To be healthy and in our weight, maybe we should say goodbye to diets. Most of the time we end up throwing in the towel and often weighing more than at first. That’s why non-diet methods are becoming more popular among celebrities, and one of the most trendy is intuitive eating, defined in 1995 by nutritionists Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in their book ‘Intuitive eating’, but which has become more current than ever. In essence, it is about eating by paying attention to food (known as ‘mindful eating’) and learning to recognize the real messages of hunger and satiety that our body sends us.
So, instead of counting calories, we should eat natural and relaxed, and when we really need to. The health benefits have been proven in different studies: better cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, less risk of obesity and fewer markers of inflammation. In terms of mental health https://mystroud.com, researchers have linked this form of eating to improved body image and self-esteem and less risk of depression.
“Everyone can benefit from intuitive eating,” say obesity treatment specialists at Harvard University. “The important thing is to learn to connect with one’s body and its signals. We often ignore them because, due to today’s lifestyle and other environmental factors, we have become accustomed to our bodies and we eat unconsciously, mechanically and unaware of our true needs. That explains why many people spend their lives dieting, but don’t really know whether they are hungry or full.
To help us reconnect with our bodies, the experts propose learning to identify the moods that drive us to eat, such as loneliness, anger, stress, tiredness… “We should think about whether we eat in response to some kind of emotion. Many times we resort to food just to calm some feeling,” they clarify. Of course, you don’t have to feel guilty about your mistakes. “Instead, act curious and, instead of whipping yourself for overeating one day, ask yourself what you’re going to do differently next time,” explain the authors of Intuitive Eating.
In short, intuitive eating is just one method to help us eat normally. And it’s certainly a healthy method. People who are not obsessed with food have the least risk of overeating or developing eating disorders. The proof? Intuitive Eating was the method used by American singer and actress Katharine McPhee to overcome her bulimia!
