[LifeStyle] Intuitive eating: the key to not dieting again

[#Steeven.™]

It is very understandable that people - and especially women - go on diets. Rarely do we feel comfortable with the body and believe that we are lacking, or on a path to the perfect measurements, which will ultimately make us happy. In addition, controlling what we eat daily helps to feel control, especially in these times when there is so little we can really handle. But this is nothing more than an illusion, a mirage, because behind that feeling of control what really happens is that the diet is controlling us.

And of course, there is fear. The one that says that if we are not following a diet we will inevitably get fat, so we will end up regimen again in the short term. But this is just another tentacle of the diet culture in which we live immersed, which has made us disconnect from the body and its needs. And intuitive eating is presented as a solution to get out of this vicious circle.

"Intuitive eating is a model developed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995, which integrates mind and body, and was created to help consumers get away from the damage that diets have caused", explains the nutritionist at the Clinical Hospital from the University of Chile and the AIDA center for patients with eating disorders, María Jose Chousal. As she says, there is evidence that these damages are capable of developing eating disorders, weight gain, preoccupation with food, weight stigma and body dissatisfaction.

Instead, intuitive eating is associated with benefits: “Greater body appreciation and satisfaction, positive emotional functions, greater life satisfaction, greater self-esteem and optimism, greater motivation to engage in physical activity when it is focused on pleasure rather than guilt or the appearance".

One of the keys to intuitive eating is that you can be healthy at any size, without seeking to be within traditional measurements or body mass indexes. "The goal is to gain health regardless of our body size, weight or BMI is not used to know if the person is healthy or well, on the contrary, it is proven that there are many large people who are in perfect health, ”says Chousal.

But the goal of intuitive eating that makes it an palatable lifestyle is that it promises to teach us to eat without guilt, based on hunger and satiety signals. "This helps people eat out of physical hunger and not out of anxiety", says the nutritionist and adds: "When you learn to follow the body's signals, the body begins to balance the consumption of different types of food and that makes them eat in a much more intuitive way ”.

But eating intuitively doesn't mean going to the fast food place every time we're hungry. Although there are no guidelines like the ones we traditionally know, there are behavior patterns that develop over time to improve habits. These do not imply food listings or anything rigid or restrictive.

Intuitive eating follows 10 basic principles, which are:

• Reject the diet mentality
• Honor hunger
• Make peace with food