronnikova is an experienced psychotherapist and clinical psychologist who studies the relationship between human inner experiences and their influence on appearance. Svetlana for a long time lived in the Netherlands, heading one of the largest clinics for the treatment of overweight people. She devoted most of her life to studying the connections between lifestyle, thoughts and health.
Svetlana is firmly convinced that without being an emotionally balanced person, it is impossible to maintain balance in her appearance.
Harmony inside leads to harmony outside, internal dependence on food, as a source of joy and pleasure, leads to dire consequences for the whole organism.
Intuitive nutrition according to Svetlana Bronnikova What is Intuitive Eating Technique?
First of all, it is worth noting that Svetlana is firmly convinced that a fierce struggle with overweight leads to a struggle with your body and health. Exhausting workouts in sports clubs, depressing diets based only on cucumbers and lean rice, constant scourging of oneself in front of a mirror and absolute dissatisfaction with one’s body can be called a struggle.
As Svetlana's psychotherapeutic experience shows - external manifestations so-called "weight loss" will not bring any results while the source of the problem is sitting inside. It may consist in a shaky emotional state that provokes frequent stress, breakdowns or depression, as well as problems with digestive system. However, any problems can be solved by learning to respect yourself and live in harmony with your body. It is about the ways of gaining control over your eating habits and desires that Svetlana Bronnikova talks about.
So what is intuitive eating? First of all, it is worth saying that this is not a diet and not a new method of deceiving your body. In general, intuitive eating is something that is "recommended" by nature and that was forgotten by people a long time ago.
Intuitive eating is a method of rational food consumption, so to speak, at the “call” of the body itself.
Often we eat without paying attention to whether we are really hungry. Intuitive eating teaches us to listen to the desires of our body and give it directly what it wants.
Fundamentals of Intuitive Eating
- No diets and violence against your own body. Diets either do not help at all, or help, but on short term. In both cases, you get a whole set - stress, a feeling of eternal hunger, excess weight returning a hundredfold.
- Treat your hunger with sensitivity and understanding and satisfy it at the earliest opportunity. Intuitive eating involves an adequate attitude to hunger and food. Do not try to eat every half an hour, but do not delay eating too long, because in both cases you will give your body not the amount of energy in which it actually is.
- Stop blaming yourself for your love of food. Shame, disappointment, and low spirits are the "symptoms" that accompany every person who watches their diet and indulges in a small weakness, such as, for example, one muffin bun.
- Stop blaming and beating yourself up. Eat what you like! And this is not at all a fishing rod for lies - intuitive eating teaches you to listen to yourself. Would you like a piece of cake? So eat it! Do not pounce on it, feel its taste, its aroma. Enjoy it, and if the body really wanted it, then after one bite (or maybe earlier) you will feel that you are full.
- Learn to listen to what your body is telling you. Try to pay attention to how you feel while eating. Scientists have proven that the feeling of fullness comes only 20 minutes after a meal, which makes it clear where all this “heaviness” after eating and uncontrolled gluttony comes from.
- To live and feel great, we need a lot less food than we are accustomed to consume. Therefore, strive for a dialogue with your body and try not to “throw” into it everything that is on the plate just because it will be awkward for you to leave the food.
- Learn to relax. If food is your only "hobby" in which you put your whole soul, then this will inevitably lead to breakdowns, a wrong lifestyle and dissatisfaction with yourself. Find an activity that you enjoy. After all, it has long been known that a favorite thing makes a person happy. And if you're happy, you don't need to eat up internal contradictions.
- Love your body. Loving yourself means trying to give yourself the best. Give your body good food rich in vitamins, do not exhaust yourself with training, but do the sport that you like. Or don't exercise at all if you feel sick just looking at sportswear.
- Be active - that's all. Climb stairs instead of taking the elevator, dance to your favorite music, laugh more and, of course, be friends with food, not fight!
How to Switch to Intuitive Eating
Of course, it takes time to start eating intuitively. In one day, you will not learn how to adequately relate to food and your feeling of hunger. Be patient, try to develop the habit of subtly feeling the signals of your body and in no case forbid yourself something.
Tip: first, just learn how to eat right, eliminating harmful foods. Then adjust your correct diet, trusting your intuition.
Intuitive eating is just healthy attitude to food, a healthy attitude towards oneself and one's life, provided by nature itself. It suits absolutely everyone, the only question is whether you want to follow its principles.
How can you lose weight without a diet - women are surprised, because the main condition for weight loss is calorie restriction. Now invented new methodology intuitive escape from extra pounds- nutrition based on the principle: the body knows what to eat. The system is simple and practically has no restrictions.
What is Intuitive Eating
It often happens that a person, exhausting himself with physical activity and diets, does not come to the desired harmony. The body protests against such an attitude and, as a result, forces one to reckon with its requests. Alternative way to get rid of excess fat- This is an intuitive diet, in which the use of any restrictions is categorically denied. The weight loss system is based on principles that allow you to eat pastries, sweets, chocolate and effectively reduce in size.
The technique was originally developed by American professor Stephen Hawkes, who himself lost weight to no avail using a variety of diets. After many years failed attempts he began to listen to his body and, based on the conclusions, made up a diet on his own. The intuitive approach turned out to be positive. He helped the professor lose 22 kg and keep the weight off for a long time. Stephen Hawkes argues that the problem of excess weight should be approached as follows:
- recognize the signals that your own body sends;
- learn to control appetite;
- pause while eating;
- intuitively recognize when hunger strikes and when overeating occurs.
Principles of Intuitive Eating
Continued to develop effective method weight loss American Tame Weiler. She opened Green Mountain, where she offered women to lose weight without food restrictions. The main technique was aimed at studying the correct sensation of one's own body and was built on the theses of Hawkes. Here are the 10 Intuitive Eating Principles:
- Rejection of diets. Any dietary restriction is harmful.
- Respect for hunger. It is necessary to give the body the right amount of nutrients.
- Call to power control. You should forget about the rules that teach when you can or cannot eat.
- Peace with food. You need to allow yourself to eat.
- Respect for the feeling of fullness. We must learn to recognize when satiety comes.
- satisfaction factor. It is required to understand that food is not a pleasure, but a necessity, therefore it is necessary to enjoy not the process of eating, but every piece.
- Respect for the senses without eating. You need to understand that loneliness, boredom or anxiety are feelings that cannot be soothed by food.
- Respect for your own body. You should learn to love yourself, regardless of the numbers on the scales.
- Training is like movement. You need to be active not to burn calories, but to get an energy boost.
- Respect for your health. It is required to learn how to choose products that take care of both taste buds and the health of the body as a whole.
The essence of intuitive eating
The modern approach to nutrition returns a person to nature, because it has given the most universal tool for evaluating something - intuition. To understand if food is needed in this moment, you just need to listen to the body and feel the presence or absence of hunger. Modern man has long forgotten that the most proper nutrition- intuitive. People start eating for company or when there is a lot within walking distance delicious meals or snack foods.
The essence of the food system is that there are no rules. Everything is allowed to eat, but only if two requirements are met: you need to feel hungry and intuitively understand that the body really wants to take the chosen product. At this stage, many adults experience difficulties. However, they are easy to overcome if you watch the children - they eat as much as they need. The desire of parents to shove too much into a child often turns into major scandal.
Can you lose weight with intuitive eating?
There was a long debate among nutritionists about such a system, but in the end they came to the conclusion that this is an effective analogue of a healthy diet, calculated from the point of view of psychology. How Much Can You Lose With Intuitive Eating? According to the reviews of those who are losing weight, this system helps to easily lose 5-7 kilograms in a month. I would like to note that intuitive way getting rid of extra kilos will not be effective for people suffering from bulimia, since this is a psychological problem that requires the intervention of a qualified psychotherapist.
How to learn intuitive eating
It is difficult for a person who is used to dieting on a schedule to learn to listen to his body. At first, everyone has difficulty identifying own feeling hunger and satiety. Over time, the understanding comes that you need to eat only when there is a rumbling in the stomach or sucking in the stomach, and not for company with someone. Intuitive nutrition for weight loss is vital for the following category of people:
- diet victims whose lives have become a tactic of restriction and disruption;
- emotional people, which seize experiences;
- accustomed to the division of products, counting calories, eating strictly according to the schedule and according to the ratio of BJU.
How to Switch to Intuitive Eating
You can learn to intuitively evaluate eating behavior if you stop dividing food into healthy and harmful, bad and good, and also stop meeting accepted standards in weight. You should get rid of the fear of becoming ugly or fat. Switching to intuitive eating is a change in attitude to food, not weight loss. Even if on initial stage If you put on a few extra pounds, that's normal. Especially for those people who previously limited themselves to goodies. When the ban is gone, then the craving for them will disappear, because, as you know, only the forbidden fruit is sweet.
How to eat intuitively
The body is genetically programmed to require from the owner only those products that are currently lacking for normal functioning. When compiling an intuitive eating menu, you should pay attention to body signals and avoid compulsive overeating. Abandoning dietary thinking, you need to allow the body to eat everything. From his point of view, a serving of boiled broccoli for dinner is no better than a plate of fried potatoes. Being eaten in accordance with the desire of the body, it will not lead to weight gain, but only replenish the energy balance.
Intuitive Eating Diary
It's not easy to start eating intuitively. Desired result will not come soon if the mind constantly throws thoughts about food. A diary will help facilitate the process, in which you need to methodically write down the foods you eat and how they felt. Pair weeks will pass and notes will help to analyze at what time of the day the metabolism is active, when food is digested slowly, what foods provoke heavy drinking.
In the diary, on the first page, there should be your own personal hunger scale, in front of each item of which notes should be made. For example, opposite the level of "overeating" write your feelings from this process - painful bloating or something else. The paragraph "full" would indicate fullness, while the paragraph "very hungry" could indicate annoyance. The first days, constantly check the scale and determine the intensity of hunger. This will help you not to overeat and distinguish emotional emptiness from a real desire to eat. You will notice that saturation comes much faster than before.
Intuitive Eating for Kids
The child makes the choice of products much easier, because he knows how much he needs to eat, intuitively relying on body signals. Small children, even with a big appetite, at one moment fill up and don’t want to anymore, and they don’t like parental attempts to force-feed them. Intuitive baby feeding is about minimizing control over the amount of food a child eats. Even a baby is able to ask for food - he cries until he gets food. Let the child from an early age retain the ability to hear intuitive sensations and understand the difference between satiety, appetite and hunger.
Video: Intuitive nutrition by Svetlana Bronnikova
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March 4
7.45 cappuccino, 2 sandwiches with smoked sausage;
19.00 banana;
20.40 turkey fillet in mushroom sauce, American salad.
Comments by Svetlana Bronnikova: The diary begins with a celebration at work. Yulia does not try to “tighten her belt” either before or after the feast, and in the end she enjoys festive table and doesn't overeat.
5th of March
8.00 yogurt, latte;
11.00 banana;
13.45 banana;
15.20 shrimp roll, pie, glaze. (the pie is so-so, the glass is too sweet);
21.10 American salad;
22.20 cake.
S. B.: The next day, she eats fast food, apparently in a hurry, on the go. It is remarkable that, instead of blaming herself for what she has eaten, the girl notes the tasteless pie and the too sweet glaze. This is an important effect of the lifting of bans: many foods and dishes "show their true colors." When they were forbidden and therefore highly desirable, we ate them with a mixture of delight and guilt that prevented us from tasting their true taste. And now Julia states: tasteless, too sweet. This is a sure sign that intuition will bypass this food next time.
March, 6
7.45 hot sandwiches with sausage and cheese;
12.00 ice cream (she burst into tears while watching the film, saw parallels with her own life);
14.10 cake, dumplings with fish;
19.00 cutlet, pickled cucumbers;
20.00 ice cream (full).
S. B.: Judging by how often ice cream appears in the food diary, it was once the leader in the list of prohibited foods, and Yulia is at the stage of its legalization. It is with them that she consoles herself after watching sad movie. “Legalization” in intuitive eating refers to the phase when previously forbidden foods are introduced into the diet without restriction, with an abundance that convinces us that we will never have to limit ourselves to this food again in our lives. At the beginning of legalization, the nightmare of a dieter comes true: all the time you want it, the forbidden one, and it seems that you can eat only ice cream (chips, gingerbread). This short period, after which the relevance of the product gradually decreases, and, finally, we retain only a weak interest in the once favorite forbidden dish. Does it happen that someone does not get bored favorite dish? No, this does not happen: general mental patterns work here, one of which is getting used to the stimulus.
March 7
5.30 yogurt and coffee;
11.35 2 sandwiches with pate, cappuccino;
14.50 macaroni and cheese, sausage, ice cream with coffee;
21.25 sausage, vegetable salad with mayonnaise.
S. B.: It was a long day, starting before 6 am, and a very austere menu for such a hard day. Judging by the level of satisfaction with food, which Yulia notes separately from the level of satiety, the chosen food quite fully reflects nutritional needs She just doesn't need more.
March 8
11.25 sandwich with pate, sandwich with raw smoked sausage, 1 egg;
14.10 husband offered a cake and I couldn't refuse, but it was too sweet;
19.00 chicken barbecue, rolls.
S. B.: Julia captures the nuances of various dishes more and more accurately. “Too sweet” is a typical state of the intuitive eater who is tempted by cake or pastry.
9th of March
9.05 yogurt, a piece of cake;
12.20 3 pancakes with cottage cheese;
17.00 squids in sour cream, coffee, marmalade;
20.40 rolls.
S. B.: It may seem that Julia chooses exclusively "unhealthy" food. Meanwhile, our judgments about the nutritional value of foods are often skewed by dietary beliefs. Julia chooses food at will, eats whatever she wants, eats freely. What does she choose? Morning starts with a piece homemade cake- carbohydrates in the morning will provide a surge of strength and energy. For lunch, three pancakes with cottage cheese - an excellent protein-carbohydrate lunch. Afternoon snack: squid in sour cream, that is, fat (natural fats are extremely useful, butter And heavy cream- excellent healthy food) and wonderful protein. And finally, rolls in the evening - again rice and fish. Complete and delicious.
March 16
8.25 sandwich with eggplant and cheese, cappuccino;
12.45 cottage cheese, coffee, half a cake.
S. B.: This day needs a separate comment. Yulia replaces smoked meat on her favorite morning sandwiches with vegetables and eggplant. This is not an accident, but a pattern: the body “asks” for food, which we usually refuse, because it is “useful” and is disgusted. But as soon as we allow ourselves to eat everything, and soon it turns out that we want exactly what is useful ...
Next in the diary is another entry: “didn’t eat enough, for dessert, bread with sea buckthorn jam.” Julia began to hear not only signals of hunger, but also signals of satiety - it is logical that at first we hear the signal “I’m not enough, give me more,” but then we begin to hear the signal “don’t feed me more, I’m full.”
The last entry is evidence of great changes that have taken place during this time. Half a cake! Who is able not to finish the cake, which is already on the plate? The ability to eat half or a quarter of a desired meal because it tastes different than expected because you are full is a sign that intuitive eating skills are developing, that the body has begun to communicate with its owner and that this is friendly and open communication. No more war: "I'm hungry - no, you can't eat, we ate so well - now go work out in the gym"!
War leads to disharmony with oneself, to the feeling that food has incredible power. Intuitive eating relieves this internal conflict. It does not guarantee weight loss, it guarantees staying at the optimal physiological weight that allows our body to shine, be the most healthy, successfully resist infections and provide us with all the invaluable services that it is capable of.
Current page: 14 (total book has 27 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 15 pages]
Chapter 14
Principle 1. Renunciation of control
Hunger is not an aunt, but a friend, comrade and brother
Eat when hungry
Starting from birth modern man constantly receives both the experience of "enduring hunger", that is, "not eating when hungry", and "eating when not hungry". When a newborn is fed by the clock, he receives food, including those moments when he does not want to eat, and learns to ignore the signals of hunger from the body. And vice versa, at the wrong time, a hungry baby is soothed with a pacifier. Growing up, the child often experiences "food abuse" when loving loved ones force him to eat when he is not hungry, and again he has to ignore the signals of his own body.
Subsequently, the experience of diets makes us learn to endure and not notice even very strong hunger.
Dieting behavior is triggered by the craving to be thin. Thinness is associated with beauty, success with the opposite sex, career achievements, health - therefore, the achievement of thinness unconsciously means the automatic achievement of all these beautiful states. Runs " vicious circle diets” described by psychologists Forrate and Goodrick in the book “Life without diets”: the desire to be thin becomes a trigger for going on a diet, a diet gives rise to deprivation and a craving for forbidden food. As a result, control over behavior is gradually reduced. At one fine moment, control over behavior is completely lost - a person “breaks down” and overeats, eating significantly Furthermore what I would eat if food prohibitions did not exist. Such episodes are repeated, stimulating the return of lost weight. Gaining weight again leads to the desire to lose weight, and the circle closes.
A lot of our behavior is determined by dietary thinking, which is why it is so important to get rid of it in the first place. The damage that dieting does to the body and psyche cannot be overestimated. Among other things, these are:
Increasing the intensity of compulsive overeating - you overeat more often and more;
Metabolism slowdown - you stop dumping what you have accumulated as easily as before, and any calorie eaten instantly "settles" on the stomach and hips;
Increasing painful fixation on food most during the day you think about food, plan what you will eat, think about what you can and yearn for what you can’t;
An increase in the feeling of deprivation (deprivation of something) - you often feel unhappy, because those around you can eat anything with impunity, but you can’t;
Increasing sense of failure - every time the diet fails, you blame yourself;
Decreased sense of your ability to regulate your own behavior - when the diet fails, you experience a feeling of complete lack of control over your life and body and fall into despair.
One of the main "accomplishments" that the experience of dieting generates is chronic food-related guilt. Studies show that up to 45% of people experience guilt when they eat what they like.
The psychological pressure of the message “you need to eat healthy food, otherwise you will die soon” constantly conflicts with advertising of what is considered tasty and forbidden - chocolate, ice cream, sweets, fast food. According to the metaphor of Tribole and Resch, as a result, a kind of “food police” is formed in our minds, qualifying us as “bad” if we ate a cake today, or “good” if we managed to sit on a green salad all day. So food, originally intended to serve as an energy fuel that provides the level of activity necessary for survival, becomes a kind of moral standard by which we begin to evaluate ourselves and others. So food begins to completely control human behavior.
Strange as it may sound, but in order to master intuitive eating, you need to reach a certain level of desperation in trying to lose weight. Practice shows that as long as a person lives in the false hope that the new diet will finally give a stable result, and losing weight is the main goal of his nutritional efforts, the result will still be the same vicious dieting cycle described above.
Therefore, at the First stage of mastering intuitive eating, most people feel like complete "losers" - any dietary attempt ends in failure, kilograms not only return, but also bring friends with them. typical picture this state: your day begins with weighing, and sometimes ends with it. Your mood is highly dependent on what the scales show. You do not feel the internal signals of hunger and satiety. The offer to “choose and eat what you want” causes you confusion and anxiety - you eat not what you want, but what you “should”. The topic of food makes you a lot negative emotions, among which guilt, fear and irritation predominate.
You do not like how you look in the mirror, you suffer from low self-esteem and consider yourself a weak-willed, spineless, incapable of controlling yourself as a person. You often overeat out of desperation and boredom, and it is possible that you have signs of eating disorders, such as compulsive overeating, when large amounts of food are consumed in short periods of time. This is accompanied by a feeling of complete loss of control and emotional "numbness".
Today we will challenge dietary thinking and hardened food scripts from the past by creating our own, personal, personal "Food Manifesto" (see Exercise 3 of the Experimentarium) - a set of no rules, but the rights of a person to eat the food that he likes, when he wants it. But first, let's talk about hunger.
The basic, most fundamental rule of intuitive eating: you can eat always, you can eat everywhere. The only thing that determines the need to start eating is the feeling of hunger that we experience.
Time of day, life schedule, “I need to eat because I’ll get hungry later,” “Let’s sing for the company,” and other considerations cannot determine the need to eat.
Often, hunger is mistaken for sensations that are completely unrelated to it - “hunger in the mouth” or “hunger in the head”.
Hunger as a physiological "event" of the body is regulated by the hypothalamus - a tiny part of the brain, located in its depths, and is localized mainly in the stomach. This means that “hunger in the head”, “boring in the mouth” and “grandmother will be offended if I don’t eat this cutlet” are by no means physiological events and have nothing to do with hunger. Right now, while reading these lines, put your hand on the place where you feel hunger. Where did your hand go?
The stomach is located just above the abdominal area, literally half a palm above the abdomen. If the hand is there, everything is in order. And it happens that the hand points to the area above the stomach, closer to the chest, the discomfort in which is regarded as hunger. This is not hunger, but anxiety, a feeling most often interpreted by people with eating disorders as hunger.
The next step is to inventory the bodily sensations associated with hunger. Take a piece of paper, sit down and describe what signs of hunger you are able to experience. Remember to just cross out the ones that never happen to you. For example:
✓ Rumbling in the stomach
✓ Empty feeling in the stomach
✓ Sucking feeling in the stomach
✓ Weakness
✓ Dizziness, headache
✓ Irritability
✓ Trembling in limbs
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Please note that absolutely all the signs of hunger that you wrote out are bodily sensations, or sensations, if in a smart way. Also note that if you write down only trembling, headache or weakness, then these are signs of extremely intense hunger, which means that you do not recognize its milder forms and listen to the body only when the hunger becomes super intense. How to deal with it? How to catch more subtle sensations? Listen to your body for a day or two and try to catch when the feeling of emptiness forms in the stomach or it begins to rumble - these are more or less accurate signs that you are hungry. At the same time, on an emotional level, and this is important to note, anything can happen to you. We are hungry no matter what happens in our mental life. Any change in the feeling of hunger in response to mental events (not only gluttony, but also anorexia, inability to eat in response to stress) can be signs of a disorder in this system.
Experimentarium 2
1. My food rules
Right now, are you following any dietary rules? Are you afraid to break them, do you feel guilty if you break them? Let's try to make a list of these rules.
1. Time. Do you have any rules related to the time of eating - do not eat after 6, 8, 10 hours, do not eat at night, always have breakfast, eat every 3 hours? Write down which ones.
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2. Product combination. Do you have any food pairing rules - don't eat protein with carbohydrates, don't eat bread with meat, don't eat porridge with sugar? Check the list if they are.
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3. Fat. Do you have any rules related to the amount of fat in food? You will not drink coffee with cream, but order skim milk, do you buy low-fat cottage cheese and low-fat cheese?
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4. Sugar. Do you limit yourself in sweets and confectionery?
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5. Prohibited Products. Are there any foods you try to avoid at all costs?
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6. Snacks. Do you avoid satisfying hunger with small snacks in between meals?
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7. Place of eating. Do you have rules saying that food can not be taken everywhere? In what places you will never be able to allow yourself to eat, even if you are very hungry - on the street, in public transport?
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8. Healthy food. Do you try to eat "healthy" or "properly" and what does this mean for you?
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9. Nutritional value and quantity. Do you rate nutritional value(calorie content) of what you eat, do you measure what you eat in a different way (in grams, in glasses, in pieces, in servings, in fists)?
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10. Do you have a drink policy? Drink a certain amount of water per day, do not drink sweet carbonated drinks?
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2. Exercise "Festive feast"
Think back to your childhood and imagine a typical holiday feast in the house where you grew up. Who cooks the holiday food? What part do you take in this? What is on the table? Who sits where at the festive table and where are you sitting?
What is the difference between holiday food in your childhood home and everyday food? Is it allowed in holidays eat more or different foods than on normal days?
Based on these memories, do you remember if your family had certain, pre-established food scripts?
For example, “we all eat together at the table when dad comes home from work.” Or - "you must have soup at lunch." Or - "sweet can be eaten only after the main course is eaten." Maybe it was necessary to finish everything that was put on the plate, or the amount of sweets and delicacies given out was strictly limited?
Did any of your family members follow the diet, limiting themselves in certain foods? Have you been restricted in certain foods?
How have these eating scenarios affected your current eating behavior?
Think about which of these rules, consciously or unconsciously, you continue to follow in your daily practice? Write down your own thoughts about this.
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3. Exercise "My Food Manifesto"
Take a piece of A4 paper and write "MY FOOD MANIFESTO" or "MY BILL OF FOOD RIGHTS" on it in large size, whichever you prefer. Carefully review all the rules, expectations, and scenarios from the previous two exercises. Formulate counterclaims and write them down in your manifest. The first statement is common to all of us:
1) I have the right to eat.
Further can go as more general rules(“I have the right to eat as much as I want”) - in the event that you constantly limit yourself in food and count calories, and private (“I have the right to eat dessert BEFORE the main course”) - if loved ones in your childhood It was considered a terrible crime to eat dessert at the beginning.
Practice certain points in your manifesto regularly. For example, when you go out to a restaurant, order dessert first and then the main course if there is “space left,” or try eating something outside if your family rules forbade you from eating “on the go.”
Keep your manifest in plain sight and reread it often to remind yourself of the new food rights you have.
4. Food diary "in a new way"
In almost every weight loss system, it is proposed to meticulously keep a food diary in order to record everything eaten. Keep a food diary long time difficult because it's boring. Therefore, we will keep a food diary for a short time and in a new way. We need it for one purpose: to understand exactly what patterns of disturbed eating behavior do I personally have?
To do this, you will need a phone with a camera. For a minimum of 5-10 days (maybe longer, as long as the gunpowder lasts), photograph any food that enters your mouth during the day. Mark the date, time, circumstances under which you ate it (“visiting mom”, “coffee with a friend”, “in the cafeteria at work”, “drinking beer with the guys on Saturday”), whether you were hungry or not, and your current emotional condition(“tired”, “irritated”, “calm”, “upset”). It is convenient, for example, to create a private account on Instagram and upload photos with comments there.
At the end of the diary period, analyze what happened to highlight the so-called “weak points” - those moments when you were not hungry, but made the decision to eat. Were you bored, scared, lonely? Were you upset, angry, dejected? This exercise will allow you to summarize preparatory work for intuitive eating: you will get an overview of situations in which you eat, although you do not want to eat. Next, we will work on setting up internal signals of hunger and satiety, regulating the emotions that you are used to coping with food.
Chapter 15
Principle 2: You have the right to…have
Much of our mental life is interconnected. One thing inevitably leads to another, and nothing can be done about it. Overeating will sooner or later affect the figure. The habit of drinking alcohol to relax is addictive. Parting necessarily entails sadness, even if we part with a bad person, which turned our life into a nightmare - parting will cause sadness.
Modern dietary and weight loss methods, one way or another, come down to a combination of self-restraint, self-torture and self-deception. These are the three main components of any popular nutrition system known to me to this day. Using the logic of "No pain - no gain", or, in the Russian negative interpretation, "No legs - no cartoons", the guru diet food announce lists of allowed, not recommended and prohibited under risk death penalty products that plunge those who decide to change their lifestyle into the abyss of physical suffering on the treadmill and under the barbell, and as a reward they allow, for example, one day a week or within one week after five, carried out flawlessly, to burst in plenty so that the body does not switch to conservation mode every calorie. And then - again in the yoke. All these methods do nothing to restore contact with the body; rather, they contribute to increasing the distance. The body in our nutritional culture of nutrition is a slave, an enemy, something that is subject to the most severe control and torture, otherwise it will rise and declare its desires. With libido, another need of the body, this, in general, no longer happens - to satisfy the sexual need in passing, so to speak, to have a sexual bite in a cafe that you pass by, or to order yourself an extensive dinner of many sexual dishes is not at all considered shameful. Some 100-150 years ago, everything was exactly the opposite ...
In our culture, there are very few situations where you are allowed to listen to your body, and they are all exclusive. For example, a person recovering from an illness is allowed to eat whatever he asks. A pregnant woman is entitled to any food fads, including the eating of substances completely unrelated to food. With pregnancy and nutrition, the situation is generally extremely interesting, because if a pregnant woman does not worry, listens to the wishes of the body and exists in an atmosphere of warmth and support, she eats more than usual, but does not recover catastrophically. An anxious, unhappy pregnant woman with an already disturbed eating pattern will use pregnancy as an excuse to legalize emotional eating and end the pregnancy with a large and unnecessary excess. A pregnant woman who feels incompetent, who tries not to listen to herself, but to read smart books, consult doctors and strictly follow their advice in order to “be good”, will begin to stuff useful foods into herself, “break down” into unhelpful ones, because it’s hard, and also pick up a surplus.
The wisdom of our body is so great that it affects not only ourselves, but also the environment around us. For example, goldfish, the simplest artificially bred creatures, release special growth-inhibiting hormones into the water so as not to outgrow the volume of water in which they exist. It doesn’t occur to goldfish to restrict themselves in food and hang a list of allowed foods on the wall - this only comes to mind for us humans.
One of the biggest fears about Intuitive Eating tends to be this: if I start eating whatever I want, whenever I want, I'll stop walking through the door. This fear has no basis. Without knowing you personally, your metabolism and your health, I would venture to say that you will still walk through the door, even if you allow yourself to eat whatever you want.
But that's not all. One of our primary tasks is to start eating not “whenever”, “when it comes to mind”, but for the most natural physiological reason - because we are hungry.
But learning to recognize when I'm hungry, which means when I can start eating, many people have to start again. This is what we will do with you now. To do this, we will use the following scale.
Hunger bar
Rice . Hunger bar
What sensations can correspond to points on this scale?
✓ Overeat- a feeling of painful bloating, nausea, it is difficult to move, it seems that you will never want to eat again in your life.
✓ Full with riding- you have to unfasten the top button on the belt or loosen the belt, a feeling of heaviness, fatigue, drowsiness.
✓ Sat- you feel food in the stomach, feel full, perhaps even a little discomfort - although there is still room in the stomach. You feel full even though your brain whispers, “We can have another slice of that pie or a slice of that divine ham.”
✓ Slightly full- you begin to experience satisfaction, the first signs of saturation. If you stop now, you will not feel satiety and any discomfort associated with this, and you will get hungry again in the near future.
✓ Neither hungry nor full- a neutral state, balance, balance of energy in the body. You do not feel food in the stomach, do not feel the urge to eat. You don't think about food at all.
✓ Slightly hungry- you experience the first signs of hunger - a slight feeling of sucking in the stomach, a small, easily tolerated discomfort that is easy to ignore and continue what you are doing.
✓ Hungry- you experience tangible signs of hunger - your stomach growls, the sucking sensation intensified. You understand that you want to eat and that you will have to eat soon. You notice a decrease in concentration, coordination, become less patient, your mood decreases.
✓ Very hungry- you are irritable, feel strong hunger cramps. Hands are trembling, fatigue is growing, at this moment you are ready to eat anything.
✓ I'm dying of hunger- dizziness, extreme fatigue, consciousness may become fuzzy.
Copy or print this scale for yourself on a small piece of paper that you can carry with you. For 3-4 days in a row, take it out as often as possible and determine how intense your feeling of hunger is now.
Eating at the “red dots” of satiety (“full to the top”, “overeating”) means that you are guaranteed to eat after saturation and get from eating, instead of pleasure, feeling unwell and feeling guilty. In the "red dots" of satiety, we usually eat if we experience the so-called "emotional hunger", and not physiological. It is just as dangerous to eat in the red points of hunger - those states when you are already extremely hungry. Having reached physiological exhaustion, the body turns on the “alarm siren”: “Attention! Attention! There was no food for too long! We eat everything, as soon as possible, as much as possible!” The result of eating at the red points of hunger is almost always overeating, and significantly - the brain "does not allow" the body to stop at the saturation point, but forces it to continue eating "in reserve".
The orange points of our scale - "Full" and "Hungry" - are alarming states, but not necessarily fraught with overeating. If you are hungry for the "orange point", and still decide to put off eating for at least a few minutes to finish one very important thing here ... you will move again. If you decide to continue eating despite being full, you will overeat too. The "orange points" of the scale indicate to us the states in which we need to stop and change our behavior.
The yellow dot - "Neither hungry nor full" - is a state of balance, homeostasis, as biologists would say, that is, a balanced state of the entire biological system. It means that the body has enough energy, enough nutrition. Compulsive eaters often become frightened, not feeling full or pressure of food in the stomach, and mistake this state for hunger - because they are afraid of being hungry. However, the body in this state does not need food, it has enough of it, enough energy - your body is ready not to look for food, chew and digest, but to create, invent, play, work, fall in love ...
Green items are the most pleasant. These are the moments when we can start eating, and we can continue if we are already eating. By learning to start eating at green spots - when you feel the first signs of hunger - you learn to eat without overeating. As you understand, for success it is necessary to learn to recognize the early signs of hunger and catch the so far incomprehensible to us, poorly recognized states of "half-satiation".
This is important: there are no objective criteria for the state of "Half full". It can be described as "I'm not really hungry anymore, but I can continue to eat for a long time." This is an individual state, only you can determine whether you have reached it or not yet, based on the internal sensations that we discussed above.
I know that many obesity treatment programs and books on overeating offer similar scales in numerical terms, from 1 to 10, and advise "only eat if the feeling of hunger is at level 8 and above," for example. This strategy is STRONGLY unsuitable for compulsive eaters and bingers, because, as we have already established, most of these people are extremely inclined to try to satisfy the needs of other people. Possessing self-esteem dependent on the opinions of others, the compulsive eater will try to "be good" and eat only if the feeling of hunger has an intensity of 3 or 4, or, conversely, suffer from guilt, because he "ate to level 10". Any attempts to clothe bodily sensations in numbers lead to what we are trying to get rid of - increase the distance between consciousness and body. That is why in our Hunger Scale there are not 10, but 9 elements.
How can I tell if I am currently experiencing emotional hunger or physical hunger – in other words, “head hunger” (or “mouth hunger”, for example) or “stomach hunger”?
It's not exactly easy to do right off the bat - but you can quickly learn to distinguish between them with a little practice. Physiological hunger develops gradually, and if you refuse to satisfy it for some reason, on an unconscious level, you know for sure that you are hungry. Emotional hunger comes suddenly, like a thief snatching a bag from your hands in a supermarket - instant confusion, a little noise, and now you find yourself surrounded by a small crowd, on the floor at your feet - old lipstick, some checks, but no bag, and you look at your empty hands in confusion... Body hunger gives us a choice - dictating quite clearly what temperature or taste of food you now need to eat (we will talk about this later), body hunger gives a sufficient choice of options. Emotional hunger categorically requires a certain product - most often this is exactly the food that has the status of "comfort" for you - a certain type of chocolate, ice cream, chips. And finally, the physiological hunger subsides, saturated with the food offered to him, with a feeling of satisfaction and calmness, the emotional one may seem generally insatiable - no matter how much you eat, you continue to want something else, and as a result you experience not satisfaction, but a feeling of guilt - Why did I eat so much at night! Why am I overeating chocolate again!
As you begin these observations, you may discover several typical phenomena.
First, often compulsive eaters only recognize hunger when they actually almost die from it. If you wait until this moment, then a physiological state sets in when the body needs food so desperately that it doesn’t matter what and how much - any, the more, the better. In this state, no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to determine what exactly you need right now to get enough, as the children did in the experiment of Clara Davis. This condition is fraught with a huge risk of overeating, and this is what most often happens to those who like to sit on a strict diet.
