Alright team, since Intuitive eating is having *a moment* – which is great – it also leaves it open to misunderstanding and misinterpretation. I’ve seen it being called a fad as bad as the keto diet and oversimplified down to just the hunger and fullness components – dafuq? Even qualified health professionals seem to be confused!
So, over the coming posts, I want to share with you some of what we know from the research literature and evidence base and how we look at IE from a clinical perspective. But first, a little history lesson – Intuitive Eating was developed in the 90s by two dietitians (Evelyn Tribole + Elyse Resch) as a framework to help people get out of diet prison, and develop a healthier relationship with food.
Since then, the evidence base around this concept has evolved massively, and we now have a deeper understanding of what it means to be an intuitive eater, and what some of the benefits could be.
Intuitive Eating as a framework is made up of ten guiding principles, but from a research and clinical perspective, we can distill these principles down into four underlying constructs; you can think of the principles as the actions we take to become intuitive eaters, and the constructs are the stuff intuitive eaters are made of – their characteristics and qualities.
I’m going to go through the four constructs 1 by 1 – the first of these is unconditional permission to eat (UPE) – in subsequent posts I’ll tackle eating for physical rather than emotional reasons (EPR), reliance hunger and satiety cues (RHSC) and body-food choice congruence (BFCC).
Contrary to popular opinion, unconditional permission to eat doesn’t just mean, “eat whatever you want, whenever you want!” It’s more nuanced than that. Ultimately, if we don’t ear with attunement to what’s going on in our bodies, it doesn’t feel great (not that we don’t get it wrong sometimes!).
There are three main components within the UPE construct:
1) Refusal to label foods as forbidden or good/bad (or use other judgey language around food)
2) Willingness to eat when hungry (i.e. not try to stave of hunger)
3) Making food choices for both health and eating satisfaction (not an either/or scenario!).
Let’s look at these a little more closely:
1) Sometimes when we say we can’t eat a particular food – let’s use the example of carbs on the keto diet – we might be able to keep that going for a little while but then, sooner or later – BOOM – you’re elbow-deep into a tub of Pringles. You might even binge on foods, even ‘healthy’ foods that are allowed on your diet. This is because we’ve put carbs up on a pedestal, and created a forbidden fruit effect. Not only does this make us want that food EVEN MORE, it can also stir up feelings on shame or guilt around eating that food.
When we give ourselves unconditional permission to eat that food – we’re letting our bodies know that there’s nothing especially interesting or exciting about that food, it’s no big deal. We can have it today, tomorrow, whenever! This removes the element of scarcity and deprivation, and gives you breathing space to decide if that’s really what you want to eat, and if it is, to eat it without guilt.
2) Raise your hand if you’ve ever tried to ignore or supress your hunger? Maybe you’ve knocked back a can of coke, a coffee, or some sparkling water to mask hunger pangs? Maybe you’ve even gone to bed early or had a cigarette to supress the messages your body was sending? I once had a client tell me it felt like an accomplishment if she went to bed hungry. Skipping meals and suppressing hunger is disordered eating and can lead to feelings of being out of control around food.
3) When we allow ourselves to eat foods that bring pleasure and satisfaction, we are more likely to honour our bodies by making choices that feel good. Think of it this way. Imagine you want some chocolate, but you’re on a diet (aka not UPE) – so you have some dark chocolate covered rice cakes. Then when that doesn’t satisfy, you go in for half a bar of 90% dark chocolate. But still feeling unsatisfied you wind polishing off a tub of Ben + Jerry’s. What if you just bypassed the bullshit, and allowed yourself the bowl of ice cream that was going to be most satisfying in the first place? You’re likely going to feel comfortably full and content instead of stuffed and sick!
So, what’s the point? If you just eat the foods you want, surely you’re going to spiral out of control??
Not so fast!! Research shows that UPE is related to less bulimia symptoms, food preoccupation and is not related to uncontrolled eating. On top of that, researcher has also shown that UPE is strongly related to less disordered eating symptoms, less body shame AND positively associated with self-esteem, optimism, positive self-regard.
In my next post I’m going to talk about some strategies we can use to help give ourselves unconditional permission to eat.
{Or check out my book Just Eat It; How Intuitive Eating Can Help You Get Your Shit Together Around Food}
Selected refs: Bruce + Riciardelli (2016) Appetite.
Tylka + Kroon Van Diest (2013) J. Counsel Psychol.
Shaefer + Magnuson (2014) J Acad Nutr Diet.
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