Intuitive Eating: My Thoughts

Now that you have a little backstory about what brought me to this book I want to talk about the book.

Here are the basic principles of the book:

source

The most informative section for me was the "reject the diet mentality" section.  It basically says the reason diets do not work is because we tell ourselves foods are good and bad.  We eat the good foods and stay away from the bad.  Then when the temptation gets too great we give into the "bad foods."  This causes us to feel bad about ourselves, like we are failures, which then causes us to binge.  The binge usually leads to more "bad" eating.  Then on Monday we vow to do better.

It also talks about the last supper mentality.  I know I've been guilty of this.  Sundays we stuff our face with everything because we are starting a new diet Monday.

It basically says to put weightloss on the back burner.  Your goal for eating this way should not be to lose weight.  It may happen. But it may not.  You should fall into your natural weight.  Your natural weight is what you maintain without trying.  

Another one of my favorite principles is "Exercise- feel the difference."  I like this because it says to find something you enjoy doing and do it.  Don't use exercise as a form of punishment.  Don't use exercise to burn X amount of calories because you were "bad" during the day.  I am VERY guilty of this.  I have 2 heart rate monitors and a fitbit.  I had been wearing one or the other or both all the time.  I wanted to see how many calories I burned to compare that to my eating in My Fitness Pal.  This is not the right way to look at exercise.

About two weeks ago when I started to try to change my thinking I decided to give those devices a rest.  I decided not to use them for a while.  I also decided instead of following a schedule for my workouts every day I would do what I wanted that day.  If I want to rest I will.  If I want to run instead of lift I will switch my days.  If I want to do yoga I will.  I am trying to change my thoughts about exercise. I used to enjoy running.  I did it almost every day because it was fun for me.  Exercise stopped being fun when it became about burning calories. I want it to be fun again.  For the past 2 weeks I have listened to my body every day to see what I wanted to do for movement that day.  This has felt so much better than telling myself well its back/bicep day so you better suck it up and do it whether you feel like it or not...

There is also a section on raising an intuitive eating child/ teenager.  I skipped that part.

The books has way more to offer.  These are just some of the chapters that stood out to me.

I think this book is great tool to start to see food, nutrition, and health from a different perspective.  Its the opposite of what we read every day in magazine, see on Instagram and social media, etc...  I have been trying to follow these principles daily, and I can say- I feel so much more free.  I haven't beat myself up about my eating habits since starting this.  I have overeaten a couple of times.  That is because at the time I let myself get too hungry before I ate again.  I would highly recommend it to anyone because it is just refreshing to see it all from a different view.

You can buy it here on Amazon.  Let me know if you read this book or have read it before and what you think!!

XO
Heather

I also wanted to include this AWESOME blogpost that I read yesterday about why this blogger stopped counting calories.  I honestly felt like I could've written it myself.  :