Today is the final installment of our Intuitive Eating series. Principle 10 is to Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition. Today, we’re talking about Intuitive Eating In Real Life: Principle 10: Gentle Nutrition.
In case you missed it:
- What is Intuitive Eating?
- Intuitive Eating Principle 1: Reject the Diet Mentality
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 1
- Intuitive Eating Principle 2: Honor Your Hunger
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 2
- Intuitive Eating Principle 3: Make Peace with Food
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 3
- Intuitive Eating Principle 4: Challenge the Food Police
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 4
- Intuitive Eating Principle 5: Feel Your Fullness
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 5
- Intuitive Eating Principle 6: Discover the Satisfaction Factor
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 6
- Intuitive Eating Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions without Using Food
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 7
- Intuitive Eating Principle 8: Respect Your Body
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 8
- Intuitive Eating Principle 9: Exercise – Feel the Difference
- Intuitive Eating in Real Life: Principle 9
- Intuitive Eating Principle 10: Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition
Intuitive Eating In Real Life: Principle 10: Gentle Nutrition
The snapshot of Principle 10 is: “Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel good. Remember that you don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or become unhealthy, from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters. Progress, not perfection, is what counts.”
While Intuitive Eating is NOT a 10-step process and you can go in any order with the principles, it is recommended you save Principle 10 for last. This is because if you are still stuck in diet mentality or haven’t truly made peace with food, you may quite easily take the information in P10 around nutrition and turn it into a set of dieting rules. That is not the goal! Gentle nutrition is NOT rigid, restrictive, or complicated.
There is absolutely a way to incorporate health and nutrition into your non-diet, Intuitive Eating approach to eating and exercise. It’s a mindset shift. Rather than not eating a food you love because you’ve deemed it “bad,” it’s certainly okay to make a food decision based on health, such as choosing a higher-fiber bread to help with blood sugar control. We can run into issues, though, if we use “health” as an excuse to continue dieting. Taken to the extreme, healthy eating can turn into Orthorexia.
What is the definition of “healthy eating”? This differs depending on who you are talking to or what your source is. But overall, there is no one definition for health, healthy, or healthy eating. The authors of Intuitive Eating describe healthy eating as “having a healthy balance of foods AND having a healthy relationship with food.” Too often, most people, when defining or talking about “health” forget about the relationship to food piece. But, as we know, that is a KEY piece to an overall balanced, non-rigid and non-restrictive way of eating and living.
Studies have shown that Americans worry the most about their eating and enjoyed eating the least, compared to other countries and populations. This is likely due to diet culture and the media portraying health and beauty as one specific body type and size.
It’s important to remember that less nutrient-dense foods, referred to as “play foods” in the Intuitive Eating book, are allowed and even encouraged in a balanced way of eating because they bring us joy! There is no joy in restricting our favorite foods and we know that restriction is what leads us to cravings, which can lead to overeating or bingeing.
That’s all for now! Thank you for following along on this Intuitive Eating blog series! Join the email list to be notified about my upcoming Intuitive Eating groups (run quarterly).
REMINDER
This blog and Instagram series I am doing is not meant to be a replacement for reading the Intuitive Eating book or working through the Intuitive Eating Workbook. Rather it’s to provide an overview of the Intuitive Eating concept and principles to bring more awareness to the fact that there is an alternative to dieting and restricting.
As always, if you need additional guidance and support via individual nutrition coaching, please reach out through my private practice website JillMerkelRD.com or join the waitlist for future Intuitive Eating Virtual Small Groups!
