Do you struggle in your relationship with food, exercise, or your body?
I get it - I’ve been there too! It can be hard to know what the best course of action is when we’re feeling like our body or our eating is out of control - should we do another diet? Buckle down and get better “discipline” and “control” over our eating? Say f*** it and just resign ourselves to being at war with our body forever?
I want to present you with different idea for your consideration: intuitive eating.
When we go through trauma, it affects us in so many different areas of our life - and our relationship with food, movement, and our body is no different. We can have attachment trauma, trauma from our family of origin, trauma from living in a fatphobic society, trauma from dieting, etc. that can be playing into how we view food, exercise, and our bodies. In order to heal, we have to understand the impact that our past has had on our present - and get clear on what it is that we want for our relationship with food, movement, and our body.
Re-learning how to eat intuitively is one aspect of healing our relationship with food and our bodies, and it’s deceptively simple: you just EAT!
However, white it is simple, it’s not easy.
Our relationship with food (and subsequently, potential for trauma around food) begins as infants. When we are hungry, we cry - and hopefully a loving caregiver is there to meet our need for food.
But what if they aren’t?
What if our caregivers let us “cry it out” instead of showing up to meet our need for food (leaving us hungry and distrusting of getting our needs met)? What if our caregivers put us on a strict feeding schedule based on what worked best for them (but meant we may eat when we’re not hungry or not eat when we are)? Even well intentioned parents can impact their child’s relationship with food without even knowing it!
As we continue to grow up, we may be exposed to different messages around food, movement, and our bodies - some from diet culture and society at large, some from our peers, and some from authority figures like parents, caregivers, teachers, etc. - which can all impact our relationship with these things, making it harder for us to hear our body’s needs. We may also have experienced bullying, abuse, neglect, or other forms of trauma around food, movement, or our body.
Intuitive eating is a way we can get back in touch with our body’s needs and begin to build trust in our body again. When left to it’s own devices, our body is like a thermostat - it’s incredibly good at regulating itself and maintaining homeostasis (aka equilibrium, or balance). In many different ways, our society disconnects us from our body and it’s internal wisdom by external forces (like diet culture, caregivers, other people, etc.) telling us what to do and when to do it. For example, have you ever been told to eat a food “because it’s good for you” despite being entirely repelled by the idea of eating it (like for example, trying to choke down a chicken breast to get extra protein and the thought of it makes you queasy)? What if, instead of the problem being you, it was actually that your body was telling you it didn’t need or want that food in that moment? Intuitive eating can help us learn to reconnect to our body’s signals and understand our body’s needs better.
When we’re doing trauma work in other areas of our life (like working on our triggers, for example), we’re doing the same thing - we’re learning how to hear and meet our own emotional needs. I see intuitive eating as a natural extension of this to our physical need for food.
If you think you may be ready to work on your relationship with food, movement, and your body and learn about the intersection of those relationships with trauma, click the button below to learn more and apply for a consultation call to determine if it could be a fit for us to work together!
Common Fears & Misconceptions About Intuitive Eating
“If I let myself eat whatever I want, I’ll eat nothing but pizza and doughnuts!”
When we grow up in a dysfunctional family system, one of the common threads many people experience is the implication that they cannot trust their own instincts. Children are told directly or indirectly that if left to their own devices, they’d be:
Lazy
A bad person
Never exercise or move their body
Eat “junk food” all day
Not want to work, clean, take care of themselves, or do anything productive
Children in these environments are also often shamed for who they are and/or what they want, so they learn not to trust their instincts - which means they may have a hard time resting, taking time to “play” or relax, taking days off from exercising, not doing their chores “first”, allowing themselves to eat what they’re craving, or trusting themselves to do what they want.
When we dig into these beliefs, clients often find that they (as their adult selves) don’t actually agree with them - for example, does not doing your laundry when you’re exhausted mean you’re a bad person? Or that you’re not worthy of love? Of course not! But these are examples of some of the messages we internalize as children, and it’s up to us as adults to decide if we agree with those messages and if they’re in line with our values and who we authentically are.
Since these messages can show up in every area of our life, it’s no wonder that this is a common concern (and misconception) when we learn about intuitive eating. Of course we think if left to our own devices, we’ll be up to no good! However, research shows that intuitive eaters actually eat a more varied diet (and more fruits and vegetables) than individuals who restrict or diet. It may not happen immediately, as it takes us time to heal from the impacts of food and diet related trauma - but with the right support, we can get there.
If you’re like me and always want to see the supporting evidence, you can find a full list of studies done about intuitive eating here.
“If I eat whatever I want, I’ll just gain weight!”
When eating intuitively, some individuals gain weight, some lose weight, and some stay the same. Where you will end up depends on where your current weight is in relation to the weight where your body feels safe (aka your set point weight, homeostasis, or where your body will maintain itself without any effort on your part). I like to think about this as allowing our body to be it’s authentic self - and if we’re trying to control it, or change it, we’re denying that authenticity. This is similar to how in other areas of trauma work, our goal is to learn how to show up authentically instead of letting our trauma responses guide our choices or how we show up. The key here though is we can’t decide where we want our body to be - we have to let it do what it needs to do. If we’ve dieted or restricted for many years, that means our brain and body have experienced a lot of food insecurity - which means our body may want a bit more insurance (aka fat) in the event that we run into food insecurity again in the future (remember, our body doesn’t know we’re restricting on purpose, it thinks we just don’t have access to food). Just like how in other areas of trauma work we are trying to re-establish a sense of emotional security for ourselves, here we are trying to re-establish safety around food access for our body.
"Healing my relationship with food through intuitive eating is really just about the food."
Oftentimes, individuals who begin eating intuitively mistakenly think that healing their relationship with food is all about the food. However, the real issue we tend to run into when eating intuitively is not learning how to do it (though that can also feel hard) - it’s usually our relationship with our body that needs the most work.
As we’re beginning to do our intuitive eating work, it's important to look at our own internalized fatphobia and how that plays a role in how we feel about our and others bodies. One of the ways that diet culture can strip away our ability to listen to our body’s needs is by teaching us that fat is bad. As a result, we may learn to control or restrict our food intake as a way to control our body size - which means that when we learn to eat intuitively, those feelings about needing to change or control our body size are still going to be there. In order to be successful with intuitive eating, we also need to confront our own feelings and fears around what it means to be in a bigger body - whether it’s our own, or someone else’s. Learning about how to have a weight neutral approach to health can be a helpful way to challenge the narrative that it’s inherently unhealthy to exist in a bigger body. Instead of trying to control our body size, we can instead focus our energy on adding more health promoting behaviors into our lives - things like adding in more fruits and vegetables, moving our body in ways we enjoy, drinking water, getting enough sleep, working to manage our stress levels, etc.
“Can intuitive eating help me lose weight?”
The point of intuitive eating is to learn to trust your body rather than to control it - so intentional weight loss is not part of the intuitive eating framework. It’s understandable and valid if we want to lose weight - how could we not desire to when the society we live in praises thinness and treats people in larger bodies differently?
However, if we find ourselves wanting to use intuitive eating to lose weight, it might be helpful for us to dig into why we want to lose weight - is it because of societal pressure? Is it because of wanting to be healthier (and if so, are there other routes that we can take to achieve that outcome that don’t involve intentional weight loss, like adding in additional health promoting behaviors)? Is it because we dislike our body as it is now? Oftentimes eating for intentional weight loss can be a slippery slope where we end up sacrificing our mental health in the name of our physical health - and if we slip back into disordered eating/eating disorder habits, our physical health can suffer too! Intuitive eating is an approach that can help us learn to balance our physical with our mental health. Curious to know more? You can learn more about Intuitive Eating here.