S.1 E.4 My Life Changing Journey to Intuitive Eating & Principle 1
Hello,Mom-friends. This is Gillian . And welcome to another episode of the Motherhood UnDieted podcast. This week, we're going to look into intuitive eating, what it is, how I found it and how it went for me. And the first principle, which is reject the diet mentality. So many of you have maybe heard of intuitive eating, and it's portrayed differently in social media.
Sometimes it's true, intuitive eating, and other times intuitive eating has been co-opted by diet culture, which is not true, intuitive eating. So for the purpose of this podcast throughout, I will just let you know of what true intuitive eating actually is.
Please listen to the first part of the podcast for my journey to finding Intuitive Eating, it would make these notes too long to include here.
What is Intuitive Eating:
So intuitive eating was developed by at Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole . and it has 10 principles it's not meant to be a perfectionistic diet. Like it's not meant to be followed as a diet. It's just principles to keep in mind as you move through your day, as you move through your life, on how to see food and your body and, joyful movement and your health.
Intuitive eating is a compassionate self care eating framework that treats all bodies with dignity and respect. It is a dynamic interplay of thought and instinct rooted in listening to your body sensations through a process called interoceptive awareness. (Intuitive Eating for Every Day, E. Tribole)
Now, this is a definition by the co-founders Elys Resch and Evelyn Tripoli. And I think it really speaks to the essence of what intuitive eating is. Sometimes it can seem as if intuitive eating doesn't really care about health. but let me just tell you
Benefits of Intuitive Eating:
A few of the benefits of intuitive eating found by research studies. So first it can improve cholesterol levels, lower stress levels, increased energy, improve your mental health, lower eating disorder, occurrences, improved body awareness, and improved self -esteem and improve your levels of happiness and joyful. (Stephanie Dodier)
My training as a Coach for Intuitive Eating for Moms:
I did a training with another mentor of mine that helped me dig deeper and discover a method of coaching my clients in doing that themselves, because it's one thing to do it for yourself, but leading other people in it, for me at the time, it was a little bit intimidating for me to help other moms journey in that process. And I will say that the principles of intuitive eating. since there's 10 of them as a mom, as a busy mom, knowing that there were 10 principles was a little bit daunting. Um, and it was maybe a little bit of a barrier for me to implement them. And so through my learning and journey, I have discovered a way of, helping Implement the principles of intuitive eating in a way that is more appropriate and user-friendly shall I say for moms? And so I hope that that's what you get from me in our talks about intuitive eating and health at every size. And a new approach to having a new relationship with food and your body.
Principle 1: Reject the Diet Mentality
Rejecting the diet mentality goes along with rejecting diet culture, and really diet culture is a phenomenon that. Rejects fatness, basically and elevates thinness and, so was a way of separating basically "good" people from "bad" people because of their size. And it's very much based in patriarchy and in racism. Maybe in the following episodes, I will delve deeper into the background and the racist and patriarchal roots of diet culture. But for today, we'll just go with it elevates thinness and demoralizes fatness.
So, diet culture is very sneaky. It keeps rebranding itself under the guise of wellness, lifestyle or health. The problem is that whatever named diet culture hides under its roots remain the same, the perpetuation of fatphobia body shame and self disconnection to opt out of diet culture. It's important to be able to recognize it.Only through awareness can meaningful change, take place.
For me, once I learned of diet culture and its roots and how it oppresses people, especially marginalized people, including women, including the black indigenous and people of color community, including. The LGBTQ communities. I was angry. I, I got quite angry that I had fallen for this ploy of diet culture. And it's okay if you get angry too, but I want you to know that it's not your fault and it wasn't my fault. It's the way diet culture is made.
Diet culture is truly oppressive. And the true mark of an oppressor is when they no longer have to play an active role, because the one they were oppressing you and me does it to themselves without them needing to constantly. Speak it to us. And it's not your fault. Starting to think a new plausible, positive alternative thought will help you unravel that voice of diet culture from your mind and your thoughts.
Steps to Reject Diet Mentality:
There's a few steps that need to take. To help you let go of the diet mentality and also begin to embrace intuitive eating.
· Grieve that you may never have that body that you've always dreamed of.
· Put weight loss on the back burner
· Stop weighing yourself because that goes along with that feeling the need to lose weight
· Give yourself unconditional permission to eat.
· Notice Diet culture in your daily life and start questioning it
· Hiding the scale or getting rid of the scale
· Food has no moral value. It's just food..
Change your thoughts:
So finally, let's start thinking about how to change the thought pattern of Diet culture of how diet culture, like I said, gets into our brains and gives us these messages that we don't even have to hear or see anymore because we come up with them on our own from our past and our history with diets.
· " The amount and type of food I eat does not dictate my worth as a human being".
· "I am a human being and I require food to survive."
· "I give my kids enough food to thrive so I can feed myself enough food to thrive too."
Finally, mama, you are worthy of love, health, and respect right now, as you are in your current body and in your current situation. Have a wonderful week mama. I will see you soon!
xo- Gillian Yuan
BN, IBCLC, MBEC
Non-Diet Mom Coach
www.gillianyuan.com