Max Lowery (00:00.13)
today's episode, I'm going be diving deep into the topic of intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is the goal with all my clients. It's an incredibly powerful skill which could help you to maintain your fat loss results. Like I mentioned before, it is a skill and unfortunately the way that most people teach it are never going to help you learn that skill. And in fact, most of the clients that I've worked with which have tried intuitive eating in the past end up putting in wait when they use it. Grab a pen and a piece of paper, take some notes. I'm going to be sharing with you exactly how I teach my clients to eat intuitively.

Max Lowery (00:34.863)
How do you create a life that allows you to lose weight, eat the foods that you love, and sustain the results? Over the last 10 years, I've helped thousands of people do exactly that. I'm Max Lowry. I'm an author, personal trainer, and weight loss coach. In this podcast, I'm going to share my top tips and tricks from within my one-on-one coaching program. It's my goal to give you the tools and understanding so that you never diet again.

Max Lowery (01:08.792)
So, intuitive eating, what is it? Intuitive eating is a philosophy that rejects traditional dieting and calls for listening to your body's own cues just to decide what, when and how much to eat. So really, it's quite simple. know, essentially rather than, you know, cutting out carbohydrates or tracking calories or anything like that, you are eating when you're hungry and you're stopping eating when you're not hungry or you're not eating when you're not hungry. So really,

Every system in our body has homeostasis, is know, continually trying to bring out, bring about balance in the body. And hunger is the same and the amount that you eat is the same or should be the same. You know, we have a hormone called granide which makes you feel hungry. We have a hormone called leptin which makes you feel full. And the idea is that those are meant to be in balance and in sync all the time. But of course, the Western...

diets, lifestyle of eating highly processed foods, the food-like products, eating regularly throughout the day, not moving nearly as much has caused problems to the extent where we're now not able to listen to our bodies. So this is where intuitive eating comes in and I really, as we'll discuss in this talk, I am definitely a fan of intuitive eating. That's what I do. I eat when I'm hungry. Most of the time that's not till one o'clock in the afternoon. Sometimes if I'm training hard, I haven't eaten a lot the day before. It's earlier than that.

But a lot of people that are teaching intuitive eating are missing out some fundamentals and I don't really think it's intuitive eating unless you're able to extend your life over fast. But anyway, we'll go into that. So I found this thing. So we've got the diet and mindset, which, you know, I've talked about before versus intuitive eating. And it's even as simple as just changing the language that you use. Okay. So instead of thinking, can I have this? It's do I want this? Really simple, but massive, massive impact. And we got, will this make me skinny?

versus will this nourish me? Okay, this is a big one that any of you that are big to the five day challenge, continuing teaching, they start to look at foods in how it's going to nourish your body. And that can be really, really powerful. And then, you know, how do I look versus how do I feel? Because if you start to focus on methods or habits, behaviors that make you feel good, more than likely as a byproduct, you'll end up looking good. But when you have how do I look as

Max Lowery (03:34.634)
the primary motivation that can actually lead you into not feeling good. That's it. Intrusion eating really is just learning to eat within your body's cues. So in order to eat within your body's cues, need to understand hunger. And I've talked about this before, we've got two different types of hunger. We've got physical hunger, which is the biological urge that tells you to replenish nutrients. It's something that builds up very gradually and is satisfied when you eat any food.

It's also something that occurs every 12 to 24 hours, not every few hours. So that's physical hunger. And to be honest, most of us who are, you know, in the Western world eating regularly throughout the day never actually experience real hunger. And I would say that just because your stomach is empty doesn't mean necessarily that you are experiencing physical hunger. You know, we're not designed to have full stomachs all the time. So, you know, for me, it's 10 past 10 in the morning.

My stomach is empty, I've had a coffee this morning and quite a lot of water and I'm not hungry and I probably won't feel hungry until later in the day. Right? So it's really, really important to understand that. Then we got emotional hunger and this is driven by emotional need, know, sadness, loneliness, boredom, guilt, you know, all sorts of different emotions can bring out emotional hunger and they create cravings often for specific foods. So, you know, if you have suddenly have a craving,

for chocolate that might imply that it is emotional and that you're looking for that change in state because remember emotional eating if you're feeling stressed if you're feeling negative emotions and you're drawn to food and your usual default is turning to food it's because you're looking for a change in psychological or physiological state you're looking to feel different and food can make you feel better if you get a dopamine

response that reward a response from food. Eating the food often causes guilt and self-hatred and it's also often not satisfied once you eat that food and also emotional hunger comes on suddenly. So if you're kind of sitting at your desk and all of a sudden you have this craving for something specific, that's definitely a sign that potentially it's emotional hunger. Whereas like I said, physical hunger is something that builds gradually over time and it's not usually for something specific. It's like, okay, I'm hungry now. Let's have

Max Lowery (06:01.184)
a proper meal. So what are the benefits of intuitive eating? So potential long-term body composition maintenance, it's a bit of a mouthful, is going to be easier. In other words, if you are eating intuitively, if you know when you're hungry, you know when you're full and you're in line with that, then it's going to be much easier to maintain. This is the body composition that you want. So, you know, the

the ratio of body fat percent of body fat versus lean muscle. It's going to be easier to maintain that. And really that's I do. It's what the goal is with lot of my clients is to get into, you know, hit their fat loss goals, get into maintenance and then not have to track and not have to do any of those things. Definitely this is a long-term benefit. There's also no need to track calories. So I have spent quite long periods of time tracking calories. Really I haven't tracked calories for many, many years now. And because I eat intuitively,

because I extend my over like fast, I don't need to track calories and I stay in shape and I eat what I like. Obviously I'm active, but remember being active isn't necessarily the most important thing for fat loss. There's no guilt associated with intuitive eating, okay? Getting out the guilt mindset is really, really powerful. It's also empowering. You know, as you've been a slave to food your entire life and you're counting down the hours until your next meal, to all of a sudden eat intuitively and be confident.

and not counting down the hours until you can eat and not being a slave to food is really empowering. It's really, really beneficial for lots of different areas.

Really quick one for me guys, I don't run ads on this podcast and I do aim to give you as many high value tips and tricks as I can for free. All I ask in return is that you help me spread the word. That way I can help as many people as I can to never die again. The way to do that is to rate, review and share this podcast. A review will only take 30 seconds but it would mean the world to me but more importantly it could help change the life of someone else.

Max Lowery (08:10.734)
It's going to improve your relationship with food, obviously, because nothing else off limits. You give your body what it needs when it needs it. There'll be less cravings on the whole because you're more in line with what you're up to with your day-to-day activities. There'll be less hunger overall. You're not going to feel perpetually hunger, hungry. So there are quite a few very good benefits and there are more that I haven't listed, but these are kind of the main ones. All the things I've listed here, really.

These benefits are going to enable you to get long-term change, long-term results rather than reverting back to existing behaviors. What are the negatives? So it cannot be adopted immediately. Okay. It's a learned skill. And this is where I really have a problem with a lot of the people that are teaching intuitive eating. You know, a of people are talking about it on social media. In essence, You know, intuitive eating is the goal, as we'll discuss.

But there's lots of things that need to be done first before you can actually transition into periods of eating and make it a way of life. And the reason can't be done in short term, you can't incorporate it immediately and hope for immediate success, is because it doesn't address the mindset, the triggers, the causes of overeating, bingeing and self-sabotage. So, you you could be trying your best to be listening to your body, but if you've got all these psychological factors that are contributing towards

overeating, binging, self-sabotaging, then you're never going to get the most out of insurative eating. But fundamentally it's taught incorrectly. And the reason I think it's taught incorrectly is because if you do not address the continuous snacking, the continuous eating, because what insurative eaters will say is if you feel hungry, eat. And yes, that's definitely the goal. But what happens initially, if you've been eating regularly throughout the day, is you can't go a few hours without eating. If you're eating

food-like products or have spent a long time eating food-like products, your entire body is going to be out of sync. You're not going to know what hunger is. And the only way to actually know what hunger really is, to experience physical hunger, is to get into a situation where you're able to extend your overnight fast to at least 14 hours, you know, 12 to 14 hours. Okay, you don't have to do that every single day, but you must have the capability of doing that.

Max Lowery (10:30.956)
Because only once you're able to extend your overnight fast will you experience the feeling and sensation of having an empty stomach and realizing that that doesn't mean you should eat. This is my big issue with it is if it's not incorporating some form of gap or extending overnight fast, then you cannot intuitively eat because in my opinion, that is the only way that you learn the difference between emotional and physical hunger. Because if you just eat three square meals a day,

And you know, the biggest gap you're getting is overnight of 9 or 10 hours. You'll never get to experience physical hunger. So intuitive eating is the long-term goal. You know, it really... I would say once you hit your fat loss guard, it's something that you want to incorporate, want to end up in. So how do you get there? So these are the ways in which I believe that you can get yourself into intuitive eating. So number one, you need to address your habits, your beliefs, your identity, you know, your triggers.

What is the psychological reasons that you don't believe that you can succeed? What are the psychological reasons why you're binging and self-sabotaging? All these kinds of things need to be addressed. And like I keep saying, any fat loss program that is not incorporating or addressing those issues is a waste of time. Once you've addressed those things, essentially it's the principles of the five-day challenge. Okay, so this is why people in the five-day challenge have such a...

a mindset shift is because they have this realization that they actually can lose weight and not feel hungry all the time. So these are the principles of the 5 day challenge. It's reduced to snacking. Ideally, eliminate snacking because if you are eating two or three larger meals per day, eating until you're full with nutrient dense foods, you do not need to snack. And if the issue of snacking regularly throughout the day is basically you're going to feel perpetually hungry all day if you do that every day because your body would expect food multiple times a day.

So reduce snacking or eliminating snacking, eat two or three larger meals per day, fill up on protein. Remember protein is the most important macronutrient for fat loss. Doesn't mean that if you up your protein, you're automatically going to lose weight, but as a by-product, an indirect benefit, you will feel less hungry. You're going to feel fuller, fuller longer if eating more protein and you're also going to retain more lean mass, which is incredibly important. Once you've reduced your snacks, eliminating snacks, once you're eating two or three larger meals per day,

Max Lowery (12:54.286)
with protein in each meal. Then start to extend your overnight fast. You know, start with 12 hours, 8pm to 8am, and then maybe try 13 hours, 14 hours, 15 hours, 16 hours. But only do this if you've addressed habits, beliefs, identity, and all those other things first. But like I said, really you can only intuitively eat if you understand the difference between physical and emotional hunger. And the only way that you're gonna experience physical hunger

is if you actually go and extend the period of time without eating. Stay hydrated! Often hunger is confused with thirst. And finally, spend at least 90 days tracking your calories. I speak to many of you on the phone, one-on-one, every single month, as you know, the transformation sessions. 99 % of the ladies that I speak to have no idea how many calories they're consuming. How do you expect to get results?

if you have no idea what you're consuming. It really is as simple as that. Tracking, I use the word tracking and not counting because counting implies restriction and deprivation. And usually if you've ever counted calories before, it's because you're trying to stick to 800 calories or 1220 calories. But really tracking your calories is not about restriction. It's about collecting data on yourself. And once you have that data,

then you can make informed decisions. But also, when you track consistently, you will begin to understand what your calorie target looks like in terms of food. And that's going to give you lots of experience too when you transition into intuitive eating to know what you're eating roughly. You look at the food and you know that you spent a period of time tracking that that is roughly 600 calories. Okay, so this is why it's important. No one enjoys it.

Okay, no one enjoys it. But if you are serious about getting results, you do have to spend some time tracking your calories.

Max Lowery (14:59.059)
If you would like to go deeper into any of the topics of this podcast and learn the exact same step-by-step system which I use with my coaching clients, then make sure you check out my free definitive guide to fat loss. It will teach you everything you need to know to lose weight, sustain the results and live life to the full. It's linked below in the notes beneath this podcast.