When we look to heal our relationship with food and decide to no longer participate in diet culture, it can feel overwhelming. Feelings of body shame have for so long turned us to diet plans and wellness gurus to tell us what, when and how we should be eating sometimes we cannot conceive of how else we might engage with food in new ways. Happily, we have options! There are other ways to think about food that are body positive and empowering because they can be practiced in a way that is weight neutral. In this post I offer a brief introduction to three of these frameworks and encourage you to explore further any or all that appeal to you.
Intuitive Eating
I was introduced to Intuitive Eating soon after I began my Health at Every Size (HAES) journey many years ago by reading Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole nutritionists who pioneered the approach. I found Intuitive Eating was a good fit with the values I was learning to embrace practicing Health at Every Size as well as providing some tools to help navigate the challenges of a positive relationship with food such as relearning body signals and navigting emotional eating.
Here is a description from the website of Resch and Tribole:
Intuitive Eating is a self-care eating framework, which integrates instinct, emotion, and rational thought. It’s a personal and dynamic process, which includes 10 principles:
Reject the Diet Mentality
Honor Your Hunger
Make Peace with Food
Challenge the Food Police
Respect Your Fullness
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Honor Your Feelings without Using Food
Respect Your Body
Exercise—Feel the Difference
Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition
https://www.intuitiveeating.org/definition-of-intuitive-eating/
Mindful Eating
Soon after I started to work with the Intuitive Eating Principles, I started coming across the tern Mindful Eating. At that time, I was learning to practice mindfuless in my day to day life and it made sense to me to bring that awareness to eating and food. Mindfulness is a core tool in reclaiming body sovereignty, especially in learning to once again trust your body.
The Centre for Mindful Eating describes mindful eating as:
” allowing yourself to become aware of the positive and nurturing opportunities that are available through food selection and preparation by respecting your own inner wisdom. By using all your senses in choosing to eat food that is both satisfying to you and nourishing to your body, acknowledging your responses to food (likes, dislikes or neutral) without judgment, and becoming aware of physical hunger and satiety cues to guide your decisions to begin and end eating you can change your relationship to food. “
http://www.thecenterformindfuleating.org/IntroMindfulEating
I understood there were differences between Intuitive Eating and Mindful Eating, but for the most part I have lumped them together in my mind. A few weeks ago I read a blog post by Vincci Tsui, RD that I found really helpful in understanding the similarities and differences between intuitive eating and mindful eating. Vincci says: ”Whereas mindful eating is about being present in the eating experience in a non-judgmental way, intuitive eating is a broader framework that goes outside the eating experience, encouraging people to actively reject external diet messaging and change their relationship with food and their body.”
Vincci’s determination that Intuitive Eating is a broader approach that includes mindful eating makes sense to me. What does that mean? You can practice mindful eating without engaging in Intuitive Eating, but mindful eating is an essential component of being an Intuitive Eater.
Finally I would like to share with you another approach to eating that supports healing from body shame – competent eating.
Competent Eating
Ellyn Satter is a well regarded a dietitian, family therapist, and author, known for the work she has done with families with her division of responsibility framework. You likely have seen her description of normal eating. Normal eating is part of what Satter calls competent eating, which she describes as:
• Going by your body rather than the rules for what and how much to eat.
• Taking good care of yourself. Planning for feeding yourself and paying attention while you eat.
• Having regular meals with food you enjoy. Sitting down for snacks between times if you need them.
• Feeling good about your eating and about your food, and feeling good about feeling good.
• Thinking about what you want to eat and letting yourself eat it without feeling guilty.
• Letting yourself eat as much as you are hungry for.
• Trusting your body to weigh what it needs to.
https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/how-to-eat/the-joy-of-eating-being-a-competent-eater/
All three of these approaches can support healing our relationship with food and help us become more body sovereign. When we can learn to once again trust our bodies to guide us in choosing what foods to eat we are able to exit the diet cycle. As you do your own research on these approaches and look for resources, watch out for diet industry co-opting. If anyone who writes, teaches or provides service using these frameworks and is promising it will lead to weight loss, they are not holding true to weight neutral premise intended. The links provided in this post provide a great starting point for each of these approaches.
Sydney is a body image therapist providing online counselling with a focus on healing body shame. Her approach is grounded in Health at Every Size principles, supporting a reclaiming of Body Sovereignty, where we once again experience peace, trust and respect of our body. To learn more about Sydney and her approach, check out her website: www.sydneybell.ca or send an email: sydney@sydneybell.ca