Is Intuitive Eating Just Another Diet?

I have sensed lately there is a divide in how to view food. Food is seen as either powerful medicine, where specific foods are recommended to consume, and foods are made to be "good" or "bad" OR food is entirely neutral and there is a striving to strip food of any label whatsoever to experience more peace around eating and that any food could be healthy and beneficial to consume.

I have found that both strategies can be beneficial depending upon what your relationship with food has been so far.

For example, if you have been labeling food as good or bad for years and years and are now so confused as to what to eat, it may be beneficial for a period of time to release all labels and just allow yourself to eat. This can cultivate more calm and peace around the experience of eating and meal times where you can then begin to explore what nourishment supports your body in feeling satiated, vibrant, mentally clear, and energetic.

If you have been on a journey of cultivating more peace around food for a while and are experiencing aches, pains, digestive issues, and other symptoms in your body, it might then be supportive to begin viewing food as medicine and exploring what foods will support your body with decreasing the symptoms you're experiencing.

It all depends upon the context of where you're at in your life and what is occurring within your body. Food can be whatever we want it to be and there is no "wrong" relationship to have with food. Sometimes it is going to support you in healing by eating specific foods and once your symptoms begin to subside, you will be entering into a new phase with food of exploring what foods will be supportive in the new body you're in at that time.

This is how I have defined Intuitive Eating is that it is being guided by what is going to support you and your body in feeling the way you desire to feel in your system right here and right now and that is going to change moment to moment. Intuitive Eating for many individuals can get really confusing in that it becomes another diet to follow of always listening to what the body needs and wants. Honestly, sometimes we might be completely clueless and have a hard time hearing what our body needs.

To discover what Intuitive Eating is for your unique system, I have seen that an individual can benefit from releasing all labels on food for a period of time. So if food was neutral and there was no good or bad food anymore, then you get to explore what resonates with your body and what does not. Then, if you discover that a particular food leaves you feeling bloated, lethargic, mentally foggy, moody, and ungrounded, it's not that you can't ever have that food. You absolutely can.

You get to be guided though by how you want to feel in your body and if those are sensations and emotions you don't want to experience then we can change internal language from you can't have that food to you don't want that food because it doesn't leave you feeling the lightness, ease, mental clarity, vitality, vibrancy you desire to feel living in your unique body. If we continue to eat the foods that increase symptoms in the body, we can invite in a lot of curiosity that this pattern is not "wrong" or "bad" and instead explore what wisdom that pattern of continuing to choose foods that don't digest smoothly has to provide.

As you cultivate more awareness around how different foods make you feel, then when you say no to a food it can be from an empowered informed place that you have discovered that a particular food doesn't work for your system instead of saying no to a food simply because you're being told to say no by some external source. Food is then both medicine and completely neutral. You can eat any food and you also get to choose to eat the foods that feel most supportive for you to thrive.