Every Day is Christmas Day for the Intuitive Eater

Doesn’t everyone eat too much at Christmas?

Only those who are restraining to some extent during the rest of the year do. Intuitive Eaters are not restraining their eating on any day of the year so they don’t feel the drive to overeat at Christmas.

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When people hear the term ‘Intuitive Eating’ they commonly think that it is some sort of ability to ‘know how to eat healthily’. Like in the sense to “intuitively know how you should eat.” But this the opposite of what Intuitive Eating^TM actually is.

Intuitive Eating^TM is normal eating, where the physical body – and not the thinking mind – is the driving force behind the eating. The physical body is driving the owner of the physical body to only want to eat when, what and the amount the body physically needs. This is the exact definition of Intuitive Eating^TM. The body is completely in charge including having the ability to make the person not only prefer to eat only to the physical needs of the body but to also make it impossible to eat beyond these physical requirements.

 

Perceived Choice

The Intuitive eater perceives that they are making all their choices about eating completely freely.

They believe they are freely choosing when to eat by feeling the signals their body is sending them via their non-thinking brain and this automatically leading to them to only want to eat at that time. This signal is ‘physical hunger’.

They believe they are freely choosing what to eat by feeling the signals their body is sending them via their non-thinking brain and this automatically leading to them to only want to eat certain things. This signal is ‘physical taste’.

They believe they are freely choosing how much to eat by feeling the signals their body is sending them via their non-thinking brain and this automatically leading to them to only want to eat a certain amount. This signal is ‘physical satisfaction’.

Quite literally the Intuitive eater cannot overeat (eat more often, eat differently or eat more) and the feeling that they choose the way they want. It’s just that their ‘want’ is totally in line with their physical needs.

Is this different to what you imagined what an Intuitive Eater would be?  No debating about when, what or how much they ‘should’ eat for health, weight or feeling good. No incentives. No effort. No knowledge of nutrition.

In fact the more a person consciously knows about food and what it’s made up of the more it get’s in the way of the ‘non-thinking’ mechanism of the eating intuition.

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‘Christmas’ Every Day

Because Intuitive Eating is based on achieving physical satisfaction every time they eat –  which means eating at any other time, eating any other food and in any other amount could NOT be more satisfying to them. They genuinely feel they have free-choice in their eating for every meal on every day. But wouldn’t they just indulge a little?

The answer is they don’t! They are ‘indulging’ is achieving full satisfaction from all their eating is, indeed, ‘indulging’.

If the foods that they like are available on Christmas Day are relatively easy to access for them at other times of year they would be eating them regularly anyway. The only reason an Intuitive eater would go out of their way to eat something different than their usual fare is because that particular food can’t be obtained at other times of year. These days we can mostly get everything all year round.

The Intuitive eater would certainly not overeat in terms of amount because the physical discomfort would just make them sleep it would make them experience really unpleasant physical discomfort. This is part of the internal protective mechanism that Intuitive eaters have going on.

And they certainly wouldn’t think about using exercise as a trade-off to eat more than their body needs. No overeating means no compensatory exercise – ever.

On Christmas Day, you can really see who is a natural Intuitive eater (or a ‘reborn’ Intuitive eater like me) and who isn’t.

For the Intuitive eater, Christmas Day is no more enjoyable food-wise than any other day. In fact, it can be a little less pleasurable because they have to root out enough normal food from all the stomach crippling nasties on offer that day.

So, do you think you are an Intuitive eater based on the way you are with food (and/ or exercise) at Christmas time?

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The Transition

So, if you aren’t an Intuitive eater how do you get to be one?

What is it that happens to transition someone with a natural and powerful drive to only want to eat normally 365 days of the year forever?

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Anyone who isn’t an Intuitive eater by definition has a larger than normal appetite. They want to eat more than the body need so they have to make effort to reign their eating in or compensate for it using exercise.

Some people’s appetites has increased over their lifetime that no amount of reigning their eating in or exercising is effective that it becomes absolutely impossible to keep their weight from increasing. This is when the emotions get involved because trying so hard to control something that can’t be controlled in the way we think is very depressing.

In a nutshell, the way Intuitive Eating works is that the person stops making any effort. They eat in response to all the urges they have to satisfy their current level of appetite. This has to be carefully managed as it can be very emotional uncomfortable to see what their appetite has grown into over their lifetime, as you can imagine.

Next, they are taught to think about eating as if it were like any other biological function of the body, like going for a wee for example. If people started to question whether they should go for a wee or not or be self-critical for the amount they wee, they’d soon want to wee all the time!  We teach them how to think to turn eating into a normal biological function and get it totally out of their head where it is up for debate.

They end up with the perception that they are consciously making all their eating decisions freely when in fact they are just following the drive from their body and can’t tell the difference. As you can image this is a long and complex process. But the Intuitive Eating programme clearly sets it out in 10 principles to follow and shape the thinking around.

For someone who has never been treated eating as a physical process and only a behaviour to be controlled using their mind there are many blocks in the way because living with an uncontrollable appetite being very stressful and make then feel totally inadequate. So, of course, their journey can take a relatively long time (but no time at all compared to the time they have endured living life with their eating being controlled incorrectly.)

But for those who aren’t so far away from all their eating in the physical domain they may only need little appetite reset which can take no time at all.

So that’s it. Intuitive Eating isn’t about ‘knowing’ or even ‘feeling’ how to eat in the ‘right’ way. It’s about regaining the body’s ability to automatically drive you to think you are free to eat as you want but at the same time making you only want to eat normally.

The body controlled eating a biological cannot be deviated from because there is nothing to deviate to, even on Christmas Day.

By Alison Hall

 

For a free consultation and discussion about how it is for you or your client, always without obligation, contact Alison Hall at Try Freedom.

Alison Hall is an Intuitive Eating counsellor and owner and founder of Try Freedom

There are now over 150 studies on Intuitive Eating showing benefit.

There is also a plethora of evidence of the wider topics of Interoceptive Awareness, Food Restriction/Dieting/Binge Eating/Inefficacy Harm from Weight Loss / Reactance Theory. Click below to see the science:

• Appetite Effects of Restricted Eating Restricting the eating leads to appetite increase.
• Inefficacy And Harm From Weight Loss Interventions Weight loss programmes fail and cause harm.
• Interoceptive Awareness Being aware and responding automatically to your body’s signals.
• Intuitive Eating There are now over 150 studies on Intuitive Eating showing benefit.
• Reactance Theory Restricting the eating leads to discomfort which drives the eating.