Intuitive Eating, by its very concept, seems to be relatively self-explanatory. After all, the very premise of Intuitive Eating is based on the idea of listening to your internal bodily cues instead of going on diets and following various food rules in order to achieve a healthy lifestyle. So, you may be wondering, how can a Registered Dietitian help me as an Intuitive Eating? Shouldn't I be just able to figure out on my own? Well, the answer is that Intuitive Eating, while simple in concept, can actually be quite a challenge, especially in the beginning, and a Registered Dietitian can help you at any point in your Intuitive Eating journey. A Registered Dietitian can help you navigate many areas related to recognizing hunger and satiety cues, can help you make better decisions and change your behaviors, and can help to clarify common misconceptions you may have about health and wellness.
While Intuitive Eating can be simply summed up as “eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full” it isn't actually that simple in practice. Intuitive Eating actually encompasses a set of ten principles that each need to be worked on. If you’ve been a yo-yo dieter for years, it can be extremely challenging to get in touch with your body and its internal cues. It can be difficult to pinpoint true feelings of hunger and satiety especially when you’ve been suppressing these natural cues over a long period of time. A Registered Dietitian will help you to differentiate between hunger and appetite, and can help you to learn to recognize when you are actually physically hungry, as opposed to when you are driven to eat out of habit or impulse. These distinctions are key, as recognizing and responding properly to your body’s cues are a crucial part of learning to eat intuitively.
Another way that a Registered Dietitian can help you on your Intuitive Eating journey is through behavior modification. For a lot of us, our eating habits are closely tied to our emotional states. When we are not in tune with our body’s physical and emotional states, it becomes all too easy to overeat or under eat in response to certain emotions we might be experiencing. A key part of Intuitive Eating is learning to cope with your emotions with kindness. A qualified Registered Dietitian can help you to develop coping mechanisms and to implement behavior modification so that food no longer serves as the main coping tool.
A Registered Dietitian can also be instrumental in clearing up common misconceptions about Intuitive Eating. Many people falsely believe that Intuitive Eating means just eating whatever you want. Many are hesitant to embrace Intuitive Eating because they don’t feel that they can trust themselves to have freedom to eat any and all foods, and still live a healthy lifestyle. However, working with a Registered Dietitian, you will quickly come to learn that Intuitive Eating is not simply eating whatever you want, but rather eating in a thoughtful and mindful way, which honors your body, and prioritizes your overall health.
Working with a Registered Dietitian at any point in your Intuitive Eating journey can be hugely beneficial, as Registered Dietitians are trained to work and respond to your unique health concerns.
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