What Does Research Show About Intuitive Eating?

If you’ve ever researched a particular food or ingredient, you may have said to yourself: Nutrition evidence is confusing. One day, carbs are out, then the next day, they’re back in. Staying up to date on the latest nutrition recommendation is tricky, particularly when the information available on the internet seems endless.

Luckily, some of our favorite non-diet approaches to health have data backed by experimental studies. As you may know, Intuitive Eating (IE) is a framework that incorporates physical and emotional needs into 10 principles. According to its founders, IE has been validated by over 100 studies. Today, we’ll cover a few from the last five years.

 In 2017, researchers from New Zealand examined how hunger training over a six-month time period affected eating behaviors in people living with overweight or obesity. Researchers used a 23-item IE Scale to assess body-food choice congruence (choosing foods that match physical needs), eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, and unconditional permission to eat. Out of 50 recruits, 34 completed the training. Compared to those who completed less than 30 days, participants who completed at least 60 days of hunger training showed increases in body-food choice congruence and eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, and decreases in unconditional permission to eat. 

In another study of 137 American college students, who were predominantly female, researchers assessed how IE knowledge and plate size affected intake levels. One group of students received an 8-inch plate of pasta and tomato sauce, while the other received a 12-inch plate of the same food. Prior to the meal, students fasted for four hours, completed an IE Scale, and rated the meal. Students who adhered more closely to IE had greater food intake. Additionally, students with larger plates ate more. Lastly, those who had greater adherence to IE and larger plates, had greater food intakes. The researchers concluded that the results counteracted the theory that IE eaters would be more sensitive to internal cues of hunger rather than external ones. However, the researchers cautioned the findings because most of the data collected was self-reported, which is subject to errors.

In one large meta-analysis, researchers compiled evidence from 16 studies to assess the relationship between novel non-diet frameworks and eating behaviors. Most of the sample size consisted of fifty or fewer participants, who were predominantly female. Eight papers specifically examined the impact of IE on food behaviors, and found that IE was positively associated with observed hunger cues, freedom to eat, pleasure derived from food, and awareness of one’s body state. Since the relationships observed were associations, the researchers couldn't determine underlying mechanisms behind these relationships. However, they speculated that IE fostered greater understanding of physical and emotional needs. For example, in one sample of young adults, participants with higher adherence to IE exhibited more anti-dieting and self-care behaviors. In another study, participants with higher levels of Intuitive eating had greater sensitivity to their body’s state. 

Intuitive eating shows promise in building a better understanding of our bodies' needs. If you want to learn more about Intuitive Eating, book a free discovery call here.

Managing PCOS Through a Non-Diet Approach

Every woman who has PCOS knows the struggle. Imbalances in hormones and metabolism present daily challenges with blood sugar regulation and chronic low-grade inflammation. PCOS is not a lonely struggle either, for it affects 1 in 10 women of childbearing age.  

For someone who is frustrated with her PCOS, trendy diets may offer a glimmer of hope: perhaps the carb-free keto diet or grain-free paleo diet will alleviate these symptoms and help me lose weight? Though these approaches seem attractive, there is little evidence that prohibitive diets work, particularly over time. Completely cutting out carbs or fats doesn’t have immense health benefits, and indeed, restricting intake can actually lead to a stress response from the body.  

When it comes to dieting, the bottom line is that the diets fail, not the individual. Their restrictive nature makes it inherently impossible to maintain in the long-term. It’s natural for the body to desire the types and levels of food it normally receives. Furthermore, a uniform, prescribed diet approach to health for everyone is simply unrealistic, nor feasible. Rather than cut and restrict intake to improve health, it’s far more important to diversify food sources and get sufficient levels of nutrients. 

This mantra is echoed in the principles of non-diet frameworks, which are significantly better for our physical and mental health. Both Intuitive Eating (IE) and the Health At Every Size (HAES) approach advocate for rejecting the diet mentality and embracing self care health promoting behaviors instead of restriction. With these frameworks, people are empowered to listen to the signals the body sends, and learn how to properly address those signals. 

IE shows potential for people with PCOS. In one web-based study, a representative sample of 120 women with PCOS completed a survey about dietary behaviors and self-efficacy. Results indicated that 89% of respondents had previously tried traditional diets. But the most interesting result was that a significant, positive relationship existed between high adherence to IE and confidence in maintaining healthy habits, like trusting hunger and satiety signals. The authors suggested that more sustainable, beneficial changes in diet are possible when people follow the IE framework.  

Like IE, the HAES approach can be tailored to women with PCOS too. It condemns the idea that weight status is synonymous with health and encourages followers to focus more on what works for them. This means freely eating the foods that help manage PCOS symptoms, and paying more attention to ovulation changes, blood sugar levels, and mood than the number on the scale. 

IE and HAES offer real, achievable solutions to living with PCOS. Unlike diets, these frameworks celebrate individuality and value body knowledge. Learning to be aware of the signals the body sends, the foods that taste good, as well as the movements that ease symptoms is a sustainable and effective way to live with PCOS. If you’re interested in learning more about identifying these things for yourself, get in touch with a HAES dietitian specializing in PCOS and discuss how to apply non-diet frameworks to your lifestyle.

How Working With a Dietitian Can Help You With Intuitive Eating

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.

Schedule a free discovery call here.

Rejecting the Diet Mentality

The very first thing you need to do when learning to embrace intuitive eating is to reject the diet mentality. It is a mentality that we are all familiar with. It is a mentality that keeps us trapped in a cycle of mistrusting ourselves, and mistrusting our bodies. It is a desperate and never ending endeavor to control our cravings and appetite, depriving ourselves of your favorite foods, and the flavor and zest of life. Healthful, joyful living comes from a mindset that embraces abundance and nourishment over restrictive diets. Learning to reject the diet mentality is key to cultivating the joyful, healthy lifestyle you deserve. 

The dictionary definition of diet is, “a special course of food to which one restricts oneself” while the dictionary definition of nourish is “provide with the food or other substances necessary for growth, health, and good condition”. These starkly different definitions really highlight how toxic and destructive the diet mentality can be. The diet mentality puts self-control over self-care. When we diet, we are constantly at war with ourselves, trying to conform our appetite and cravings to fit arbitrary sets of rules. The diet mentality is an approach based on deprivation and restriction, and it is hard to live a full and happy life when we are constantly concerned over food rules and trying to stay in control. Nourishment on the other hand is all about living a full and healthy life. Nourishment is about honoring and respecting our bodies, eating in a way that promotes growth, health and vitality. 

In order to reject the diet mentality, it's important to be able to embrace the gray areas in life. What does this mean? It means realizing that we are human, and that we don't have to be perfect in order to be happy, successful and fulfilled in life. The diet mentality is an all-or-nothing approach that leaves little room for spontaneity or flexibility. When we go on diets we make harsh and unrealistic demands on ourselves, setting ourselves up for misery and failure. Embrace the gray. There can be room in a healthy lifestyle for any and all foods, all in the right amounts. Embrace moderation and flexibility, and stop falling for the all-or-nothing trap. Remember: diets are hardwired to fail. It's not about a lack of self-control or discipline. When we restrict and are undernourished, our bodies naturally strive to come back into balance. Diets are not designed to be sustainable long-term. Cultivating a mindset focused on nourishment and balance is key to creating a long-term, sustainable, healthy lifestyle. 

Practicing Gentle Nutrition

I’m sure most of us have experienced the terrible feelings of shame and guilt that result from falling off a diet bandwagon. Dieting often seems like a never ending cycle of restriction and deprivation followed by overwhelming feelings of self-loathing. We berate ourselves, trying to control our cravings and appetites and agonizing over every single food choice, but healthy eating doesn't have to be so complicated and difficult! Gentle nutrition, the tenth principle of intuitive eating, is about approaching health and nutrition from a relaxed and flexible perspective. With this approach, we don’t cut out any food groups, and we don’t moralize food. When we practice gentle nutrition, all types of food can be a part of a healthy and balanced diet.

Gentle nutrition can be a difficult concept to accept, especially if you’ve been influenced by years of diet culture. Diet culture is constantly sending us messages about how food is harmful, and that we need to cut out foods and restrict our diets. This over emphasis on restriction creates a sense of urgency in our brains. Urgency is what motivates us to act: when we feel like something might not be available to us, we are more motivated to act to get it. The more we feel like we can’t have something or we won't have access to it, the more we want it, and the more urgently we pursue it. When we go on a diet, we are in effect, telling ourselves that certain foods are limited to us. In doing so, we are creating a sense of urgency around these foods, causing our brains to more actively pursue and desire these foods. Gentle nutrition throws all of these mind games out the window. Gentle nutrition is about giving ourselves unconditional permission to eat any and all foods. Once we genuinely stop thinking of certain foods as “off-limits” or as “good” or “bad” we can come to a place where we are more capable of making rational and sound decisions in order to best nourish and sustain our bodies. Gentle nutrition is a practice of self-care, not self-control. It is about eating without restriction and anxiety, allowing us to feel happy, satisfied, and relaxed about eating. 

Nutty 'Nana Overnight Oats

This quick and easy overnight oats recipe uses oats, nut butter, banana, and spices. It’s a delicious and nutritious breakfast idea for busy work week mornings!

Ingredients
¼ cup nut butter (almond butter, peanut butter, etc.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 cup unsweetened milk (I use unsweetened vanilla Almond Milk)
1 cup rolled oats
3 tablespoons sweetener of choice (I use maple syrup or agave)
1 tablespoon ground flax seed
1 ripe bananas, sliced
Ground nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon to taste

Instructions
1. In a small microwave safe bowl, combine nut butter, vanilla, and salt & heat for 15 seconds
2. Add nut butter mixture to a jar with a lid and combine with yogurt, milk, oats, sweetener, seeds, and spices
3. Cover with lid and refrigerate overnight
5. Add fresh fruit right before eating

A Beginner’s Guide to Intuitive Eating

Intuitive Eating (IE) is a tenable framework that builds on the intricate relationship between physical and emotional health. By using its ten principles as a guide, you can learn to remove the obstacles that prohibit you from meeting your biological and psychological needs. Below is an IE principle in bold and a beginner’s way to practice it in italics.

Diet culture penetrates our lives – there are so many books written that tout quick weight loss solutions. Each time you see a new, trendy diet emerge, reject the diet mentality.  

Ignore the short-lived fad diets. Invest your time in learning about intuitive eating.

Honoring your hunger is necessary to meet your body’s biological needs. Denying yourself food now may lead to overeating later.  

When your stomach grumbles, it’s telling you that you’re hungry! To replenish your energy demands, grab your favorite snack. 

Give up the fight and make peace with food. Allow yourself to eat without restrictions to reduce negative attributes associated with food.

The next time you’re craving something, don’t deprive yourself of it.

It’s normal to categorize food as good vs. bad, but it can create unreasonable rules. Challenge the food police by quelling these contrived restrictions.

Write down the restrictions you place upon yourself when it comes to type and quantity of food. Think about where you heard about these rules and what purpose they really serve.

Realize the pleasures associated with eating, and how that pleasure engenders satisfaction. In time, focusing on the vicarious qualities will help you realize when you’ve had enough.  

Keep a list of your favorite foods, and think: why do I love them and how much do I need to feel gratified?

Just like hunger signals, we have satiety signals. Acknowledge the ways in which you feel full.

Pause in the middle of a meal and assess the food’s taste and your current hunger level.

Food may temporarily ease uncomfortable feelings and emotions; however, it ultimately won’t solve them. It’s important to identify the sources of these emotions, and how emotional hunger may only make you feel worse in the long run. Thus, cope with your emotions with kindness.

When you’re feeling down, brainstorm the causes of these emotions through journaling. Rather than ignoring them, address the source or plan an activity to clear your mind.

Respecting your body is the first step to feeling better about yourself. Celebrate body diversity and reject unrealistic body size standards.

Every morning, name one quality you love about yourself. Ask a friend for suggestions if you have trouble. 

The feelings derived from exercise are more sustainable than its calorie-burning effects. When you are moving, feel the difference.

Try a new form of movement and record the feelings you experience.

Gentle nutrition is the key to honoring your health. Eating well doesn’t have to be rigid. Overall dietary patterns reflect flexibility and balance in food choices.

Examine your grocery list: Is there variety in there? Pick foods that are diverse in color (orange vs. yellow) and kind (protein vs. whole grains).

Feel the Difference With Joyful Movement

Just as intuitive eating is about healing our relationship with food, joyful movement is about healing our relationship with exercise, and reclaiming the joy in physical activity.  Joyful movement is about shifting our perspective - it’s about viewing exercise as a pleasurable way to be active on our bodies rather than a chore. Too often, we get swept up by the idea that exercising has to be painful or tortuous in order for it to be effective. We approach exercise feeling like we have to burn calories in order to “earn” our food. This mindset is toxic to our physical and mental health, and ultimately backfires. When we view exercise as something that we have to suffer through, we begin to dread it and try to get away with not doing it. We hit the snooze on our alarm in the morning, skip out on going to the gym, and inevitably fall out of our exercise routine because it is just too taxing and exhausting to keep up. Ultimately we try to force ourselves to do something we hate day in and day out, and we come to resent it and avoid it.

The foundation for a healthy and active lifestyle cannot be built on guilt. Joyful movement is a radically different mindset, one that centers around pleasure in movement and honoring our bodies. Exercise should be a celebration of us and our bodies, not a guilt trip. Joyful movement is about finding ways to be active that are mentally and physically pleasurable for each person. Each person is unique and we each will find different activities enjoyable. There is no one “right” way to be active. It’s important that we listen to our bodies, and that we are present in our movement. When we approach exercise and physical activity from an intuitive and joyful perspective, we are able to be more in tune with our bodies, and will reap the benefits of physical activity that much more.

Ways to Measure Progress Other Than the Scale

Weight is just one measurement of many that can be taken to indicate health. Weight is not the sole indicator of health, and measuring progress solely based on the number on the scale is not only counterproductive, but can also be mentally harmful. Too often, we become fixated on our weight, foolishly believing that this number is an accurate measure of our progress and health, and react to small fluctuations in weight that really don’t mean much. Becoming fixated on the number on the scale often leads to obsessive patterns of eating and exercising that are damaging and unhealthy.  The number we see on the scale measures one thing: our weight. It doesn’t tell us how much of our weight is made up of body fat, muscle mass, or bone destiny, and doesn’t account for changes in weight due to hormone levels or water retention. Because of this, we can't accurately assess small fluctuations we see in our weight. We don’t know if a small increase on the scale is actually a weight gain, or if it can actually be attributed to muscle gain, water retention, or hormone fluctuations. Because of this, it is important not to get too fixated on the number on the scale because it is only one of many important indicators of health. Here are some other ideas for measuring progress other than the scale. 

1. Track healthy habits: there are many other ways to set, track, and achieve health goals that don’t relate to weight. For example, you can set a goal to drink more water, eat more fruit, or get in more joyful movement. You can then measure and track your progress in these goals on a weekly and monthly basis. This is a great way to take concrete steps towards measuring and tracking progress that don’t involve the number on the scale.

2. Energy levels: By using intuitive eating, we get in touch with how certain food makes our bodies feel. When we eat certain foods, we may feel sluggish and tired. Our minds feel fuzzy, and our bodies feel weak and slow. Alternatively, when we consume more foods that make our bodies feel good through gentle nutrition, we feel more energized. When our brains and bodies are given proper nourishment and fuel, our energy levels soar. Paying attention to energy levels, and how our bodies respond to different patterns of eating, can be a great way to measure progress in living a healthier lifestyle. 

3. Stress levels and mood: Mood and stress levels are another major area that are impacted by healthier lifestyle. When we are undernourished and under fueled, our neurotransmitters aren't firing optimally, which can leave us feeling irritable and low. When we begin to live a healthier lifestyle that isn’t dictated by the scale, our mood and stress levels often improve dramatically. Being aware of mood and stress can also be a great way to measure progress. 

When we are striving to live a healthier lifestyle it can be easy sometimes to get fixated on the number on the scale, and to attribute meaning to the number we see. However it is important to remember that the scale is not always accurate, and certainly does not give us an accurate picture of our overall health. It is important to focus less on the scale and more on how you feel. There are many other ways to measure progress other than the scale. The scale does not define you. 

Five Easy Ways to Add Fats to Your Day

Are you looking to add more nourishing fat into your day?

Here are five Dietitian approved ideas:

1)Oils - Use olive or walnut oil as salad dressing. Add slivered or chopped nuts to your salad.

2)Avocado - Prepare avocado toast, add sliced avocado to sandwiches, wraps, or salads.

3)Flax seed - Sprinkle flax seed onto oatmeal, cereal, yogurt, or in smoothies

4)Nuts & nut butter - Snack on nuts such as walnuts, almonds, or pistachios. Or, spread nut butter on toast.

5)Fatty fish - Enjoy fatty fish like tuna or salmon for dinner tonight!

What are your favorite ways to incorporate more fat into your day?