When we’ve spent years ignoring our bodies, intuitive eating doesn’t come quite so intuitively… But there’s a way to get past this.
The mouse clicked in a steady rhythm as I flicked through a presentation I’d given to a group of nurses years earlier. It wasn’t very pretty and the images definitely needed updating, but the material itself was still solid, actionable advice. Not too shabby, I thought to myself.
But then something caught my eye. My index finger paused its steady beat and hovered over the mouse. I peered closer, dropped my head and sighed quietly to myself.
I’d written “Listen to your body” on the slide.
What a rookie mistake.
“Listen to your body” is bandied about without any real understanding of what it means and how someone can apply it to their everyday life.
Internet gurus will tell you that you know when you’re hungry, you know when you’re full, you know what kinds of foods make your body feel its best. It’s like the self-actualisation of intuitive eating…
And they’re not wrong exactly. But the thing is, it’s absolutely useless advice for someone who has been dieting. And, unfortunately, that’s most people.
Restrictive diets have a multitude of effects on the body, not the least of which is shutting down hunger and fullness cues. (I’m always banging on about how dieting is bad for you – you can read about it here).
Basically, the body is designed to protect against weight loss. Back in caveman times, weight loss wasn’t a sign that everything was going well for you. Quite the opposite in fact! So the body kicks into gear, slowing down metabolism and reserving energy wherever it can.
At first, you feel really hungry. Because your body is trying to load up on any food it can get, to get you through this famine. But if the restriction continues, your body will actually switch to shut down your hunger. There’s no point making you hungry when there’s no food to eat (or so the body thinks) as it’s a waste of precious energy.
For my clients who have dieted fairly regularly for years, they’ll often tell me conflicting things. “I don’t really get hungry anymore” but also “If I start, I can’t stop”. This is the end result of their hormones going absolutely crazy trying to conserve energy when they’re restricting, and trying to get as many calories in as possible when they are available.
Basically, the body has lost all trust that they’re actually feed it consistently. So it grabs on to whatever it can, whenever it can, and clings on to it for dear life, in order to make it through the next period of restriction. It’s common for someone who is often dieting to view these strange variations in hunger as a sign that their body can’t be trusted, and they can become masters at ignoring what their body is desperately trying to tell them: feed me consistently.
Because this scenario is so incredibly common, it’s not at all helpful to tell a dieter to “Listen to your body”. Instead, we should be advising our reformed dieters to “Learn your body”.
They’ll make mistakes. And it’s very common that they’ll go a bit crazy at first – eating everything in sight! But as their body learns to trust them to feed it consistently, and they learn what makes their body feel good, things settle down. Those hormones stabilise again and they can relax into state where they actually can listen to their body.
Because they’ve put the work in to learn it first.
After staring at the words on my computer screen for a minute, I double-clicked into the slide. My fingers gently deleted the word “listen” and typed “learn” instead. I smiled to myself. The images still needed updating, but now the content was solid again. Not too shabby.
If you want all the steps to get your clients to ditch dieting forever laid out for you on a silver platter, register for my upcoming Disordered Eating Masterclass: the roadmap from yoyo dieting to intuitive eating (and where weight loss fits in)
In this free online training, I’ll walk you through:
- The 5-step system I personally use to move my clients from a dieting mindset to intuitive eating
- How sustainable weight loss can fit in with intuitive eating principles
- And as a special bonus, in the first 5 minutes I’ll reveal my single best strategy to gain trust with clients and get them to open up to you. It’s so simple it’s either stupid or brilliant – you be the judge!
Plus, I’ll do a LIVE Q&A afterwards, where you can ask all of your questions. This Masterclass is for you if:
- If you’re frustrated with clients who fall back into their old dieting habits that backfire in the long-run
- If you’re nervous that you’re not picking up disordered eating red flags in your niche area
- Or if you’re simply an overachiever who thinks it can never hurt to get a new perspective and do more learning!
I’m running multiple so you can pick your date and time, and there will be a recording available but only if you register!
Together we can dismantle the diet industry. I’ll see you on the Masterclass.