Eating Intuitively Blogs
The Powerful Gift of Emotional Eating
What is the gift of emotional eating?
Thinking of emotional eating as a gift may seem to be a strange concept as the prevalent diet culture demonizes this same eating behavior. Diet culture teaches us not to give in to emotional cravings as it may be a sign that we lack willpower and discipline. Yet almost every human being eats emotionally.
One of the foundational aspects of the Going Beyond the Food Method is to see our relationship with food and our body as a message. Seeking to understand our eating behaviors instead of fighting them is what will allow us to see the gift of emotional eating. If we fail to see the gift behind emotional eating, we miss out on the guidance and opportunity for growth that it has to offer.
This article aims to help you understand emotional eating and how it can empower you instead of sending you down the path of shame and self-loathing.
It also answers these questions about emotional eating:
What is Emotional Eating versus Binge Eating versus Overeating?
What is the gift of eating emotionally?
Why do we want to stop eating emotionally?
How do we stop emotional eating?
What is Emotional Eating?
Emotional eating is the act of using food to reinforce positive emotions such as joy, love, and celebration or to soothe negative feelings such as anxiety, stress, fear, anger, boredom, shame, etc.
A shorter and simpler emotional eating definition that I can give you is “eating for reasons other than satisfying one’s physical hunger.”
Most women can relate to emotional eating in some way. 99.9% percent of us are emotional eaters. Emotional eating is more common in women partly because we are more emotionally sensitive than men.
What is Emotional Eating versus Binge Eating versus Overeating?
People often describe emotional eating as mindless eating. It’s consuming food when you’re not hungry or when you’re trying to satisfy an emotional need.
On the other hand, binge eating involves eating a large amount of food within a short period of time. This eating behavior is usually accompanied by the feeling of a lack of control over the eating episode as well as intense shame about the behavior.
Binge and emotional eating aren’t necessarily two separate and distinct processes. Instead, they are one process that occurs in a continuum. What may start as casual emotional eating may lead to eating past the point of comfort (simply overeating).
How do you know when you’re moving further into the continuum of emotional eating? By paying attention to the “3-how’s”:
- How much are you eating?
- How often do you use eating as a coping strategy?
- How else are you coping with difficult emotions?
Overeating is interesting. The word clearly means “eating over a certain amount.” What is that certain amount? Who determines it?
The concept is 100% created by the diet culture. It’s a term used to shame someone who’s not following a prescribed meal plan, diet, etc.
When you ditch the diet culture and practice intuitive eating, you’ll find that there’s no such thing as overeating. That’s because you let your internal hunger and fullness cues guide you when it comes to how much you should eat instead of following a dictated amount from an external guide.
Why do we want to stop eating emotionally?
Diet culture is the primary driving force that promotes the concept that emotional eating should be first controlled and then avoided. It puts a negative spin on emotional eating as it leads people to eat more than the ideal amount it prescribes. And when you eat more than the prescribed amount, it tries to shame you and labels your behavior as “overeating.” Diet culture then provides tips and tricks to stop emotional eating as a way to ensure that you “stick to your diet”.
The second reason why people so badly want to stop emotional eating is that they don’t understand it.
Diet culture leads you to be afraid of gaining weight or not losing weight. It’s when you begin to understand that there is a gift behind emotional eating that you can finally get out of that state of fear and start engaging with your desire to eat emotionally with curiosity instead of judgment.
What is the gift of emotional eating?
Now, I’m going to get a little bit science-y here. Let’s break down emotional eating.
Let’s start by understanding what is an emotion. Emotions are created by your thoughts and communicated to the rest of your body via a burst of electric energy in your nervous system. Think of this burst of energy as a signal for the rest of your body to act or behave in a certain way. These bursts of energy are simply signals or messages that are felt in your body as sensations. You feel these sensations (aka emotions) deep down in your body both consciously and unconsciously.
Sometimes, these sensations can be uncomfortable. Emotions such as anxiety or stress are often deeply uncomfortable and food can be an antidote for this emotional discomfort. To help this emotional discomfort, food will release dopamine in our brain to offset the discomfort of stress or anxiety, making you forget for a while that you are anxious or stressed.
And so, over time, you may start building a pattern of reaching for food when you feel uncomfortable emotions. Think of this behavior as protective; you are simply trying to feel better. Humans are wired to seek comfort and pleasure and to avoid pain and discomfort.
But once you understand how your emotions relate to your eating behavior, you’ll begin to see emotional eating as a radar for your life and as a way of getting to know yourself better. Emotional eating allows you to ask powerful questions that can put you back in control and help you change your life.
The gift of emotional eating is that it’s a window into your truth and growth.
How do we stop?
Do you really want to learn how to stop emotional eating? Or do you want to understand your emotional eating behavior?
The first place to start is to shift from judging your eating behaviors to being curious about them. See emotional eating for what it is – a gift.
Ask yourself questions like:
“I wonder why I eat every night after 8 o’clock?”
“I wonder why I crave chocolate every morning around 11 am? What is that all about?”
“Why is that when I have a fight with my partner all I want is chips?”
“Why am I so afraid of gaining weight? What am I really afraid of?”
When you ask yourself questions like these, only then will you be able to start the process of understanding what is hidden behind your emotional cravings.
As the term itself suggests, emotional eating is eating in response to emotions. An emotion is a mood, a state of mind derived from our thoughts and our perspective in life. All of your emotions are the outcome of the way you think.
If you want to stop emotional eating, the best way to do that is by changing the way you think. Emotions are produced by our thoughts, therefore if we change our thoughts, we change our emotions.
To better understand how events, thoughts, and emotions influence your actions, you can listen to my self-coaching podcast episode or read my self-coaching article where I discuss how the brain works.
Seeking to understand your emotional eating behavior will help you understand yourself better. By understanding yourself and your life better, you will start making different choices and interrupting patterns that create emotional discomfort.
That’s when you stop needing to eat emotionally.
My biggest shift
For me, shifting my perspective of emotional eating has been a turning point in my life. It’s been a gift. It sent me down the path of healing. I use my relationship with food, weight, and my body as a way of seeing what’s going on in my life.
Shifting from judging my eating behavior and my body weight to being curious has been a journey. That journey wasn’t easy. I made some mistakes along the way and it led me to understand myself and why I had been struggling with food and my body since the age of 12. After dieting for 25 years, I finally understand the real reason why diets never worked for me.
It was never about the food or my body…
Need help with emotional eating?
Perhaps you came across this article because you’re looking for ways on how to overcome emotional eating. It’s mostly about understanding the gift behind it, and harnessing this gift to develop a healthier relationship with food.
We are ready to help find YOUR gift of emotional eating!
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.
Health Beyond Dieting: Chasing Health With Intuitive Eating
Health beyond dieting seems to be a foreign concept to most people.
Diet culture conditioned us to believe that thinner is better in all aspects of life including our health. We’ve always heard that thin equals healthy, and that dieting is the way to a thinner body.
We’ve also been brainwashed into thinking that a thinner body is more attractive because it is associated with health.
This is a belief that’s hard to let go.
Why It’s Hard to Change Your Beliefs About Weight and Health
Your reptilian brain is the reason why it’s not easy to let go of beliefs. It’s the most primal part of your brain that has the survival instinct. It seeks to protect you from danger. Because the diet culture has programmed your reptilian brain into believing that fat people aren’t healthy, you’ve since associated health with thinness.
But as you’ll see, there is evidence that proves that your body size has little do with your health outcome. That said, it’s going to require some effort to reprogram your reptilian brain to fully accept the belief about health beyond dieting.
In this article, you’ll find answers to the following questions regarding health beyond dieting and the Going Beyond The Food Method:
- Who is the ideal candidate for The Going Beyond The Food Method™️ Health approach?
- How to get started with a weight-neutral approach to health
What does it mean to be healthy?
We all grew up with the idea that health is the absence of illness. But the World Health Organization has a definition of health that’s different from what we’re all used to. WHO defines health as “a complete state of physical, emotional and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Good health is essential to being able to handle stress and live a long and active life. It doesn’t just refer to the absence of disease, but also to the ability to recover from illness, to adapt to life challenges in general.
When you’re healthy, it doesn’t mean you’re never sick. Humans have the innate capacity to adapt and recover from sickness and health issues. That is to say, being healthy allows you to recover and bounce back quickly.
Does “obesity” cause one to be unhealthy?
The keyword here is CAUSE. Before we can answer the question, we must first understand the difference between Correlation and Causation. For example, smoking is correlated with alcoholism, but it doesn’t cause alcoholism. However, smoking causes an increased risk of developing lung cancer.
As of 2019, there isn’t any evidence that directly points to obesity as a causative factor in a disease. That said, many studies link or correlate obesity to health risks. Even when body weight is correlated to health risks, it is never the sole factor of any health condition.
For example, research also found that obesity does not affect the risk of having coronary heart disease and stroke “Metabolic status is relatively stable despite rising BMI”. (However, it does increase the risk of developing diabetes)
But if the question is, “Is obesity associated or correlated with health risks?” the answer would be yes. If the question is “Is obesity causing disease?” the answer would be no. That’s where the big difference lies.
Here’s where it gets interesting – one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are actually metabolically healthy. Being metabolically healthy means having your blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose levels, and other metabolic markers within the normal range.
Is health beyond dieting possible?
Yes, and scientific research proves it!
A 2016 study by researchers at UCLA studied 40,420 adult participants in the most recent U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Researchers looked at the participants’ health as measured by six accepted metrics (not including BMI). These metrics are blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride, glucose, insulin resistance, and C-reactive protein.
The study found that 47% of people classified as overweight by BMI and 29% of those qualified as obese were healthy based on at least five of those other metrics.
Meanwhile, 31% of normal-weight people were unhealthy by two or more of the same measures.
A number of research studies show that weight loss is not necessary to improve physical health. Studies have also found that fitness is more predictive for mortality than weight. This study defined ‘fit’ as 3-4 hrs per week of walking.
Source: JAMA. 1999 Oct 27;282(16):1547-53.
Note: “Fit” is not synonymous with “thin” or “lean.” That’s Diet Culture. Being fit means being in good health, especially because of regular physical movement.
Furthermore, trying to change your health status simply by losing weight has not only proven to be an ineffective approach but also carries potential negative side effects to your health. The focus on intentional weight loss via dieting can be harmful. Multiple studies demonstrate negative side effects of dieting behaviors. The three most documented negative effects are weight cycling, disordered eating, and weight stigma.
What is Health At Every Size?
As a response to the failure of the traditional weight-loss model of health, the Health at Every Size (HAES) movement emerged over the last decades.
Health At Every Size is a philosophy and an approach to health. Linda Bacon, PhD, an advocate for body positivity, wrote the book Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight. It shows through research that health behaviors influence health more than weight.
The HAES movement promotes the simple truth that all bodies are good bodies. It shifts the focus away from dieting for weight control. Instead, it steers you toward self-care practices that support your body’s natural wisdom and vitality.
Chasing health at any size is possible. Dr. Bacon had led research to support the Health At Every Size approach to health with positive outcomes over the traditional model of intentional weight loss.
Honoring your body, and being able to understand your body’s needs, leads to meaningful changes in health behaviors.
HAES subscribes to the idea of health as stated by the World Health Organization—that it is more than just the absence of disease. It also sees health as a continuum that varies throughout one’s life span. Health, in this model, is from a holistic perspective (physical, psychological, relational, and spiritual).
In fact, the Health At Every Size approach discourages judging others and oneself regarding their health status. It acknowledges that shame and oppression can have significant negative effects on one’s health and wellness.
What is a weight-neutral approach to health?
A weight-neutral approach to health is based on the idea that your health status or risk level can’t be determined solely by your weight.
It acknowledges that your weight is determined by a complex set of genetic, metabolic, physiological, cultural, social, and behavioral determinants. Many of these factors are either difficult or impossible to change.
Instead of focusing on a weight-oriented outcome, weight-neutral programs teach you to take charge of the factors within your control. These factors include your thoughts and behaviors. Taking charge of these factors will help you improve your well-being, regardless of your weight.
Weight-neutral approaches to health have significantly decreased body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and depression. They’ve also increased sustainable, enjoyable self-care behaviors such as eating and moving well in the long term.
Body dissatisfaction and shame: Their effect on health behaviors
Weight stigma (also known as body shaming, or weight shaming) is the social devaluation, denigration, and discrimination of people perceived to carry extra weight based on their weight.
It originated from the “old school” model of inducing behavioral changes through punishment or shaming. A common example today is the “before and after” pictures we often see on social media.
It’s a common belief that weight stigma or shaming will motivate people who don’t meet body size ideals to change their behaviors so as to avoid further stigma.
As a result, many women internalize weight stigma and become increasingly dissatisfied with their bodies.
A 2013 study published by the Journal of Obesity found no link between body weight and the way women feel about themselves. However, the findings show a link between how women feel about themselves and their health behaviors. In other words, the better they feel about their bodies, the more likely they are to take care of themselves leading to a better health outcome.
Conversely, body dissatisfaction discourages women from taking part in certain health-related activities and from eating properly to fuel their bodies. These behaviors could eventually lead to weight gain… cynical right?
Shifting from weight management to health behaviors
Instead of focusing on weight management to improve your health, what if you shifted your focus to health behaviors?
For example, what if you cared more about the quality instead of the quantity of the food you eat?
What if you improve your mindset and thoughts so you can be better motivated to move your body every day?
What if you take steps to reduce and manage stress so that you can enjoy a better quality of sleep?
Research associated healthy lifestyle habits to a significant decrease in mortality regardless of baseline body mass index. Therefore, all BMI groups can benefit from practicing healthy habits. Interestingly, the greatest benefit is seen within the BMI “obese” group.
The Going Beyond The Food Method️ is a weight-neutral and non-diet health framework composed of eight core elements. Our health framework is grounded in holistic principles and functional medicine approach to health. It also follows Health at Every Size principles.
What happens if we take the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ approach to health?
The Going Beyond The Food Method is a proprietary methodology that I created. The program is primarily designed to help women make peace with food and their body. As a result, women are able to focus their efforts on health outcomes beyond dieting and weight loss. Certainly, it’s a five-step process that includes mindset, emotional regulation, mindfulness, body neutrality, and intuitive eating.
The method️ is based on four core pillars: Body Wisdom, Body Trust, Body Respect, and Body Neutrality.
The health behaviors we teach inside our programs center around intuitive eating, a well-researched self-care eating framework. Moreover, it teaches Body Neutrality, a framework that neutralizes body dissatisfaction.
Sustainability and health beyond dieting
The single most powerful advantage of a weight-neutral and non-diet approach like the Going Beyond The Food Method️ is sustainability. It helps you develop the ability to sustain health-promoting behaviors throughout your life. Our unique approach, combined with the evidence-based health benefits of intuitive eating, is very powerful!
Certainly, when it comes to health, consistency is significantly more powerful than short-term results. One of the secrets to consistency is self-compassion.
A 2015 study systematically reviewed a weight-neutral and no-diet approach to health. It determined the overall effects on factors including weight, biochemical measures, food, activity, behavior, body image, and mental health.
- Weight stability (in 5 yrs)
- Improved biochemical markers
- Cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, CRP
- Sustained healthy behaviors
- Improvement in:
- Dietary quality
- Psychological states
- Disordered eating patterns
- Self-esteem
- Depression
The Going Beyond The Food Method framework supports health-promoting behaviors and makes health beyond dieting possible. It encourages the increase of fruit and vegetable intake and variety in diet. In addition, the framework aims to encourage health behaviors such as physical activity, stress management, sleep quality, and digestive health.
Who is an ideal candidate for the Going Beyond The Food Method™️ approach to health?
Truly anyone! Individuals who’ll benefit most from this approach are:
- Chronic dieters.
- Women who are overly concerned with weight and shape (a.k.a. body image issues).
- Women who are repeatedly trying to lose weight and restricting food for two years or more.
- Women who have had enough of dieting and regaining the weight that they lost.
- Women who are intuitive eaters.
- Women who have disordered eating behaviors.
If you have an eating disorder, I recommend that you work with a qualified health practitioner first. Bring yourself to safety and lay the groundwork with a health practitioner in a one-on-one setting.
Then you can come to one of our programs to learn the mindset piece of health beyond dieting.
Health beyond dieting: How to get started with a weight-neutral approach to health
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: The #1 ressource I’d like to point you toward
Health Beyond The Scale Masterclass: Learn how to implement a weight neutral approach to health that redefine body norms and champion your body autonomy. This is the fundamental of health beyond dieting in 2 hrs masterclass!
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.
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Intuitive Eating Before and After: My Story
I’ve always shared my journey to my followers, but only a few people know about my intuitive eating before and after story. Since I started eating intuitively, I’ve learned a lot of lessons that I’m eager to share. So I think it’s time for me to update my narrative.
If you’ve been on the fence about intuitive eating or you’ve been struggling with body image issues, these lessons will prove to be valuable to you.
But first, let me explain what intuitive eating is.
What does eating intuitively mean?
This is the most concise intuitive eating definition I can give you: “a self-care framework that uses your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.” It emphasizes self-care and attunement to one’s body cues.
Scientific research has proven intuitive eating to be healthy and safe. I have a blog post that describes all the intuitive eating health benefits. Read this article if you want to know how eating intuitively can help you become healthier.
As for me, eating intuitively has changed my life for the better. I’d like to share all the lessons I learned from my intuitive eating experience, hoping that they’ll inspire you to start your own intuitive eating journey.
Here is a quick rundown of the lessons I learned in my intuitive eating journey:
Lesson 1: Weight stigma is real and freakin’ powerful.
Lesson 2: Diet culture is a powerful motherfriggin’ monster but it’s optional.
Lesson 3: Repeat or evolve…It’s your choice.
Lesson 4: It’s beyond the food!
Lesson 5: The wellness diet and healthy body are BS
Lesson 6: You can’t hate yourself to happiness
Lesson 7: Intuitive eating is the gateway to health and happiness.
You can click the links or scroll down to go over the lessons and to learn about my intuitive eating before and after story in greater detail:
Lesson 1: Weight stigma is real and freakin’ powerful.
When I was 9 or 10 years old, my body was different. I was taller, heavier, and bigger than most kids in my school. My classmates bullied me…a lot. I didn’t know it yet, but I was dealing with weight stigma.
Then I grew up. The bullying became less frequent, and after some time, it stopped altogether. But there was a voice inside me, shaming me for the way I looked. For 25 years, I was brutal with myself because I thought that was the only way I could change.
I internalized the stigma that I dealt with as a kid.
Weight stigma, defined by the National Eating Disorders Association, is discrimination or stereotyping based on a person’s weight. Scientific research on weight stigma reveals that it has a huge effect on stress levels, hormones, and eating habits.
There are two types of weight stigma: externalized and internalized. Mind you, internalized weight stigma is more powerful than externalized weight stigma. Why? You can avoid the people who taunt you, but you’re with your body 24/7.
It was only when I overcame my internalized stigma that real transformation began. I became happier and more confident than ever before.
Lesson 2: Diet culture is a powerful motherfriggin’ monster but it’s optional.
The diet culture is an insidious monster that crept into my life when I was very young. It affected how I saw and treated myself. It also influenced my mother who, out of love and concern for me, sent me to Weight Watchers.
For 25 years, I was a slave to this oppressive monster. I tried one diet after another. Nothing worked. I thought there was something wrong with me and I needed to be fixed.
You might be wondering, “What the heck is diet culture?”
Diet culture is a system of belief that worships thinness and equates it with health and moral virtue. It makes you believe that you’re broken just because you don’t look like the “thin ideal.”
I had no clue that the diet culture existed. I thought that pursuing weight loss and thinness was the norm. When somebody presented me with the idea that I could actually live my life without aiming to lose weight or to become thin, it didn’t even sink in.
Fortunately, I came to realize that being part of the diet culture is a choice. Whether we want a thinner body or just lovingly accept ourselves–it’s completely up to us. The suffering that comes from wanting to be thinner is completely optional.
This led me to lesson number three…
Lesson 3: Repeat or evolve… It’s a choice.
A significant turning point in my life happened when I was in my late 30s and at the peak of my corporate career. I was about to deliver a speech before a large crowd when I suddenly collapsed. Shortly after that, I found myself in the ER.
Subsequently, the doctor diagnosed me with five chronic conditions: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, anxiety, panic disorder, and depression. The doctors prescribed a medication for each condition.
Medication was the solution that these doctors had for me. But I decided to take a different route in my pursuit of health. I took responsibility into my own hands. However, I knew that I needed support, so I hired a coach.
It was during this time that I experienced a huge shift in mindset. I stopped being a victim and began to think that life happens for me instead of to me. I realized I could choose to either repeat my actions and have the same results. Or I could change my choices and make progress. Because I had the freedom to choose, I also had to be responsible for the consequences of my choices.
If you find yourself in a situation or condition that you don’t like, remember this: You can stay wherever you are and just keep repeating your old patterns. Or you can create new patterns of behavior and evolve.
Either way, it’s your decision and you’re responsible for it.
Lesson 4: It’s beyond the food!
Geneen Roth is one of the person who taught me the emotional and spiritual aspects of food. She is the bestselling author of Women, Food, and God I had the privilege of interviewing her in one of my emotional eating podcast episodes.
I remember the time I was reading Geneen’s book, at a poolside in Florida. One concept struck me so hard that I had what I now call a “holy shit” moment.
“Holy shit! It’s beyond the food!” my brain screamed.
This realization deeply changed my relationship with food. I became aware that I was using food to numb discomfort, because I hated being uncomfortable. Using food is just one of the behavioral patterns I developed when dealing with discomfort. There were other things, too, such as people-pleasing, perfectionism, etc.
These unhealthy behavioral patterns offered me a way for me to avoid change and stay comfortable. Realizing this, I became aware that it’s really not about the food.
Lesson 5: The wellness diet and healthy body are BS
When I realized that I had to go beyond the food, I decided to stop dieting forever.
But then I learned about the paleo diet. Paleo doesn’t require you to eat less. You only have to make sure that everything you eat followed the guidelines.
I convinced myself that going on paleo wasn’t about losing weight. Instead, it was about balancing my hormones and fixing my body.
Then I encountered the Ketogenic Diet and decided to adopt it into my lifestyle.
The truth is I was still chasing weight loss, but I didn’t see that. Paleo and keto are deceptively packaged as tools for achieving health. But really, they’re products of the diet culture.
Because it was so restrictive, the keto diet sent me down the path of binge eating. My body was so angry with me for restricting food and chasing a thinner body, although I couldn’t admit it to myself.
Later, someone sent me a book called Health at Every Size. It pretty much says you can be healthy regardless of your weight. To me, it meant that everything that I was doing wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to be.
I was so offended that I couldn’t go beyond the first chapter.
It took a while before I finally accepted what it teaches. But after that, I felt a sense of freedom and relief.
I later learned that the pursuit of thinness has devastating consequences on mental and emotional health. In contrast, the Health at Every Size approach to eating emphasizes self-acceptance rather than weight loss.
Does it work? Research on Health at Every Size shows that this approach improves eating attitudes and practices, perception of body image, and health among other things.
(Read the Health at Every Size Manifesto to learn more about it.)
Lesson 6: You can’t hate yourself to happiness
After learning that I can be healthy regardless of my weight, I quit restricting food in any ways and I realized that I had to accept my body just as it is.
Now, body acceptance requires some work. This work is different from dieting. It’s not physically, emotionally, or mentally harder. It’s just different. But again, it’s uncomfortable.
I had to learn new tools to work through body acceptance–the mirror exercise, journaling, and breathing. I had to deal with the discomfort of being a beginner again. But that got me to this beautiful place of embracing body neutrality, which I now teach.
Body neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself. Its focus is to avoid self-hate while simultaneously relieving you from the pressure of having to love your body. The goal is to respect and accept your body for what it is – and that’s it.
Lesson 7: Intuitive eating is the gateway to health and happiness.
I encountered the concept of intuitive eating a few times. To be honest, at first, I wasn’t convinced that intuitive eating was any good. My colleagues sent me a book and some links to articles, but I refused to read anything about it. I simply said, “Nope, it’s not for me.”
Until Evelyn Tribole came into my life. Evelyn is one of the two coauthors of the ground-breaking book, Intuitive Eating. She is now my mentor. Through her, I learned that healing my relationship with food is necessary so I can make peace with my body.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Evelyn in my intuitive eating podcast. If you want to learn more about what she teaches about eating intuitively, listen to the episode.
Intuitive eating teaches you to respect your innate body messages such as hunger and fullness so you can have a healthy and respectful relationship with your body. This kind of relationship with my body is exactly what I’ve been enjoying since I started eating intuitively.
Wondering how to start eating intuitively?
We’re here to help! You can read my article that will walk you through the step-by-step process of integrating intuitive eating into your life.
Undiet Your Life is our beginner coaching program that will teach you how to become an intuitive eater,not just develop a healthy relationship with food, but also to embrace your current body. Go check us out.
Lessons learned from intuitive eating
Lesson 1: Weight stigma is real and freakin’ powerful.
Lesson 2: Diet culture is a powerful motherfriggin’ monster but it’s optional.
Lesson 3: Repeat or evolve…It’s your choice.
Lesson 4: It’s beyond the food!
Lesson 5: The wellness diet and healthy body are BS
Lesson 6: You can’t hate yourself to happiness
Lesson 7: Intuitive eating is the gateway to health and happiness.
Intuitive Eating: 8 Evidence-Based Health Benefits
Does intuitive eating really have health benefits?
That’s not an unusual question for people getting started with intuitive eating. The answer is a resounding YES, and its amazing health benefits are backed by science.
In fact, intuitive eating is picking up popularity, not only among former dieters but also with researchers. As of 2019, there are more than 100 research studies looking at intuitive eating. These studies demonstrate that intuitive eating has many positive health outcomes like:
- 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
Have you been dieting for quite some time, but keep finding yourself right where you started?
Intuitive eating can help you break out of that cycle. And unlike dieting, it lets you enjoy eating without regret, guilt, or shame about your food choices.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Perhaps the best intuitive eating definition I can give you is, “a self-care framework that uses your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.”
This definition emphasizes self-care and implies reconnecting with the body. That is to say, you need to be attuned to your body to follow its cues.
As I discussed in my intuitive eating podcast episode of The Beyond The Food Show, eating intuitively is innate in all human beings. When you were a baby, you’d cry when you were hungry, and you’d be fed. You knew when you needed to eat. When you were full, you’d just stop feeding and go back to sleep. We just moved away from this natural state when we were immersed in the diet culture.
Does Intuitive Eating Really Work?
Yes. Hundreds of intuitive eating research studies prove that it does work. It isn’t another fad diet.
Registered Dietician Nutritionists (RDNs) in the U.S. agree. A 2017 study found that RDNs are using an intuitive eating approach more often than traditional weight management practices.
If you’re wondering “How does intuitive eating work?” you may want to read my blog post that answers that question.
Is Intuitive Eating Healthy?
Intuitive eating is both healthy and safe. It’s based on being attuned and aligned with your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues. What could be healthier than that?
But don’t take my word for it. Scientific studies do confirm the health benefits of intuitive eating. Here are a couple of examples:
A study participated by 1,600 middle-aged women links intuitive eating to lower body mass index and positive emotional health. It also showed potential benefits on nutritional and cardiovascular health.
Another study found that chronic dieters can benefit from size acceptance and intuitive eating. It also supports long-term behavioral change. Size acceptance, reducing dieting behavior, and increased awareness and response to the body’s internal cues improved health risk indicators for the study participants.
Certainly, intuitive eating is not only safe; it promotes your overall health!
What are the Benefits of Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating teaches you to have a healthy relationship with food by empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs. It helps you distinguish between physical hunger and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom. This results in improved overall health.
Let’s look at the specific benefits intuitive eating has to offer:
1. Improved Cholesterol Levels
Intuitive eaters have been found to have lower triglyceride levels, higher levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL), and lower cardiovascular risk. One of the possible reasons for the improved cardiovascular health of intuitive eaters is the improvement in the inflammation marker, C-reactive protein (CRP).
In fact, anyone can benefit from intuitive eating, including those with health challenges. Moreover, it can also help prevent certain health conditions.
2. Lower Stress Levels
In my opinion, this is the most important benefit of eating intuitively. One of the most notable transformations demonstrated in studies that look into intuitive eating is with the psychological health indicators such as better body image and lower incidence of depression and anxiety.
Ditching the diet mentality and breaking free from the cycle of “getting on and off the wagon” will tremendously reduce your stress around food.
3. Increased Energy
Intuitive eating increases your energy by creating a lot of mental space for you. By worrying less about eating, you have more headspace to focus on other priorities in your life.
Research also links intuitive eating with increased motivation to engage in regular physical activity. Women who say that they are internally motivated to eat are more likely to participate in physical activity for pleasure. Therefore, they see themselves as physically active.
In other words, when you eat intuitively, you’ll have more energy and you’ll want to move more. Ultimately, that leads to better health and greater productivity.
4. Improved Mental Health
One of the reasons why diets often fail is that they make you feel bad. Food restriction is associated with negative mood, decreased cognitive functioning, eating disorders, weight obsession, and body dissatisfaction.
On the other hand, a study published in the Cambridge University Press website reveals that there is a substantial and consistent relationship between intuitive eating and improved mental health.
If dieting has made you feel bad about yourself, eating intuitively will make you feel better. Therefore, helping you get into a better mental state.
5. Lower Eating Disorder Occurrence
Those who suffer from eating disorders either restrict food or overindulge. In contrast, intuitive eating resets and balances your eating habits.
Researchers analyzed the eating habits of 2,287 young adults. They found that the participants who followed their hunger and fullness cues were less likely to have eating disorder behaviors than those who didn’t.
Your body instinctively knows what, when, and how much you should eat. In like manner, when you eat intuitively, you trust your body’s wisdom to guide you. You can’t go wrong with that.
6. Improved Body Awareness
Your body has a way of giving subtle signals that are meant to guide you in making the best choices for your health. (We call these signals “body messages” in the Going Beyond the Food community.)
It also lets you know when you have a health problem coming up through the symptoms that you experience. This way, you can take the appropriate steps to deal with the problem before it becomes a crisis.
Intuitive eating is based on interoception-the ability to feel the small sensations in the body such as hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues. Researchers have found that those who follow their internal eating cues are more sensitive to interoceptive signals.
This means that when you eat intuitively, you get more attuned to those body signals. This will help you with your relationship to food and will enable you to make the right decisions for your overall health.
7. Improved Self-Esteem
The diet culture promotes the “thin ideal.” It assumes that you that if you’re not thin enough and you don’t look a certain way, you’re broken. Therefore, you need to be fixed. It also equates food restriction with moral virtue. Obviously, it’s oppressive and can damage your self-esteem.
In contrast, intuitive eating results in positive body image, better body satisfaction, and improved self-esteem. A positive body image and high self-esteem motivate you to make better choices concerning your health while relying less on willpower.
Inside the Going Beyond The Food Method, we teach our students a unique approach to body image: Body Neutrality. For people who have lived through years of internalized and perhaps externalized body shame for years, body neutrality is the bridge from body hate to body positivity.
8. Increased Level of Happiness
As you can see, intuitive eating can benefit your mental and physical health, and scientific studies prove this. When you become both physically and mentally healthier, your quality of life improves. This translates to an increased level of happiness and contentment.
How to Get Started with Intuitive Eating
Do you want to give Intuitive eating a try? If you are ready to eat better, feel better, and be healthier, we can help you!
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.
Food isn’t good or bad
Food isn’tt good or bad… it just food.
Think of food as the raw material to build your “house” aka your body.
It’s not good or bad but the choice of materials will have consequences on the quality of your house. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Not every nail will be straight. Not every piece of wood will be free of knots. Not every angle will be perfect. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Food isn’t good or bad
It’s the same with our food choices. Diet Culture wants us to eat perfect food all the time so we lose weight. Wellness Diet wants us to eat perfect food all the time so we achieve optimum health⠀⠀⠀⠀
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That was a hard lesson for me. A lesson that caused my body a lot of undue stress and activated in me, disordered eating behaviours.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The stress associated with the need to be perfect in eating only healthy food caused more damages to my health than I wanted to realize. I was so deeply invested in the need for perfection as the solution to finally lose weight.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The Going Beyond The Food nutrition model takes away the complicated rules around food. It informs us to eat food that grew, flew, ran or swam most of the time. That’s it. Most of the time and the rest of the time focus on living your life!⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive Eating helps us overcome the food police that has been deeply programmed in our mind the dieting. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Next time you catch yourself labelling food as good or bad, or keto or not, or gluten-free or dairy-free ask yourself: Why do I need to judge the food? What am I really seeking by labelling food?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Rid yourself of the food police!
What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that makes YOU the boss of YOU.
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Get started with intuitive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide.
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
Cope with feelings without food
Cope with your feelings without food. Do you mean feel my feelings?
Food is legal… so it’s was ok for me to use it to cope with my undesired emotions.
I ate at night to cope with my complete exhaustion.
I ate when I felt lonely and bored.
I ate when I was angry with my partner or jealous.
Is that you too?
Emotional intelligence
I was emotionally unintelligent. Yes, that’s a thing.
Are you emotionally intelligent? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Emotional intelligence is the skill that guides you to be able to feel all the feelings & emotions without judgment or wanting to avoid them. Emotional Intelligence gives you the ability to see emotions for what they are… just messages. Emotions are energy bursts.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Food distracted me from feeling… I fought my emotions with food.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Cope with feelings without food
Emotional eating made my emotions worse in the long run. I still had to deal with the source of the emotions plus the discomfort of overeating. Double trouble!
Intuitive Eating taught me to feel and stop fighting. That in itself was a huge relief emotionally and physically. Allowing myself to feel reduce my desire to overeat.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive Eating made me realize that food wasn’t really the issue… my inability to cope with my emotions was. No diet, way of eating was going to resolve that.
If you struggle with emotional eating I feel you sister. My journey with emotional eating started at 9 years old with deep feelings of loneliness.
I want you to know that it’s possible to overcome…but for that, you need to see emotional eating as you ally NOT your enemy. Learn from it. Grow from it.⠀
What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that make YOU the boss of YOU.
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Get started with intuitive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating Guide.
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
Seeking Satisfaction with food
Seeking satisfaction with food is a powerful experience when you’re seeking to become an intuitive eater.
My goal is to have “pleasure” in my plate.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Pleasure = Satisfaction= Feeling content.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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In my quest to become or stay thin and healthy, I overlooked one of the most basics gifts of living this human experience- the pleasure and satisfaction that is found in the eating experience.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Seeking satisfaction with food
I shifted from preparing food so that I can be 100% perfect to my food rules and diet way of living to prepare food so that I can have flavour full meal that will make me feel energized, satisfied and support my body.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I coined the term of making love in the kitchen as it’s the perfect expression of this process to focus on pleasure and satisfaction.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive eating allowed me to embrace the pleasure that food is meant to bring to us as human.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive eating encourages me to have fun and enjoy preparing food instead of seeing it as another thing to do on my long “to do list”
What is intuitive eating ?
Intuitive eating is proven and well
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Get started with intui tive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive e
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
Ditch the Diet Mindset
Ditch the diet mindset… what? No dieting?
The most crucial step of Intuitive Eating was for me was rejecting the diet mentality.
That made no sense at first… and even when I finally understood why it was so important it still was challenging.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Letting go of restriction triggered a worthiness issue. To think that I deserve to eat anything I wanted, that I no longer needed to label my way of eating was scary. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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No more counting calories or macros (hello “healthy dieting”) and yes no more forbidden food groups. Yikes! You mean it’s ok to have carbs? My last diet was keto so you understand my dilemma with carbs.⠀⠀
Ditch the diet mindset
I needed to get mad at diets… diets had made me feel like a failure all of my adult life every time they stopped working. Diet Culture thrives on us feeling like a failure. It had worked for more than 25 years.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I try to eat intuitively while holding the on to a small portion of the diet mindset… like that, I could eat intuitively while being on ketosis or that intermittent fasting was my body’s expression of intuitive eating. Doing that kept me away from truly being an intuitive eater. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Truly I was holding to the idea that permanent weight loss would come as a result of manipulating my food. I had to go full out and ditch diet culture altogether. NO grey zone on this one. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
What has dieting cost me?
The tipping point for me was self-discovery exercise I did to explore my dieting life… here’s a sample of the question I reflected on⠀⠀⠀
I plotted a timeline of my life and all of the
It was tough to admit that dieting wasn’t working for me. That restricting food only sent me down the path of wanting more food, overeating and binging.⠀⠀
It
Intuitive Eating is the “other” option to diet. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive Eating teaches you to become the guru of your own body and for that, the diet mindset must be released. We can’t have two master sisters!
What is intuitive eating ?
Intuitive eating is proven and well
Intuitive eating teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food, empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
Intuitive Eating requires that we let go of diet mindset so that we can fully embrace our body cues.
Intuitive Eating teaches to reconnect to your body so that you can feel your body cues. To trust your hunger and respect your fullness.
Get started with intui tive eating
If you’d like to explore intuitive e
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps ).
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is proven and well-researched self-care eating framework that makes YOU the boss of YOU.
Intuitive eating is an evidence-based approach that empowers you on to be the expert of your own body.
It teaches us to have a healthy relationship to food empowering you to trust your ability to meet your needs, distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and ultimately develop body wisdom.
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Intuitive eating fuels our innate ability to trust our body and meet our own needs. That’s what makes it sustainable.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive eating allows us the space to respect our innate body wisdom.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The outcome of intuitive eating?
When I began my journey into learning and practicing intuitive eating it felt like I was coming home… home to myself, my body and my health.⠀⠀⠀
I stopped fighting my body: pushing it, manipulating it and shaming it. I stopped stressing my body into diets and crazy restrictive “lifestyle” way of eating.
I relieve my mind from the constant negative self-talk that came along with believing something was wrong with me and the anxiety to never be satisfied with my journey.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive eating offered me calm and peace in my mind and body.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My journey with intuitive eating
Intuitive Eating is about eating “junk food” all the time. That was my first reflection when I was introduced to Intuitive Eating years ago. I was seeking an option out of dieting (today I know I call it Diet Culture).
What I found online were women eating pizza, chips, bags of Oreos cookies and drinking Pepsi on a cheat day while ”flexible dieting”. That’s how Intuitive Eating was presented online back then.
I was repulsed by it and walked away from anything Intuitive Eating. I went back to Keto and fasting (what I now call Wellness Diet).
Then a few years later, feeling completely consumed by food, weight and out of control eating behaviours I knew I needed help. Someone suggested intuitive eating.
I reluctantly went back, this time I sought a professional perspective and entered in my life Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch and their research on intuitive eating.
Today I live and teach Intuitive Eating because it’s in full alignment with my personal values and my proprietary methodology Beyond The Food.
Intuitive Eating is eating beautiful salads like this one but also eating chocolate and chips when I desire too.
Intuitive Eating is about health.
Get started with intutive eating
If you’d like to explore Intuitive Eating and discover how it can help you make peace with food download our Get Started with Intuitive Eating.
This free (and highly detailed) cheat sheet will give you a 3 easy to follow step process to help you get started with intuitive eating right away (and give you a shot of confidence to stop dieting … perhaps 😀).
Intuitive Eating and Body Image… FOR KIDS!
The foundational information you need to teach your children how to be competent eaters – with the ability to manage food, weight, & health successfully for the rest of their lives.
Majority of the women in my community share my story of being introduced to the world of dieting at an early age. And for years we believed that it’s the way to go to control our eating and improve our body image. Until such time we finally realized that diet doesn’t work. It’s just a band-aid solution to something that needs a permanent solution. We don’t want to pass this kind of relationship to food to our children. We don’t them to live their whole lives restricting, which actually brings about more craving. Instead, we want them to practice intuitive eating and learn to be competent eaters as they grow up.
But how do you raise your kids to become competent eaters and body confident? No need to Google the answer because I have the best suggestion for you.
Intuitive Eating and Body Image… FOR KIDS!
My friend and colleague, Dr. Jillian Murphy, ND, creator of The Food Freedom/Body Love Method for women, is sharing with us her 5-part podcast series on Intuitive Eating and Body Image FOR KIDS!
Recently, I interviewed Dr. Jillian on our podcast, The Going Beyond The Food Show. We covered the basics of integration of intuitive eating in a family setting. I’d suggest listening to this interview first then moving on to the specialized series below.
In this podcast series, Jill will acquaint you with the concept of Intuitive Eating for kids. She’ll introduce the Ellyn Satter Feeding Competency Model and address common misconceptions, objections, and mistakes made when implementing this model.
Here’s an overview of the podcast episodes:
- EPISODE 1: Competent Eaters. The skills and structure you need to raise competent eaters. We’ll discuss Ellyn Satter’s Division of Responsibility, why we want to raise competent (not healthy!) eaters, and the research on long term outcomes with regards to food management, weight, and health. This is the foundational theory you’ll need to move forward.
- EPISODE 2: Obstacles, Resistance & Nutrition: What about picky eaters? Compulsive eaters? WHAT ABOUT HEALTH?! We’ll trouble shoot common parental worries and discuss why HOW you feed your children is ultimately more important than WHAT you feed them.
- EPISODE 3: Understand Appetite, Weight, and How to Help your Child Without Harming. This is a BIG one. The majority of methods for helping children “manage their weight” actually backfire – resulting in children with more food issues, body image issues, and higher weights. So what to do? How can we help our children without interfering with their normal physiological processes?
- EPISODE 4: Body Talk. Learn how to talk to your children about their bodies, other bodies, and foster a sense of body confidence in your children – even while living in a thin-is-best, diet culture!
- EPISODE 5: Permission & Discipline. The key concepts you need to master in order to feed your healthy family and raise body confident, competent eaters. Here we take the theory and turn it into practical strategies you can get started with today!
Teach your Kids NOW!
Dr. Jillian Murphy is one of the Naturopathic doctors I know who shares my passion in teaching women to have a healthy relationship with food. Using a combination of research and clinical experience, she was able to discuss how parents can help their kids. Particularly, to develop intuitive eating and a positive self-body image, which they will carry until they grow up.
I highly recommend that you listen to Intuitive Eating and Body Image FOR KIDS! So, start NOW and teach your kids to become competent eaters with this 5-part podcast series.
Welcome!
I’m Stephanie Dodier
Non-Diet Nutritionist & 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 coaching revolution!
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