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Beyond the Food Blog
A catalog of evidence-based articles written by Stephanie Dodier Clinical Nutritionist on all topics supporting the non-diet approach to health.
Welcome to
Beyond the Food Blog
A catalog of evidence-based articles written by Stephanie Dodier Clinical Nutritionist on all topics supporting the non-diet approach to health.
Our Most Recent Articles
Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating
Have you ever wondered about self-coaching for intuitive eating and asked, “Can I be successful with intuitive eating on my own?”
After all, intuitive eating is meant to empower you to be the expert of your own body and make you the boss of YOU.
However, just as there are diet coaches, there are also intuitive eating coaches. But do you need them? And what’s self-coaching anyway? If you are your own coach, does that mean you don’t need a coach at all?
These are the questions that I aim to answer in this article. I also hope to help you understand what coaching is, especially in relation to self-coaching. Last but not least, I want to show you what the self-coaching model looks like and how it can help you change your thoughts and your behavior.
But first, let me discuss what intuitive eating is, just to make sure you understand the concept before we move on to self-coaching.
What is Intuitive Eating?
This is the intuitive eating definition I usually give whenever I’m asked about the concept: “A self-care framework that uses your body’s internal cues of hunger, fullness, and satisfaction to guide your eating behavior.”
Eating intuitively teaches you to trust your own ability to meet your own needs. It’s an empowering alternative to dieting. It requires you to be attuned to your body’s cues.
You can learn more about eating intuitively by listening to my intuitive eating podcast episodes.
Now, let’s explore self-coaching.
What is Self-Coaching?
Coaching is identified as the process of supporting a person towards a goal. It’s a form of development that leads people from where they are to where they want to be.
Typically, in a coaching relationship, there’s a coach, who does the coaching, and a coachee, who is the learner or the client.
Self-coaching is when you become your own coach. You are both the coach and the coachee. The idea may sound a little strange to you, but yes, you can coach yourself. You have an innate wisdom that knows what’s best for you and enables you to become the expert of your own life.
Coaching Versus Training: What’s the Difference?
Some people use the terms “coaching” and “training” interchangeably, but actually, they’re two different things. Training is focused on learning and acquiring knowledge. It’s usually formal.
On the other hand, coaching is focused on developing the skill set to apply the knowledge learned. It’s often informal, discussion-based, and experiential.
The History of Self-Coaching
The first use of the term “coach” in connection with an instructor or trainer was in the 1830’s at the Oxford University. The term is slang for a tutor who “carried” a student through an exam. In the 1860’s, the term was used in sports to refer to an athletic trainer or instructor.
With the advent of the human potential movement in the 1960’s, the term came to refer to mentors, especially in executive development in the corporate world. Today, there are coaches in different areas of life–life coach, coach for binge eating, fertility coach, etc.
Self-coaching came to the world’s awareness about 20 years ago. Dr. Joseph Luciani is the leader in the field of self-coaching. He wrote four books on the subject, including The Power of Self-Coaching. This book is a must-read for those who want to understand the science behind coaching and self-coaching.
Coaching Versus Self-Coaching
In a coaching relationship, both the coach and the coachee establish goals centered around what the coachee wants to achieve. The coachee commits to taking action towards improvement. On the other hand, the coach brings guidance, support, tools, resources, framework, and a step-by-step action plan to help the coachee achieve the goals they set together.
On the other hand, self-coaching is tapping into your innate wisdom to make the best decisions certain areas of your life. It’s the same inner wisdom that guides you when you practice intuitive eating.
Intuitive eating is the process of learning to self-coach yourself around food.
So which one is better for you—coaching or self-coaching?
Having a coach is always better. A coach helps you build confidence and maintain momentum. You’ll know where to focus and you’ll never feel lost and overwhelmed because there’s someone guiding you.
Most importantly, a coach will help you see your blind spots, the patterns you aren’t aware of yet, so you’ll know why things haven’t worked out in your own.
But what do scientific researchers say about self-coaching?
Research on Self-Coaching
If you’re torn between self-coaching and coaching, you may want to know what scientific researchers say about the different types of coaching.
Researchers from different universities in Austria and Italy conducted a study on individual, group, and self-coaching. They found individual coaching to be the most effective type of coaching.
On the other hand, research on self-coaching reveals that it is not as effective as the other two types of coaching.
However, this doesn’t mean that self-coaching is useless or that it doesn’t work.
The best thing you can do is start with a coach who will guide your first steps towards your goal and teach you to be independent. A good coach will equip you with everything you need to learn so you can later transition to self-coaching.
How to Do Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating
As I just said earlier, you can either hire a coach or you can do self-coaching. If you choose to strike out on your own with intuitive eating, here are the steps you need to follow. This is self-coaching 101 for intuitive eating. Follow these and you’ll get a good head start:
Step 1: Find out whether intuitive eating is right for you.
Step 2: Determine whether self-coaching works for you.
Step 3: Understand how your brain functions.
Step 4: Be aware of your thoughts.
Step 5: Pick one thought and investigate it.
Step 6: Replace the thought that is not serving you with an empowering one.
Step 7: Coach yourself by reinforcing the new thought.
These steps are discussed in greater detail in the following paragraphs. If you want to focus on a particular step, you can simply click the corresponding link above.
Step 1: Find out whether intuitive eating is right for you.
To help you with that, I have created a starter kit of self-assessment for eating, body image and mindset. Download the free non-diet assessment kit and complete the eating assessment. These are actually the same assessment I use with my private clients!
So go ahead and take the test.
Step 2: Determine whether self-coaching works for you.
In the free starter kit of Non-Diet Assessments there is a second evaluation for your mindset. Take it to determine your current mindset state and if self-coaching can be of support to you.
Step 3: Understand how your brain functions.
The self-coaching model is based on the CBT framework. CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) is a type of psychotherapy that aims to change negative patterns of thinking and behavior. This framework gives us a window into how the brain works.
Here’s a graphic that shows the self-coaching model:
At the very top, you’ll see circumstance. This is an event that acts as a trigger, something that happens in your life that causes you to have thoughts and emotions that influence your behavior.
The image that you see goes through your brain and into a filter called perspective. Your perspective towards body image is shaped by your beliefs, assumptions, and past experiences.
After your brain goes through this filter, it creates a thought. Then, these thoughts create emotions. Your emotions influence your actions. Finally, your actions create a result.
When you understand how the brain works, you can use this to your advantage and influence the whole process to get the results you want. This is why understanding how your brain works is crucial in self-coaching.
Step 4: Be aware of your thoughts.
Kara Loewentheil, my mentor and the author of Unfuck Your Brain, once said, “Awareness precedes change.” So if you want to change your thoughts, you must first be aware of them.
Here’s an exercise that will help you become aware of the thoughts that influence your actions:
Grab a pen and a piece of paper. Write down your thoughts that you’re currently having around eating and/or body image.
Now, this is important: Write these thoughts down without judging them. Be in the “observer mode.” Just dump these thoughts onto a piece of paper as they come.
Step 5: Pick one thought and investigate it.
After writing down your thoughts, look for the one that comes up frequently (perhaps a recurring theme) or the one that’s most painful.
Take that thought and put it through the self-coaching model. What were the circumstances that trigger this thought? What emotions come up when this thought enters your mind? How does this thought influence your actions? What results do these actions create?
Investigating your thoughts will help you fully see the impact of your thoughts in your life. Some people skip this part, which is why they fail at self-coaching. They jump from being aware of a negative thought to changing the thought outright.
This step is essential. DO NOT skip it.
Step 6: Replace the thought that is not serving you with an empowering one.
Now that you’ve investigated the thought that has been responsible for the results that you don’t want, it’s time to replace that thought with one that empowers you.
In the previous step, you saw how your old thought led you to the results that you didn’t like by putting it through the self-coaching model. This time, you will create a new, empowering thought by applying the same model you used to investigate the old thought.
In a nutshell, this is how you do it: Create an empowering thought that generates the emotion that drives the actions needed to produce the results you want.
Step 7: Coach yourself by reinforcing the new thought.
You now know how you need to think and what you want to think. It’s your job to go and repeat that thought many times every single day. You can get creative by making a poster that reminds you of that new thought. Or you can scribble the thought on a Post-It and stick it where you’re likely to see it often.
Now, reinforcing a new thought in order to change results isn’t as easy as it sounds. It will require patience and practice. You also need to keep the motivation and momentum going, especially when you must take action. Setbacks will be inevitable, but look at them as learning opportunities rather than failures.
In the end, the benefits you reap will be well worth your patience and effort. So, keep at it!
Need support to learn self-coaching?
If you’re looking for an program to help you learn self-coaching we offer two different option: Beyond Mindset is short term program specifically focussed on teaching self-coaching.
Undiet Your Life Program is our signature intuitive eating coaching program that teaches you self-coaching techniques, along with intuitive eating and body neutrality. It also aims to equip you for self-coaching for your entire life.
How to Do Self-Coaching for Intuitive Eating
Step 1: Find out whether intuitive eating is right for you.
Step 2: Determine whether self-coaching works for you.
Step 3: Understand how your brain functions.
Step 4: Be aware of your thoughts.
Step 5: Pick one thought and investigate it.
Step 6: Replace the thought that is not serving you with an empowering one.
Step 7: Coach yourself by reinforcing the new thought.
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.
Intuitive Eating Benefits FAQ
Does intuitive eating improve cholesterol levels?
Intuitive eaters have been found to have lower triglyceride levels, higher levels of high density lipoproteins (HDL aka ‘good’ cholesterol), and lower cardiovascular risk.
Does intuitive eating lower stress level?
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.
Will I have increased energy with intuitive eating?
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.
Does intuitive eating improve mental health?
A study published on the Cambridge University Press website reveals that there is a substantial and consistent relationship between intuitive eating and improved mental health.
Does intuitive eating lower eating disorder occurrence?
Those who suffer from eating disorders either restrict food or overindulge. Intuitive eating resets and balances your eating habits.
Does intuitive eating improve body awareness?
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.
Does intuitive eating improve self-esteem?
Intuitive eating results in positive body image, better body satisfaction, and improved self-esteem.
Does intuitive eating increase level of happiness?
Intuitive eating can benefit your mental and physical health. When you become both physically and mentally healthier, your quality of life improves. This translates to an increased level of happiness and contentment.
What is Body Neutrality?
What is Body Neutrality and how is body neutrality going to help me ? That one of the most frequent question from client inquiring to work with us. before I answer this let’s consider the following statistics…
In Glamour Magazine study found that 97% of women are “cruel to their bodies” every day.
Research released by Dove, for their ‘Self-Esteem Project’, found that 96% of women in the UK reported feeling anxious about the way they look, compared with 86% in China, 72% in Brazil and 61% in the US. Only 4% of the women in all the countries surveyed would consider themselves ‘beautiful’, and by the time girls reach 17, 78% will be ‘unhappy with their bodies’.
In fact, current media ideals are achievable by less than 5% of the population – and that’s only if we’re thinking about weight and size. When we add shape, face, muscle tone etc into the messed-up mix, it’s probably going to be around 1%. 1 percent
Are you a statistic?
I was for years until I discover Body Neutrality.
That’s a question I receive very frequently… we are somewhat used to term body positivity but body neutrality not so much.
What is body neutrality?
What is body neutrality?
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 reliving 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.
Body Neutrality recognizes that not everyone is going to love every part of themselves all the time because that’s an unrealistic expectation to say the least.
The reality is that some days you’re going to look in the mirror like ‘Dam it, yeah, thank you legs for letting me travel, thank you arms for allowing me to type this inspirational post and thank you belly for creating life!
And then there’ll be those days where you stand in front of the very same mirror, focusing on that cellulite you hate or the wrinkle that suddenly seems so obvious.
Body neutrality versus body positivity
Embracing Body Neutrality over Body Positivity allows you to experience negative feelings about yourself, but without the pressure that comes with having to be positive all the time.
In other words, it’s a middle ground between positivity and negativity (shaming) – that’s neutrality.
Body Neutrality is the safe bridge between body shaming and body positivity. It’s about being grateful for your body and everything that it does for you because it does a lot. You are alive right now right!
So Body Neutrality is centric to the process of accepting your body.
Body neutrality & intuitive Eating
For many of us we’ve have years of suffering thru body shaming and along the way we’ve picked up coping behaviours to neutralize the pain the pain associated with body image struggles.
Being the victim of body shaming, most of it from our own mind, is difficult to say the list so now wonder that many of us have become along the way emotional eater or binge eater.
Combine the suffering that comes along with body shaming with the notion that food is the gateway to “loving our life and body” food has become this enemy that we need to control in order to end the suffering.
Healing our relationship to food is necessary in order to make peace with our body. Intuitive eating is the way in which you can achieve both: body neutrality and peace with food.
Intuitive eating teaches to respect your body.
Intuitive eating teaches to respect your innate body messages such as hunger and fullness so you can have a healthy and respectful relationship with your body.
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 ).
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 ).
Exercise & Feel the difference
Exercise & Feel the difference.
Why we exercise guides how we exercise.
How we exercise determines and guides what we feel when we exercise.⠀⠀
Exercise should bring pleasure, not pain.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If you are a listener of the Going Beyond The Food Podcast ( we have 100’s of episodes ready for your listening pleasure) you know I have started a new series recently title: She’s Beyond The Food where I share my personal journey going beyond the food. Episode 183 I shared my life journey with exercise which has been for most of my life one of “burning calories” not one of pleasure.⠀
Your journey with exercise⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
For many of us who have had life long journey of dieting, exercise is something we use to lose weight. Over time that relationship became really painful and in some cases traumatic. I call it “exercise trauma”. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My relationship to exercise was a source of trauma until I came to Intuitive Eating. Just like an abusive relationship, exercise caused me a lot of pain (in all 4 bodies).
Today’s my form of exercise is walking. Walking in my own backyard or hiking in nature’s setting.
For years I thought that walking wasn’t enough. That walking wasn’t a form of exercise that was strong enough to bring me health.
I needed to sweat and have pain for exercise to be effective. If that you right now I totally get it! I mean that’s what we’re told everywhere right?!?
I just want to share with you that for me that way of thinking got me to one place: “on and off the wagon” of exercise. Meaning I would exercise hardcore for 6 months maybe 1 year and the “fall off the wagon” for 3 years.
Move and Feel the difference⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Intuitive Eating taught me that my intention was key to healing my relationship to exercise. I call “exercise” movement today. In part because of the trauma associated with the word exercise.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Intuitive eating recognizes the need for the movement to chase health and ask you to focus on how it makes you feel instead of the calories burned so that you can desire to move because of how it makes you feel.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Intuitive Eating inspires you to focus on the joy you find in moving. Find a form of movement that you desire to do without having to resort to willpower. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Intuitive Eating teaches us to forget militant exercise and just get moving and feel the difference.
Intuitive Eating is more than just food. It’s a self-care eating framework so yes movement is part of self-care but we seek to find joy in movement instead of calorie burning.
I choose to talk about “movement” instead of “exercise” in all of my programs since many of us have been traumatized by exercise. So simply using a new word make a big difference.
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 ).
Body Neutrality
Body Neutrality empowers you to embrace yourself as you are, including the parts you don’t like about yourself.
The focus of body neutrality focus is to avoid self-hate whilst simultaneously alleviating 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.
Body neutrality recognizes that not everyone is going to love every part of themselves all the time. The reality is that some days you’re going to look in the mirror like ‘yess, thank you legs for taking me places, thank you arms for allowing me to reach for the biscuit tin, and thank you stomach for keeping my organs where they should be’, but then there’ll be those days where you stand in front of the very same mirror, focusing on that cellulite you hate, or the belly rolls that suddenly seem so obvious
Body Respect
My physical body is a vehicle for me to experience my life.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The moment I realize that I had my self-worth all tangled up with the appearance of my body is the day that my new life began.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The notion of body respect came into my life. Respecting my body was essential for me to feel better about myself. To increase my self-worth.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Body Neutrality is the safe bridge between body shaming and body positivity. It’s about being grateful for your body and everything that it does for you because it does a lot. You are alive right??.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My body neutrality journey
To say that accepting my body was easy is a wild understatement…
The act of accepting my body required of me to be courageous. To be vulnerable and lots of tears.
Choosing to make peace with my body was scary. Scary as shit to be honest!
Frightening to be a health professional in a larger body. In a fat body. In an “overweight body” as my colleagues like to categorize my body.
Nerve-racking to stand up in front of my audience and say that I no longer recommended to chase weight loss. That the most efficient path to health was thru acceptance.
Body neutrality and intuitive eating
Going Beyond The Food has taught me that courage is not the absence of fear rather the ability to act in the presence of fear. That’s what accepting your body requires in a society controlled by diet culture and the concept of thinness=happiness & health.
Intuitive eating teaches to respect your body. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Intuitive eating switches our perspective from wanting to control our body to need to respect our body. We can’t respect what we hate right?!?
No matter, where you are now sister on your path of body acceptance, know that I feel you.
I hear you. I see you. I know how you feel and the fear of what could happen…. You aren’t alone.
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Be reminded of one universal law: Love always win in the end. Not hate, shame or fear.💞
“Show up, be seen, answer the call to courage… ’cause you’re worth it. You’re worth being brave.”
Brene Brown
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 ).
Chasing Health
Chasing health instead of weight loss is very empowering yet confusing,
What if you took care of the body you have now, instead of the one you wished you had?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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That was my coach’s question… and she added: What would happen if your weight wasn’t the problem?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I want you to ask yourself this question. Reflect. Go deep.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I know for me it changed a lot personally and professionally. It actually led me to close my nutrition clinic in Toronto.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“…. but I need to lose weight to be healthy”
To be healthy your body weight must be in the “normal” BMI range. That was my core belief since I can remember and this core belief was validated through my training in nutrition. That’s the core of Diet Culture.⠀⠀
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Diet Culture is is a system of beliefs that worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue.
The facts are you can pursue health at any size. We all have the natural person around us that although they maintain their “small body weight” all their life they still are sick today. If health was caused by normal BMI weight then these people would be healthy… right?
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So I strived hard, hustled and spent a whole lot of time figuring out how to be healthy.
As my level of health knowledge evolved the purpose of my hustle change to: “Be healthy and you’ll release the weight” because a healthy body doesn’t hold on to weight. That’s the core of Wellness Diet.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Wellness Diet is the sneaky, modern guise of diet culture that’s supposedly about “wellness” but is actually about performing a rarefied, perfectionistic, discriminatory idea of what health is supposed to look like.
That just another achieve false assumption. Being healthy doesn’t mean you’ll release the weight. That’s just another form of dieting beliefs. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The truth is health is accessible at any weight. There is another body work dedicated to the research on this field: Health At Every Size.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Chasing Health with intuitive eating
Intuitive Eating teaches that health is more than the number of pounds on the scale. Weight is at best 10% of the contributing factors to health status. Quality and quantity of sleep, stress, emotional stability, quality of thoughts, inflammation level, exposure to toxicity, are just some of the other 90% of the factors that make up our health.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Intuitive Eating is shifting the focus from food and weight loss to honouring your health. By releasing obsession you are creating mental and emotional space to focus on 90% of the factors that contribute to your health.⠀⠀
Intuitive Eating invites you to honour your health. To chase health in your day to day interaction with your body.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Intuitive Eating teaches you to focus on behaviours that will bring you health including relationships with food, movement, stress, sleep, friends/family, etc. Not just food.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I’m healthier today than when I was 50 lbs lighter. I’m healthier today than when I consumed 20+ supplements a day. I’m healthier today than when I was Keto, Paleo or Fasting.
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 ).
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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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