HEALTH
MAKING PEACE WITH YOUR BODY: INTUITIVE EATING By Mindy Sinason
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sk anyone what the underlying principle of dieting is, and 99% of the time you will get the same answer, in varying forms: restriction. Food management, self-regulation, abstention – it all boils down to the principle upon which the multi-billion industry is founded, that the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you eat. However, in recent years, as millions of people around the world have come to the realisation that self-deprivation is not a sustainable way to maintain a healthy weight, a new understanding of healthy food intake has emerged. The origins of intuitive eating may be murky, but its core message is clear. It’s a process that focuses on building a healthy body image, tuning into your body and making peace with food. All dieters are familiar with the demoralising cycle of denying oneself a calorific food, only to guiltily consume a larger-thanoriginally-intended quantity later (think entire chocolate bar!). Many can identify closely with the trapped feeling of avoiding social situations, which are usually centred on food, for fear of eating something ‘forbidden’. Being out-of-control around food leads to strong feelings of shame and humiliation, which in turn leads to the perception that you are somehow unworthy because of it. That shame and humiliation turns into the bynow familiar resolve: the diet starts tomorrow! Since this is the last day that you are going to eat before you start to eat ‘sensibly’, your food consumption takes on the proportions of the ‘last feast’ and you end up eating everything within sight and range. This again results in intense guilt and selfflagellation, and so the cocktail of negativity continues. In this light, does anyone still think the tried-and-tested (and, for the most part, failed) method of deprivation, denial and despair is worth sticking with? Intuitive eating isn’t about giving up. It’s about gaining selftrust. So why isn’t it more popular? If it will avoid the negative physical and emotional effects of dieting as we currently know it then why aren’t more people embracing it? The hesitancy of people to adopt this approach is based largely on the fear of weight gain. People start out on their dieting journey with a fixed goal – they must reach a certain weight, size and image. This fear needs to be recognised as a legitimate one, however what isn’t usually recognised is that dieting is not just unsustainable most of the time, but in fact it often causes weight gain in the long run.
Why Diets Fail Diets essentially try to fight the body’s natural processes – with pretty poor results. Research shows that two thirds of dieters regain more weight than they lose. Dieting causes glycogen to be burnt, in order to prevent sugar levels from falling too low. This in turn, depletes your glycogen reserves and the water associated with it, hence your weight drops. This initial weight loss success encourages you to keep going, by which point you’re in a negative calorie balance, and you lose more weight. Everything’s going swimmingly, right? Right. Except that as you lose weight, your body gets the message that food is in short supply. It reacts by effecting a change in your appetite, which means that a whole variety of foods starts to tempt you, when you had never so much as looked at them before. Secondly, it triggers hormones which influence your food choices and in turn manifests in cravings. And that’s when things start to fall apart. If you have been through this process, you will have noticed that at this point, your weight loss plateaus, and your body will do whatever it needs to do to keep itself alive. Once the weight loss slows, you become frustrated, and all it takes is one stressful incident to throw you off track (and the combination of hunger, a change in appetite, and cravings produce plenty of stress on their own). Now, since dieting is a form of shortterm starvation, your first opportunity to really eat is often experienced with such intensity that it feels uncontrollable. In fact, this is the body’s natural response to starvation. Are we complimenting sickness? Reading the four-word line above, many people may instinctively recoil and respond with an emphatic, ‘No!’ Except that the truth may be a little more uncomfortable than that. Too many times people have been complimented on weight loss that is actually due to physical, mental or emotional illness. Those with eating disorders become society’s heroes of self-control and beauty. Well-meaning, ‘ You look amazing!’ comments only cause the recipient to feel isolated from the admirers. If the only way of achieving the magical number on the scale or label is by illness, that elusive goal is obviously not a desirable one. For decades though, people have aligned themselves with a diet mentality. 73% of women and 55% of men report
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