Eating Disorder
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is a philosophy of eating that makes you the expert of your body and its hunger signals. Essentially, it’s the opposite of a traditional diet. It doesn’t impose guidelines about what to avoid and what or when to eat. Instead, it teaches that you are the best person — the only person — to make those choices.
Issues WCC works with:
- Binge eating
- Compulsive overeating
- Emotional eating
- Body image concerns
- Anorexia Nervosa
- Bulimia Nervosa
- Avoidant/Restrictive food intake disorder
- Children and adolescents with eating disorders
- Body dysmorphia
- Challenges with body acceptance
The intuitive eating approach is based on 10 core principles. These are:
In fact, long-term your weight going down then back up may cause you more physical and mental harm than the short-term benefits you received. Reject the notion that you have no willpower or that you “failed” when you couldn’t stick to a diet or later regained the weight. The diet actually failed YOU.
If you have ever ignored your hunger, you will probably find that your cravings or likelihood of bingeing increase. When you ignore what your body is telling you, your body will respond in an effort to protect you, by increasing hunger.
Plus, nobody deserves to experience deprivation regardless of the size or shape of their body. You deserve to be nourished and taken care of.
Letting go of the guilt and the mentality of “good” or “bad” foods will help heal your relationship with food. When you first allow yourself to eat your forbidden foods, you may be scared you’ll overeat. While this may happen initially, this is a necessary part of the process that is only temporary. At a certain point, that food will lose its appeal and power over you, and those intense cravings will fade.
The food police can also be external voices that make you feel like you “should” or “shouldn’t eat a certain way. For example, a friend or loved one commenting on your food choices. A co-worker trying to convince you to join them in their new diet endeavor. Or the magazine headlines promising a new diet fix.
Look for the signs that you are satisfied with your meal. Does the food still taste good? How do you physically feel? Using a hunger and fullness scale can help you to better identify these feelings. Eating is so much more pleasurable when you learn how to fully enjoy your food but also are able to stop before you become overly full or uncomfortable.
But avoiding those foods in an attempt to feel guilt will likely backfire as your meals will be missing pleasure, thus you won’t feel fully satisfied even if you are full.
The first step is acknowledging this without any guilt or shame. The second step is then learning healthier coping strategies to replace these habits so that you no longer use food as a crutch.
Instead, choose the type of movement that feels good for you. Don’t choose an exercise solely for its calorie-burning effects, but one that you look forward to doing. Consistent exercise, no matter what it is, is what brings you the biggest mental and physical health benefits.
We frequently hear from clients who have embraced intuitive eating that after they go through a period of indulging, their body actually begins to crave healthier foods. In the past they may have felt they needed to restrict or control their food intake after indulgences and that would just feed into the eat-repent-repeat cycle.
Now they realize if they listen to their bodies they will more gently realign with healthier choices. But it may take time for you to rebuild trust in yourself and your body that was destroyed by dieting.
What is Healthy At Every Size (HAES)?
The basic premise of health at every size, as written in Linda Bacon’s Book, Health at Every Size: The surprising truth about your weight, is that “Health at Every Size” (HAES) acknowledges that well-being and healthy habits are more important than any number on the scale.
- Accept your size. Love and appreciate the body you have. Self-acceptance empowers you to move on and make positive changes.
- Trust yourself. We all have internal systems designed to keep us healthy — and at a healthy weight. Support your body in naturally finding its appropriate weight by honoring its signals of hunger, fullness, and appetite.
- Adopt healthy lifestyle habits. Develop and nurture connections with others and look for purpose and meaning in your life. Fulfilling your social, emotional, and spiritual needs restores food to its rightful place as a source of nourishment and pleasure.
- Find the joy in moving your body and becoming more physically vital in your everyday life.
- Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and seek out pleasurable and satisfying foods.
- Tailor your tastes so that you enjoy more nutritious foods, staying mindful that there is plenty of room for less nutritious choices in the context of an overall healthy diet and lifestyle.
- Embrace size diversity. Humans come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Open to the beauty found across the spectrum and support others in recognizing their unique attractiveness.
What is Weight Stigma?
Weight stigma, also known as weight bias or weight-based discrimination, is discrimination or stereotyping based on a person’s weight. Weight stigma can increase body dissatisfaction, a leading risk factor in the development of eating disorders. The best-known environmental contributor to the development of eating disorders is the sociocultural idealization of thinness.
It is never acceptable to discriminate against someone based on their size, but shaming, blaming, and “concern trolling” happen everywhere – at work, school, in the home, and even at the doctor’s office. In fact, weight discrimination occurs more frequently than gender or age discrimination.
Despite its unfortunate prevalence, weight stigma is dangerous and can increase the risk for adverse psychological and behavioral issues, including depression, poor body image and binge eating.