13 Intuitive Eating Myths You Shouldn’t Believe

by | Dec 23, 2019 | Eating Intuitively Articles, Featured Blog Articles | 0 comments

These intuitive eating myths come as no surprise since intuitive eating has been named the #1 nutrition trend for the year 2020.

Since it is such a departure from dieting it’s bound to have lots of misconception, fear-mongering (Thank you, diet culture!) and yes false beliefs surrounding this practice.

These myths cause confusion and doubt. As a nutritionist and expert, I get all sorts of questions like:

“Is intuitive eating healthy?”

“Will eating intuitively make me gain weight?”

“Will intuitive eating work for me?”

In this article, I dispel the biggest 13 intuitive eating myths that I’ve come across since I started my own intuitive eating journey. And in the process of debunking these intuitive eating myths, I hope to help you better understand what eating intuitively means and what it can do for you.

 

Here’s a quick summary of all these intuitive eating myths:

Myth 1: Intuitive eating is unhealthy.

Myth 2: Intuitive eating will make me gain weight.

Myth 3: Intuitive eating means I’ve given up on myself.

Myth 4: Intuitive eating is simply the “eat when you are hungry and stop when you’re full” diet.

Myth 5: You can be a good intuitive eater or a bad one.

Myth 6: You can count macros and still be an intuitive eater.

Myth 7: Intuitive eating means you eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

Myth 8: Intuitive eating is for healthy-minded people. I won’t do it right and I’ll gain weight.

Myth 9: Intuitive eating doesn’t solve my “over-eating problem.”

Myth 10: Intuitive eating doesn’t lead to weight loss.

Myth 11: Intuitive eating will make you binge on food that you shouldn’t be eating.

Myth 12: Intuitive eating is impossible because of food addiction, and certain foods are addictive.

Myth 13: Intuitive eating is only for people with eating disorders.

Before we dive into these myths, let me first explain what intuitive eating means.

 

What is Intuitive Eating?

The best and most accurate intuitive eating definition I can give is this: “a self-care eating framework that uses your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.”

Note that this is an eating framework, not a diet program. Unlike diets that dull your sensitivity to your body’s eating cues, intuitive eating encourages you to listen to your body and helps you develop trust in your body’s innate wisdom. Intuitive eating is supported by 100’s of studies showing the health benefits of intuitive eating.

Now let’s look into the 13 intuitive eating myths one by one:

 

Myth 1: Intuitive eating is unhealthy.

This comes mainly from the fact that intuitive eating allows you all kinds of food, even the ones you may consider “unhealthy.”

Fact: Yes, when you eat intuitively, you can all the foods, because part of the intuitive eating process is to give yourself unconditional permission to eat. This means if you start intuitively, you will likely eat the food that you’re currently restraining. Perhaps that’s carbs if you’re doing keto or animal products if you’re vegan.

Now, one interesting fact to understand is that the World Health Organization defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

 

This means that health is not just all about the food you eat.

 

Health is also the quality and quantity of sleep you get, your mental health, emotional stability and balance, spiritual health, movement, etc.

Researchers have found that food restriction has negative physical and psychological side effects. This means food restriction affects your mental health.

For instance, studies reveal that women who go on a diet and restrict food have higher levels of cortisol in their bodies. Cortisol is a hormone that our body releases in response to stress. This hormone is linked to higher levels of inflammation, high blood pressure, change in blood lipids, and other negative factors that can adversely affect your health. Also, the restriction has been associated with depression and anxiety.

We also know that scientific studies associate weight cycling with morbid health conditions, meaning that being caught in an endless cycle of restricting and overeating leads to negative health consequences.

So is intuitive eating healthy? The answer is a big YES because it prevents all the negative side effects associated with dieting!

Not only that…Many of the intuitive eating benefits such as lower cholesterol levels, decreased stress, and improved mental health is backed by scientific evidence!

 

Myth 2: Intuitive eating will make me gain weight.

intuitive-eating-myths 2

Another version of that myth is intuitive eating causes weight gain.

Now, before I go any further, I want to validate the desire for weight loss that you might have. These are real and consistently encouraged in the society that is laden with weight stigma. Weight stigma is also known as weight bias, weight-based discrimination, and also stereotyping based on a person’s weight.

So it makes perfect sense that you are afraid of gaining weight or that you desire to lose weight.

Fact: Intuitive eating DOES NOT cause weight loss or weight gain all the time. The truth is, none of us knows what the body will do as a result of changing the way you eat. If a dieting coach or guru predicts that you will lose 20 pounds in four weeks as a result of their new diet, that is BS.

 

We don’t know what’s going to happen with your body when you start becoming an intuitive eater. No one knows except your own body!

 

But we know that, when you start eating in accordance to your body’s natural hunger and satiety cues, this eating behavior will send information to your hypothalamus, that gland in your brain that regulates the hormone production around appetite and weight regulation.

Your hypothalamus establishes your set point, which is the weight range which your body believes to be healthy for you. Intuitive eating will take you to that weight range.

Now, that weight range may not be what you want. It may not be the “ideal” BMI for you. But your body’s innate wisdom knows it’s best for you.

(You can read my blog post about your body’s setpoint if you want to have a better understanding of the topic. Also, here’s a study that shows that Health At Every Size has more positive outcomes than dieting for weight loss.)

Intuitive eating will not either make you lose weight or gain weight. It will only support doing your body what is best for you.

 

Myth 3: Intuitive eating means I’ve given up on myself.

Another version of that is “Intuitive eating is lazy” or “Intuitive eating is just an excuse to eat whatever you want and not have to practice dietary control.”

Fact: If you think this myth is true, it means that your self-worth is based on how you engage with food. Likely your self-image is tied to the size of your body or looks and food is the weapon of choice to control your body appearance.

The truth is we were all born worthy. Along the way, someone came and led us to believe that we needed to earn our worth. Perhaps a few years later, dieting came into your life and then you associated a thin body with worthiness.

Then, after a few years of dieting, you associated your eating habits with how worthy you are. Thus, in your mind, eating “everything” meant you weren’t worthy.

Also, people judge those who eat intuitively as “lazy” because they associate their self-worth with dieting or eating “healthy.”

But does intuitive eating mean you’ve given up on yourself and that you’re lazy? Quite the contrary. It means that you are actually trusting yourself and that you have removed your self-worth from the way you look and the way you eat and reconnect to your innate power.

 

Myth 4: Intuitive eating is simply the “eat when you are hungry and stop when you’re full” diet.

Fact: This seems to be one of the most common intuitive eating myths, because the diet culture is prevalent in our society. When you have this myth in mind, that’s your diet brain speaking to you. It makes you believe that you must control what you eat in one way or another and that you are innately not smart, wise, or good enough to know what you should eat. Your diet brain makes you fall for the next diet or repeat the same diet.

The truth is, intuitive eating is not just another diet. Rather, it’s an entire eating framework. It’s a philosophy that changes your entire relationship with food. There’s more to it than just what you eat, when you eat, and how much you eat.

Intuitive eating is about the entire relationship, what comes before and after. This means changing your perception around how you should engage with food and what it means to be engaged with food. I’ve broken down how to eat intuitively in 5 easy steps.

intuitive-eating-myths 3

Myth 5: You can be a good intuitive eater or a bad one.

In other words, intuitive eating works for some people and it doesn’t work for others.

Fact: We know that diets don’t work.95% failure rate within 1-5 years. As a result, you have worked really hard at a process that doesn’t and adopting on the way perfectionistic behaviors and an all-or-nothing mindset. With each diet, your brain gets rewired to see food, exercise, lifestyle, health, behavior as good or bad or “all in or all out.”

The longer you diet, the longer you maintain this all-or-nothing frame of mind. I’ve worked with women who are typically 40 plus and that have been dieting at least 10, 15, 20, 30 years. What I’ve found is that this all-or-nothing mindset has spread throughout their entire life.

That’s why Going Beyond the Food Academy is a life-changing process. The first step of the program is to learn tools to shift your mindset away from “diet brain.” Subsequently, this changes the way you interact with your whole life.

Is it possible for you to be good or bad at intuitive eating? The answer is no because intuitive eating is a process, not an end goal. It’s a way of being.

 

Myth 6: You can count macros and still be an intuitive eater.

As intuitive eating becomes more popular, I’ve been seeing other versions such as keto-intuitive, flexible eating with intuitive eating, vegan intuitive, intuitive cheat day, etc.

Fact: People are getting tired of dieting. Their bodies are getting run down. Their emotions are all over the place. People are looking for another way. And so, diet culture is repackaging and renaming their diet programs so they could fit into intuitive eating because that’s what people want.

However, none of those programs is intuitive eating.

Their diet culture version of intuitive eating is the same old diet programs with “intuitive eating” attached to them. They do this so you’ll feel better about their programs and get you to be more attracted to their products.

Any rule around food is not intuitive eating. When you have rules as to what you should be eating, that means you don’t trust your body. Can you count macros or be keto-intuitive or a flexible eater and still be an intuitive eater? The answer is no.

 

Myth 7: Intuitive eating means you eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

 

intuitive-eating-myths 4

 

Another version of this myth is “You can’t eat healthy on intuitive eating. Intuitive eating means intentionally eating unhealthy food.”

Fact: In a way, this is true. But then so what? Why is it a problem to eat what we want whenever we want?

Human’s love dichotomy. Labeling good or bad food makes us feel safe… It makes us feel like we are in control which cannot be further from the truth.

 

When you transform your eating pattern from dieting to intuitive eating, you have to lift all the rules around food.

 

There’s a period of time, the honeymoon period, from the moment you begin to when you become at peace with food where you’re trying to figure out what it means for you to eat when you want and whatever you want.

I call it in my program the elastic band period, where you go from restricting to finally achieving food freedom. Imagine pulling an elastic band towards you and then releasing it. What would happen? The elastic will go completely the other way. Then, it will rebound to restriction and go the other way again.

Every time it does a loop, it’s going to have less force in it. Then with time, it’s going to stabilize and be back to normal. That’s what happens when you become an intuitive eater.

When you release the rules, your reptilian brain is like “Holy crap. You mean we can eat the carbs we’ve been restricting for years? Let’s eat it all!” That’s what happens.

But it doesn’t last long, because intuitive eating teaches you to respect your body. When you eat too much of the food that was forbidden before, you likely not feel your best. Ever tried to eat donuts at every meal for a week?

You have to satisfy your reptilian brain and to really prove to your body that there are no more rules. Then your body will stabilize itself.

 

Myth 8: Intuitive eating is for healthy-minded people. I won’t do it right and I’ll gain weight.

Another version of this myth is, “Intuitive eating works only for certain people. I’m different.”

intuitive-eating-myths 5

 

Fact: Intuitive eating is not another diet or a new scientifically-created way of eating. It’s innate in all of us. We were all born intuitive eaters.

Just observe a baby. When she feels hungry, she cries. When you feed her, she stops crying. Then, she stops feeding when she’s full and falls asleep. The cycle begins anew she feels hungry again.

Intuitive eating is simply going back to the way you were born.

Now, why would you feel it’s not for you? Your diet brain is partly responsible for that. It’s saying, “You know, girl, you’ve been dieting for years. Look where you are today. You’re not doing this right. You have to have a lot of restriction and control. Otherwise, you’ll lose control. You’re not good enough to do intuitive eating.”

Is intuitive eating only for certain people? Absolutely not. It’s for everyone because we all have it within us to be an intuitive eater. But if you want to be 100% sure, take the intuitive eating quiz.

 

Myth 9: Intuitive eating doesn’t solve my “emotional eating problem.”

Fact: There is only one truth around that. Intuitive eating does prevent emotional eating. Now, here’s the thing. I didn’t say solved it. I said to prevent it.

If you find yourself saying that eating intuitively won’t solve your emotional eating problem, again, it’s your diet brain speaking. You have been programmed to seek an external solution to an internal problem. You internally developed the behavior of using food as a soothing or regulate your emotions. This behavior is what we commonly refer to as emotional eating.

And now, you want a quick fix, a formula to come along and tell you how to prevent that. That’s the model of dieting. It’s all external. It’s just about food.

Intuitive eating will not solve the problem of emotional eating… but you will. It’s really up to you. Through the process of intuitive eating, you will figure out why you’re using food to cope with your emotions. Here’s another scoop for you: emotional eating is normal. Emotional eating is a gift when understood properly.

 

Myth 10: Intuitive eating doesn’t lead to weight loss.

Another version of that is “Intuitive eating can work for weight loss.”

Fact: Intuitive eating is not a weight loss program. The purpose and the goal of intuitive eating have nothing to do with weight management.

Now, because intuitive eating is becoming more and more popular, diet culture has latched onto this trend. It sells intuitive eating as a way to lose weight.

But I’m going to tell you this: if you see intuitive eating being marketed as a weight management program, then it is NOT really intuitive eating.

“… but I need to lose weight” the root causes of the desire to lose weight is what needs to be addressed for most women.

 

Myth 11: Intuitive eating will make you binge on food that you shouldn’t be eating.

Another version of that is “I’ll eat intuitively, but I’ll just eat junk food.”

Fact: If that’s what your body needs, then yes, you’ll binge on food you shouldn’t eat.

It may make you uncomfortable because you might believe that your body does not know what it needs. Thus, you might be thinking that you need to rely on someone or something else to tell you what your body needs.

The part of the intuitive eating journey is coming back to a respectful relationship between you, the spirit, and your body. This means that you do support your body through healthy behavior. In response, your body supports you through life.

When you experience a desire to binge or overeat, it’s because your body is trying to tell you something. The body is trying to point out to you that you are in a state of imbalance, that is something inside you is not okay, and it needs to comfort itself through food.

So does intuitive eating lead you to binge on food you shouldn’t eat? The answer is no. But it does make you more aware of the messages that your body tries to send you.

 

Myth 12: Intuitive eating is impossible because of food addiction, and certain foods are addictive.

Now, among the intuitive eating myths, this is a loaded one. Before anything else, if you are currently holding the belief that there is such a thing as food addiction or sugar addiction, I would refer you to episode 153 of The Beyond The Food Show. We had a food addiction specialist actually do a complete analysis of my eating pattern and my eating history. I shared all the results publicly with everyone via the podcast and a video interview.

She came to the conclusion that the Going Beyond the Food Method was extremely effective in healing or helping people to overcome what they believe to be sugar addiction or food addiction.

Fact: The belief that food can be addictive is debatable. At this time there is no study demonstrating human addiction to food and sugar.

The only study showing demonstrating evidence of sugar addiction in a rat model and researcher came to the conclusion that sugar addiction in the rats was only present when sugar was restricted.

If you’re currently thinking you are addicted to food and or sugar, I highly recommend that you seek help immediately.

Is intuitive eating impossible because of food addiction? The straight answer is no. But if you struggle with food or sugar addiction, there’s a deeper level of work that you need to do before you can actually become an intuitive eater.

 

Myth 13: Intuitive eating is only for people with eating disorders.

Fact: No. In fact, it is not, because intuitive eating is the natural way that humans engage with food. We were all born with this propensity.

Now, intuitive eating is used in the treatment of eating disorders. Why? Because it’s very effective. People who suffer from eating disorders are actually not connected to the innate cues of hunger and fullness and satisfaction. They use food in a disordered way to meet their unfulfilled needs.

When your eating behavior is causing harm to you physically, emotionally, or mentally, that’s when you need to seek professional guidance and help immediately.

Intuitive eating is not only for eating disorders, although it is used to treat eating disorders. It is for ALL of us.

intuitive-eating-myths 6

Bonus: Myth 14: Intuitive eating has no scientific basis.

Fact: This is by far the easiest of all intuitive eating myths to debunk. Intuitive eating is a proven and well-researched eating framework. As of today, there are well over a hundred intuitive eating research studies published, most of them peer-reviewed, that demonstrate the efficacy of intuitive eating.

To this day, there is not one scientific research that shows any kind of danger associated with this eating framework.

Intuitive eating has a scientific basis. There will be more research around it as more and more people become intuitive eaters.

 

Ready to Begin Your Intuitive Eating Journey?

Now that I’ve debunked all these intuitive eating myths for you, I hope you have a better understanding of what eating intuitively really is. So how do you feel about intuitive eating now? Are you ready to start becoming an intuitive eater?

Here’s what I recommend that you do: First you can access all of our services on our work with us page.  We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:

Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!

Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.

Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.

Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become  Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.

What are the 13 myths of intuitive eating?

Myth 1: Intuitive eating is unhealthy.

Myth 2: Intuitive eating will make me gain weight.

Myth 3: Intuitive eating means I’ve given up on myself.

Myth 4: Intuitive eating is simply the “eat when you are hungry and stop when you’re full” diet.

Myth 5: You can be a good intuitive eater or a bad one.

Myth 6: You can count macros and still be an intuitive eater.

Myth 7: Intuitive eating means you eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

Myth 8: Intuitive eating is for healthy-minded people. I won’t do it right and I’ll gain weight.

Myth 9: Intuitive eating doesn’t solve my “over-eating problem.”

Myth 10: Intuitive eating doesn’t lead to weight loss.

Myth 11: Intuitive eating will make you binge on food that you shouldn’t be eating.

Myth 12: Intuitive eating is impossible because of food addiction, and certain foods are addictive.

Myth 13: Intuitive eating is only for people with eating disorders.

Stephanie Dodier bio

Hello!

I’m Stephanie Dodier Non-Diet Nutritionist and Coach. I teach and coach women how to break free from the socialized thinking of diet culture and liberate yourself from unrelenting pressure to be thinner so that you can eat in a way that truly supports your well-being and start living the life you’ll look back on with no regrets. Join me in leading the feminist health revolution where we trust women and their body!

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3. Choose How to Respond

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Ready to Take the Next Steps and Dismantle Fatphobia?

If you’re inspired by my journey and want to learn more about overcoming fatphobia or providing empowering, intersectional coaching, there are several ways to get involved.You can access all of our services on our work with us page.  We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:

Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!

Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.

Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.

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One of the frequent questions from health coaches who encounter my work in the non-diet approach for the first time is this:

How do I make money as a non-diet coach?

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Clients seeking services from a non-diet health coach have a lot they are willing to pay for: primarily ending their struggle with food and body. Helping them relearning to eat following their own eating cues instead of a “health coach” looking over their shoulder lol! Undoing all the body-shaming that “weight loss coaches” have created within them, being able to trust their own choices when it comes to health, undoing the critical mean girl voices in their head, etc…

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Anti-diet training for health coaches

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Anti-diet training for health coaches

The process of becoming an anti-diet health coach starts with your own healing from years of restrictions, cleanses, detoxing, overthinking, shame and guilt.  We have plenty of resources on anti-diet training for health coaches to help you take this first step along with professional training.

We have created a number of free non-diet approach training resources to help you begin learning more about this revolutionary health approach. Join my non-diet professional community by requesting our non-diet professional starter pack.

I would suggest you also subscribe to anti-diet podcast .

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Starting an anti-diet coaching business (also referred to by some as an intuitive eating business is simple. It is the same as starting any other business: You create a product, in the anti-diet health coaching business this would be a coaching package, and you go out into the world and sell this product.

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I’d like to give you an inside view into my anti-diet health coaching business more precisely what I wish I knew before starting my anti-diet health coaching business.

As I say in every episode of the Going Beyond The Food podcast: Ready? Let’s do this!  

By the way, if you would like to access more details, hear my personal story that created each one of these learning head over to our podcast and listen to Season 2 Episode 2 – My Non-diet business journey episode or listen directly below:

What I wish I knew before starting my non-diet health coaching business

  1. It’s about helping others, not turning a profit. Profit will come naturally as you help others and live your life in your zone of genius.
  2. You can make a great living as an anti-diet health coach in a career helping others deeply despite what anyone says.
  3. 6 P’s: Proper Planning Prevent Piss Poor Performance. You need to be strategic about your business and organize yourself. What you should do is not always what you wish you could do.
  4. Learn how to coach people. Coaching is not – this is how I did it so that’s the way. What worked for me is not what will work for my client. Coaching is a skill.            
  5. Create goals and apply consistent action. Show up consistently day in and day out in your business. Take one action at bare minimum daily.
  6. Asking for help is ok. Your client asked for you, so should you.
  7. Use technology so you can maximize your time being a coach. Technology can help, but don’t forget that health coaching is about the people.
  8. Trying to be everything to everyone is a straight road to failure. Pick a niche and become the world expert at it.
  9. Growing a business is not linear. There will be more downs than ups. Successful businesses don’t happen overnight. It takes time.
  10. Be unapologetically YOU. Don’t copy what other non-diet coaches are doing. Your clients want to work with you.

The anti-diet approach certification program

The Non-Diet Coaching Certification is a space where you can receive support guidance to become the best non-diet professional. It’s a program geared to refine your non-diet professional skills set and teach you the skills you need to build a successful business that can impact thousands of women. It will help you develop as a powerful leader and help other women come back to their power. You will learn how to harness your ability to support and help other women. As a result, you can impact thousands of other women and dismantle diet culture.

Anti-diet training for health coaches

We have created a number of free non-diet approach training resources to help you begin learning more about this revolutionary health approach. Join my non-diet professional community by requesting our non-diet professional starter pack.

I would suggest you also subscribe to anti-diet podcast and start with episode 199 and follow through up to the latest one.

Starting an anti-diet coaching business

Starting an anti-diet coaching business (also referred to by some as an intuitive eating business) is simple. It is the same as starting any other business: You create a product, in the anti-diet health coaching business this would be a coaching package, and you go out into the world and sell this product.

My anti-diet business journey

My first business in the world of health coaching was actually a nutrition clinic in Toronto Canada. Five years ago, I transitioned my health coaching business to the non-diet model and I shared the details of my business transition to the anti-diet model in season 1 of the Pro’s podcast series.

What I wish I knew before starting my non-diet health coaching business

1. It’s about helping others, not turning a profit.

2. You can make a great living as an anti-diet health coach.

3. 6 P’s: Proper Planning Prevent Piss Poor Performance. 

4. Learn how to coach people. 

5. Create goals and apply consistent action. 

6. Asking for help is ok.

7. Use technology so you can maximize your time being a coach. 

8. Trying to be everything to everyone is a straight road to failure. 

9. Growing a business is not linear. 

10. Be unapologetically YOU. 

Ready to take the next steps

The anti-diet approach mentorship program

You can access all of our services on our work with us page.  We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:

Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!

Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.

Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.

Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become  Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.

Good Money Business Mastermind  A business mentorship and a collective of ambitious, driven and empowered anti-diet culture providers and coaches on a mission to dismantle diet culture and make GOOD money doing it! 

Non-Diet Business Training

Non-Diet Business Training

Non-Diet Business Training

Non-Diet Business Training is essential for any women health entrepreneurs starting their business adventure in the non-diet health approach.

Your business success means women’s learning how to ditch diet culture. Your willingness to accept that your business success means more lives transformed is key to your being successful in your professional journey.

In the same way you ask your client/patient to invest in themselves by working with you: are you investing in yourself to be successful in your business?

Non-Diet Business Training

In episode 2 of season 1 of the Pro series, we discovered why crafting a business strategy is so important to your overall business. Without the foundation of a strategy, there’s very little chance your business will grow and transform hundreds of women’s lives.

In today’s episode, we will discover the various business model available to you to create your business strategy. A business model is a framework for how you will create value. It answers fundamental questions about the problem you are going to solve, how you will solve it, and the growth opportunity within a given market.

What you’ll learn listening to this episode:

  • What is a business model
  • Why it’s important to have a business model
  • Look behind the scene of my business model
  • The one thing that most important to your business success

Mentioned in the show:

Mentorship Program
Free Intuitive Eating Guide
PRO Series – Free Training & Resources
PRO Podcast series – Full listing

Intuitive Eating for Weight Loss: The BMI Story

Intuitive Eating for Weight Loss: The BMI Story

Are you thinking: Is intuitive eating for weight loss?

That’s a very valid question, given the society we live in. Losing weight seems to be the answer to almost anything these days: to get healthy, to be happy, to be beautiful, to be confident, to have more money, etc. Being in a smaller, thinner body seems to be the key to everything.

But is it? Is thinness at the root of happiness and health?

In short, the answer is no… If it were true, then all “thin” people would be happy and healthy. But when we look around us, we quickly have the answer to that question. To the opposite, all “fat” people would be unhealthy and unhappy… which again isn’t the truth. I have been on both ends of body size and I can testify to this truth… my health and happiness was never the result of my body size.

One of the most frequent questions I receive when I teach women about intuitive eating is “My BMI is higher than normal so I need to lose weight”. BMI or body mass index is a common metric that most MD use to determine whether their patients are overweight or not.

But how reliable is BMI as a measure of health? Does it really reflect your health status? Should you use intuitive eating for weight loss? In this article, you will discover facts about BMI that might surprise you. Among other things, I also discuss intuitive eating, the science behind it, and how it can support your health.

Intuitive eating for weight loss-1

Here’s what you’re going to learn from this article:

Do I need to lose weight?

The history of the BMI

Is the BMI an accurate measure of health? 

How to determine health status beyond the BMI

What is Intuitive Eating?

Can you lose weight eating intuitively?

The Science behind Intuitive Eating

How to get started with intuitive eating in 5 Steps

10 Intuitive Eating Principles

Intuitive Eating Guide

Do I need to lose weight?

I just did my BMI calculation using the official CDC BMI calculator. A score between 18 to 24.9 means you’re normal; 25 to 29.9 is overweight; and 30 or above is obese.

I bet you’re curious to know my result. It’s 39. I’m considered class 2 obese.

The truth is, as far as I can remember, I’ve always been “overweight” based on BMI. In one of my many diet cycles in my adulthood, I remember hitting one of my lowest body weights, which was 180 lbs.  I had a body fat of 18% and wore size 8 clothes.

However, when I calculated my BMI, it showed that I was overweight. I remember the day I did the calculation and seeing the result. It sent me down a spiral of shame and binging. I thought I still wasn’t good enough.

Yet I was as healthy as ever. I had just received a full annual health check and was no longer considered pre-diabetic. My cholesterol was well below normal and my blood pressure was stellar.  Also, my inflammation blood markers were the lowest they could be. And still, I was overweight.

That’s when my journey with intuitive eating began.

Intuitive eating for weight loss

The history of the BMI 

The mathematical formula known today as BMI was first introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician. Take note: he was neithera medical doctor nor physician. He produced the formula to give a quick and easy way to measure the degree of obesity of the general population to assist the government in allocating resources.

It’s not until 1972 that Ancel Keys brought it back with its modern name, body mass index (BMI).

Before 1980, doctors generally used weight-for-height tables — one for men and one for women — that included ranges of body weights for each inch of height. These tables were limited because they were based on weight alone rather than body composition.

BMI became an international standard for obesity measurement in the 1980s for usage in public health and insurance purposes. The wider public learned about BMI the late 1990s, when the government launched an initiative to encourage healthy eating and exercise.  Up to 1998, the BMI category of overweight began at 27.8.

Overnight millions of people became overweight

In 1998 the NIH decided to lower the BMI cutoff for overweight, from 28 for men and 27 for women to 25 for both sexes. The cutoff for was reduced to 25 because “It’s an easier number to remember.”

And just like that—overnight, 25 millions of Americans became overweight! And since then we’ve been on the rampage with “obesity epidemic.” Is it really an epidemic or simply a result of the 1998 new “cut off” that created the epidemic?

Is the BMI an accurate measure of health?  

What happens if you are over the prescribed normal BMI?

Many experts say that BMI is an inaccurate measure of health or fatness. In other words, they disagree with the prescribed BMI.

A 2016 study by researchers at UCLA, published in the International Journal of Obesity, looked at 40,420 adults in the most recent U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They assessed their health as measured by six accepted metrics (not including BMI) blood pressure, triglyceride, cholesterol, glucose, insulin resistance and C-reactive protein.

It found that 47 percent of people classified as overweight by BMI and 29 percent of those who qualified as obese were healthy as measured by at least five of those other metrics.

In contrast, 31 percent of normal-weight people were unhealthy by two or more of the same measures.

Therefore, based on this large study, we can be healthy and yet be considered overweight by the BMI standard. Conversely, we can have a normal BMI and yet be unhealthy.

If we are honest with ourselves, we see these same results in our day-to-day life. Look around you…How many people who are “thin” are actually sick? Perhaps, they’re diagnosed with diabetes or cancer. On the flip side, how many “ BMI overweight” people in your life now are healthy and happy?

So it begs the question: Over what weight exactly? Over the BMI-weight!

How to determine health status beyond the BMI

The problem is that the BMI doesn’t tell the whole story of health. Human health is far more complicated than simply body weight.

Now that we know that the BMI can be an unreliable measure of health, how do we determine if we’re healthy or not?

That’s a question that many researchers are currently asking and studying. And there is still no definite answer.

One option to consider would be the six physiological metrics mentioned in the large 2016 study mentioned above: blood pressure, triglyceride, cholesterol, glucose, insulin resistance and C-reactive protein. The medical community accepts these metrics as determinants of physical health.

However, there’s more to health than your physical well-being. The World Health Organization defines health as “a complete state of physical, emotional, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

Your mental and emotional health also matters, so it’s not enough to be physically healthy. You have to ask yourself, “How do I feel about my body?” Certainly, the way you feel about your body determines how likely you are to take care of yourself.

As I’ve discussed in one of my articles, Health Beyond Dieting, researchers have found a link between how women feel about themselves and their health behaviors. The better they feel about their bodies, the more likely they are to take care of themselves. On the other hand, women who are dissatisfied with their bodies are least likely to take part in health-related activities and to eat properly.

That’s the power of intuitive eating versus dieting (BMI-focused approach to health). Intuitive eating is built upon the fact that health is merely more than just body weight.

weight loss with intuitive eating

What is Intuitive Eating?

I’ve always given this intuitive eating definition to those who ask me what it means: “a self-care eating framework that teaches you to have a healthy relationship to food, using your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.

Most importantly, intuitive Eating goes beyond the food and also considers how you engage with your body image, movement, and nourishment for your health. You can read more about the 10 intuitive eating principles in this article.

Can you use intuitive eating for weight loss?

I’ll level with you. If losing weight is your main goal for eating intuitively, you might be disappointed.

Weight loss isn’t the end goal of intuitive eating. Rather, it is developing a healthy relationship with food and one’s body. When you have a healthy relationship with food and your body, you’ll be more inclined to care for your health, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally.

Certainly, some people do lose weight when they eat intuitively, but this isn’t always the case. Your weight may stay the same. Or you might even gain weight.

To clarify, here’s the point: when you eat intuitively, you chase health rather than weight loss.

Here’s a caveat: if anyone tries to sell intuitive eating for weight loss, don’t buy it! This eating framework isn’t compatible with intentional weight loss. Using intuitive eating for weight loss will only prevent you from being attuned to your innate eating cues. Instead, it will keep you focused on controlling how much you eat and what food you eat.

To all of you now that are thinking: “… but I need to lose weight,” I invite you to read this article.

The health benefits of Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating is an approach to eating that’s backed by over 100 scientific research.

In one of my articles, I give a run-down of the evidence-based health benefits of intuitive eating. Here are some of those benefits:

  • Improved cholesterol levels
  • Lower stress levels
  • Increased energy
  • Improved mental health
  • Lower eating disorder occurrence
  • Improved body awareness
  • Enhanced self-esteem
  • Improved level of happiness

How to get started with intuitive eating

By now, you should know that you must chase health instead of using intuitive eating for weight loss. You can start building a healthier relationship with food and your body through intuitive eating in 5 easy steps:

Step 1: First, understand the diet culture and your power to choose.

The diet culture is so prevalent in the world today. It teaches people that being thin is the way to go. Also, it tells you that if you don’t conform to this thin ideal, you’re morally weak and unhealthy. Of course, we know that this is a lie! Certainly, you have the choice to reject this lie and break free from this insidious culture.

Step 2: Reject the diet culture.

You get to choose the way you think about your body. Don’t allow yourself to be a slave of this oppressive culture. Take your first steps to freedom by unfollowing social media accounts that use the weight loss lingo and uphold dieting myths. Toss out the books and delete videos, apps, and e-books that are part of the diet culture. Don’t be fooled by diet-culture programs that are wellness programs in disguise.

Step 3: Be present with your food.

First, before you eat, unplug from all distractions such as your phone and the television. Then, using your five senses, immerse yourself totally into the experience of eating. Enjoy it!

Step 4: Shift from external eating cues to your body’s internal eating cues.

Don’t pay attention to your calories and macros. Instead, use your body’s natural cues to guide what and how much you eat.

Step 5: Seek satisfaction from food.

Eat foods that you enjoy. Listen to your body and observe how certain foods make you feel. Eat more of those that make you feel good.

Intuitive eating to lose weight

10 Intuitive Eating Principles

If you want to integrate intuitive eating into your lifestyle, then you must know these 10 principles:

  1. Reject the diet mentality.

Get rid of all the books, articles, videos, and other materials that falsely promise easy, quick, and permanent weight loss. Don’t buy into the lie that you’re a failure or something is broken in you just because another diet has failed you.

  1. Honor your hunger.

Nourish your body properly and fuel it with enough calories. Depriving your body of food will put your body into the starvation mode and will consequently cause you to overeat. On the other hand, when you honor your hunger, you learn to trust your body’s natural eating cues.

  1. Make peace with food. 

Stop labeling food as “good” or “bad.” It can result in uncontrollable cravings and binge eating. Therefore, food labeling will do more harm than good. Also, if you succumb to the “temptation” to eat that you’ve labeled as “bad,” you’ll feel guilty. Eat without any conditions!

  1. Challenge the food police. 

Silence the voice inside your head that says you’re “good” for counting your calories or “bad” because you ate a slice of chocolate cake, for instance. Drive it away and tell it to never come back!

  1. Respect your fullness.

Be mindful of your body signals that let you know that you’ve had enough food. When you’re no longer hungry, pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself:

  • How does the food taste?
  • How full are you?

  1. Discover the satisfaction factor.

Remember that you’re meant to eat, not just to survive, but also to enjoy the experience of eating. The ability to enjoy the flavors and textures of the food in your mouth is a gift. On the other hand, the diet culture teaches us that enjoying this gift will only lead to overeating. The truth is, if you allow yourself to enjoy the pleasure of eating, you will subsequently feel satisfied sooner.

  1. Honor your feelings without using food. 

We are all emotional eaters. In many instances, we try to soothe negative emotions with food. However, there are ways to comfort yourself and resolve your issues other than food. Food temporarily soothes emotional discomfort. But it won’t fix the underlying problems that cause the uncomfortable emotions. So you need to deal with the source of the emotion.

  1. Respect your body.

Don’t try to fit into the thin ideal that the diet culture worships. Instead, accept the body you were born with! You’re perfect just the way you are.

  1. Exercise—feel the difference.

You don’t have to spend long hours at the gym. Just go outside for a brisk walk or bust some moves! Most importantly, stop focusing on the calorie-burning effect of exercise and enjoy what you’re doing. Exercise makes you feel good by making your body release endorphins, the “feel-good” hormones.

  1. Honor your health.

Eat foods that taste good and make you healthy. Always remember that you don’t have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. What’s important is what you eat consistently over time. Above all, stop aiming for perfection. Rather, make progress your goal.

intuitive movement

Intuitive Eating Guide

Ready to feel better and be healthier? I have prepared some resources to help you start eating intuitively:

  1.  Get started with our free intuitive eating guide.
  2. Listen to our Intuitive Eating podcast episodes on the Going Beyond the Food Show. Here, I invite health experts who share their insights on intuitive eating and other health topics.
  3. Get tips and more information from my Intuitive eating blog.

 

Intuitive Eating for Weight Loss FAQs

The history of the BMI

The mathematical formula known today as BMI was first introduced in the early 19th century by a Belgian named Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet. He was a mathematician. Before 1980, doctors generally used weight-for-height tables — one for men and one for women — that included ranges of body weights for each inch of height. BMI became an international standard for obesity measurement in the 1980s for usage in public health and insurance purposes. 

How to determine health status beyond the BMI

The World Health Organization defines health as “a complete state of physical, emotional, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

What is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive Eating is a self-care eating framework that teaches you to have a healthy relationship to food, using your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.

Can you lose weight by eating intuitively?

Weight loss isn’t the end goal of intuitive eating. Rather, it is developing a healthy relationship with food and one’s body. When you have a healthy relationship with food and your body, you’ll be more inclined to care for your health, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally.

Certainly, some people do lose weight when they eat intuitively, but this isn’t always the case.

How to get started with Intuitive Eating?

1: First, understand the diet culture and your power to choose.

2: Reject the diet culture.

3: Be present with your food.

4: Shift from external eating cues to your body’s internal eating cues.

5: Seek satisfaction from food.

 

What is Diet Culture and 4 Steps to Navigate It

What is Diet Culture and 4 Steps to Navigate It

If you’ve been following me on social media or reading my blog, you certainly have come across the term “diet culture.” I’ve mentioned it many times before. But what is diet culture? How does it impact your life? And what should you do about it?

This article tackles this topic and teaches you how to opt-out of it. Also, I offer some resources that will help you start a new life outside of this oppressive belief system. Here’s what you’re going to learn from this blog post:

What is diet culture?

How to navigate the diet culture

Diet culture educational resources

Now, let’s begin exploring the diet culture so you can take your first steps to freedom!

diet culture

What is diet culture?

From the sound of it, you might think the term “diet culture” refers to a group of people who are on a diet. But it actually has a different meaning.

Christy Harrison, a colleague of mine, has the best diet culture definition. She defines it as a system of belief that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue. It’s now prevalent in our society and oppresses women from all over the world!

How does this impact your life?

This means you may have spent your entire life thinking that you’re broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin ideal.

That’s just one angle. You can also look at the diet culture from three other angles:

The second angle is that it promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status. It makes you feel compelled, almost obligated, to spend massive amounts of time, energy, and resources, trying to shrink your body so you can fit into this thin ideal. Now, research is very clear that the dieting model has a 95 percent failure rate, so it might as well be an exercise in futility.

The next angle is it demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others. It forces you to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, shames you for making certain food choices, and distracts you from the pleasure of eating as well as from your purpose and power.

Last but not least, it oppresses people who don’t match the supposed picture of health or the thin ideal. This affects us most particularly as women, although it’s starting to affect men.

My 25-year journey inside diet culture

As you probably know, I used to have a love-hate relationship with food and my body. A 25-year career in dieting left me obsessed, frustrated and confused about food. I was also at a loss on how to take care of my body.

Dieting was stealing my life and at 39. Then I decided that I had enough… I finally chose to take my power back and free myself from dieting and body shaming. The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ was born out of my personal journey.

Now, as a health professional, I’ve helped hundreds of women work their way out of this oppressive culture and develop a healthier relationship with food using intuitive eating and body neutrality.

Is diet culture affecting you, too? I invite you to consider its impact on your life. Take our quick self-assessment tool we created to help women determine if intuitive eating is the right solution for them.

How to navigate the diet culture

how to navigate diet culture

I invite you, and honestly all women, to become diet culture dropouts! Below are the four steps you need to take in your journey towards freedom:

  1. Understand that you have a choice. 

Now is the best time to be a woman. Unlike the generations before us, we’re liberated and empowered! You have to understand that diet culture is a tool that the patriarchy uses to keep us from being in our power. It keeps us busy minding our calories and macros. It induces guilt and so we feel inclined to punish ourselves when we fail.

Whether you want to stay in the diet culture and be oppressed or to break away from it and change your life, it’s totally up to you. But you should know that you have the power to make that choice.

  1. Take responsibility.

With great power comes great responsibility. Now, that sounds like a quote from a Spiderman movie, but as an empowered woman, you are responsible for your life. No one else is!

Now, you can be the victim of diet culture and drown yourself in self-pity and helplessness. Or you can say, “Screw this! I’m going to take responsibility, and I’m going to work myself out of it and change my life.”

It’s your call.

  1. Educate yourself. 

Read books and blogs. Listen to podcasts. Consume content that supports the choice that you’ve made for yourself. Be on guard against the content that might suck you right back into the diet culture. As I’ve said before, beware of diet culture programs disguised as wellness practices.

I’ve made it my personal mission to empower women by educating them so they don’t allow themselves to be oppressed. And so, I have put together some resources for you.

We have anti-diet culture podcast episodes on the Going Beyond the Food Show, where I interview health professionals. I invite you to listen as they share their expert insights and opinions on our relationship with our bodies and with food.

You can also read our anti-diet culture blog posts on this website. Here, we go deep into the research and the studies around diet culture as well as dieting and its impact on health.

If you’re looking for an anti-diet culture book, I recommend Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon, PhD. Dr. Bacon does research around health and dieting. It’s a book that gave me a lot of “aha moments” and subsequently changed my life.

  1. Find a framework to help you reconstruct your relationship with food and with your body.

You’re going to shift from the way of life that diet culture has taught you to a more empowering way of thinking and doing things. This means there’s a lot for you to unlearn and relearn, so you’re going to need all the support you can get.

The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ is a 5-step strategic process to help women move out of diet mentality and into self-care. Our 5 pillars are: mindset, emotional wellness, mindfulness, body neutrality and intuitive eating.

Diet culture educational resources

diet culture resources

As a clinical nutritionist, I’ve found that intuitive eating is the most effective tool for developing a healthy relationship with food and your body. Intuitive eating teaches you to tap into your innate hunger and fullness cues. It requires you to relearn how to engage with food without restriction and without labeling food as “good” or “bad.”

The trauma around body image is more powerful than the one around food. What I have found over the years is that when we work through our relationship with food, it’s a lot easier and faster to heal body image issues.

We offer a variety of programs that will help you should you decide to opt-out of diet culture:

You can access all of our services on our work with us page.  We have a number of programs and service levels enabling us to serve most women:

Free Resources and Masterclasses: Get started and get to know us better!

Private coaching with Stephanie and her team Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches are waiting to support you in a one-to-one setting with an individualized plan.

Undiet Your Life group coaching program is for women to learn how to eat intuitively, become body neutral, and learn self-coaching at their own pace while being supported in a group setting by Stephanie and her team of Certified Non-Diet Coaches.

Non-Diet Coaching Certification for professionals ready to integrate the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ in their practice and for women wanting to become  Certified Coach and build a business coaching other women beyond the food.

Diet Culture FAQs

What is diet culture?

Christy Harrison defines it as a system of belief that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue. It’s now prevalent in our society and oppresses women from all over the world!

How to navigate the diet culture?

1. Understand that you have a choice.

2. Take responsibility.

3. Educate yourself.

4. Find a framework to help you reconstruct your relationship with food and with your body.

What are the diet culture educational resources?

Intuitive Eating Project – This is a self-study program that will help you relearn how to eat intuitively at your own pace.

The Going Beyond the Food Academy – This is a group coaching program where we teach the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ and offer support and coaching in a more in-depth approach. In this program, we talk about mindset, emotions, body image, intuitive eating, and mindfulness.

Conquer and Thrive – This is a six-month, high-touch intensive program where you work one-on-one with me. Here, you learn how to work your way out of the diet culture and heal your relationship with food, your body, and yourself.