Principles of Eating Intuitively - CARE

I always tell my clients the best way to maintain weight loss, prevent emotional eating, and live a more healthful lifestyle is eating intuitively.

No, this doesn’t mean you can eat whatever you feel like whenever something strikes your fancy…

But in a way…. kind of.

I want you, and all my clients, to eat intuitively as a sustainable method of taking care of yourself. If you can remember the acronym CARE, it will be your guide to eating intuitively as a healthy long-term lifestyle:

Check your emotions
Arrange your plate
Respect your body and food
End the meal when satisfied

**This information is not intended for people with specific dietary, medical, or psychological stressors surrounding food. Please consult a physician or RD for your specific needs.**

Check your emotions

Before you go to the fridge, have a quick check-in with yourself. Quiet your thoughts, relax your shoulders, and ask yourself “am I actually hungry?”

This will be a complete game-changer.

Symptoms of physical hunger include:

·        Feeling of emptiness in stomach

·        Headache

·        Fatigue

·        Nausea

·        Growling stomach

·        Difficulty focusing

If you aren’t experiencing these symptoms but still feel something is missing, identify what emotions you may be experiencing. Often times stress, boredom, nervousness, or any other extreme emotion may lead you to reach for snacks when you’re not actually hungry.

If you’re NOT hungry, but rather need to process your emotions, take a break and do something to address those emotions. Whether its talking with someone, meditation, brushing your teeth or walking down the hall for a few minutes, do something that will ease some of that tension.

If you’ve determined you ARE hungry, practice determining how hungry you are with this scale below:

Do this before each meal. Take a break when you are about halfway finished with the meal and rate yourself on the scale again. Then, when you’ve decided you have finished, rate yourself again.

Checking in on yourself is the best way to manage your own emotions and prevent overeating or emotional eating and it is a great first step to practicing more purposeful control in your life.

Arrange your plate

Start meal preparation by filling your plate with quality protein and vegetables first. These are the things that will fill you up, make the meal satisfying, and keep you sustained until the next time you eat a few hours in the future.

After you prepare a good amount of those, add in your fruits, whole carbs, dairy, etc. until you have plated your meal according to your hunger level.

Despite your determination to eat clean, you may also want something less than completely healthy from time to time. Keep these foods in moderation, but don’t disallow them. When you create hard food rules you are more likely to associate strong emotions with those food, which in turn can lead to disordered eating behaviors.

A good ratio is to fill your meals with 80% of food to nourish your body and 20% for pleasure.

If you’ve been dieting long enough, you know what foods are full of nutrients, and which ones are void of them.

To show true respect for your body, choose foods that are good for it a majority of the time.

Respect your body and your food

Overeating or undereating is not respecting your body. However, it can be easy to do either if your fluid intake is inadequate.

Drinking sufficient water will help you in determining whether you are hungry or not and can help you notice when you are truly full. If you don’t drink enough water, you are more likely to overeat. Conversely, if you’re drinking too much water it may give you the illusion you are fuller than you actually are.

When in doubt, drink water and stay hydrated.

Once you are well hydrated, take a moment to honor the food in front of you. Consider all the work it took from yourself and others to grow vegetables, grind flour, process and preserve each item so it can eventually make it into your mouth.

Next, as you do take your first bite of food be very observant of how it tastes. Notice how it’s presented on the plate, the texture as you first cover the food in your mouth and chew. Find any hints of sweetness, sour, salty, bitter, or savory tastes. Really take in every aspect of the food.

And remember, nothing tastes as good as that first bite.  Over time your tongue expects certain flavors within that meal. Each bite after the first may still be delicious, but it won’t have nearly the same impact as the first one.

Respect your body and hunger cues which will help you to know when you are satisfied.

End the meal when satisfied

Once you’ve reached to about 6-7 on the hunger scale, slow down your bites. Really take a moment to listen to your body, notice any emotions that may be bubbling up during the meal, and watch for some of these cues you may be satisfied:

·        The absence of the hunger cues mentioned above

·        When you no longer feel deprived of food

·        If the remaining food was taken away for leftovers, you would not feel remorse or resentment

·        You can stop eating comfortably

·        You feel grateful for the food

Once you have determined you are finished eating, but there is still food left on your plate, this is okay and sometimes to be expected. Remember, when you are eating out or visiting the homes of people who like to cook, they often serve large portions.

However, it can become quite easy to mindlessly eat what remains on the plate and become uncomfortably full. This is typically where most over-eaters struggle to stop eating.

When eating out at a restaurant, some small behaviors to change to stop eating include:

·        Push the plate away

·        Package remaining food for leftovers and set it aside

·        Place a napkin over food you don’t want anymore

·        Sip on a non-caloric carbonated beverage or water

·        Chew quietly on gum

·        Stay distracted away from the food by socializing

When at home,

·        Position food in your kitchen so you have to complete one more step in order to get seconds (i.e., a lid on a dish)

·        Clean up as soon as you decide you are done

·        Don’t keep trigger foods* readily available

*Trigger foods are foods you know you have a difficult time eating too much of*

If you do overeat and feel uncomfortably full, take special note of how you feel.

You may feel sluggish, uncomfortable, lazy, and like you want to sit for the rest of the day. While this may be okay on rare occasions like a holiday, this should not be a normal state of being. If it does happen, take note of how you feel and why you don’t want to feel this way again.

You don’t need to overcompensate, beat up on yourself, or give in to the feeling of wanting to laze about. Move on with your regular plans for the day. Forgive, learn, and if it’s a habit- break it.

Taking CARE of yourself takes practice, failure, and years of improvement. But ultimately, intuitive eating is the best way to be successful in the long-term with weight-control and developing a proper diet mentality.