Want to Reach Your Health Goals Without Dieting? A Dietitian’s Take On Intuitive Eating and Non-Restrictive Approaches

When you think about health, what do you envision?

Do you envision yourself following a strict eating plan, avoiding all the foods that you have been told are “bad” (ie. Junk food) and only eating the foods that are “good” (ie. Healthy)? Does this desire for “eating healthy” make you feel guilty every time you eat one of the foods that you have classified as “bad” food?

You are not alone.

This is a common belief set about healthy eating in diet culture, which can bring about the feelings of guilt or shame. Not only is it unnecessary to follow such over-restrictive eating patterns, it can also be damaging to your health and wellbeing.

Why over-restrictive dieting doesn’t work:

1. Skipping meals and snacks, and not eating when we are hungry, actually make us even more out of tune with our hunger and fullness cues, which can make us more likely to overeat as soon as we let down our guard. As we are only human, with a range of emotions, hunger, and ever changing life circumstances, it is unrealistic to expect ourselves to uphold these restrictive ways of eating. Having our guard up all the time is not only unrealistic but also does not bring happiness or a sense of freedom.
   

2. Cutting out specific foods completely also gives us a false sense of health. We might believe this makes us healthy, but then completely ignore more important aspects of health including getting enough healthful foods and nutrients, staying physical active, and maintaining our social health and wellbeing.

   
   

   Health is a lot more complex and multifaceted than the oversimplified "good food" vs "bad food" approach. Not to mention, indulging in a treat once in a while is not going to have much of an effect (if any) on health. What matters most is what we consume on a regular basis.

   
   

3. Having our main health goal as avoiding certain foods 100% of the time just leads us to feeling unnecessary amounts of guilt when we indulge in a treat. This guilt not only makes us feel worse about ourselves, but also makes us feel like giving up because we messed up so "there's no point in trying anymore." This way of thinking is not sustainable for keeping up with health goals in the long-run.

   
   

4. Even if a food is low in nutrients and high in sugar or saturated fat does not mean it is all bad - we can't forget that food is also about pleasure and social connection, and is not just nutrition all the time. Therefore, while these foods might not provide as many direct physical health benefits, it could still be providing us mental health benefits, which can affect all aspects of our health too.

How Do We Eat Healthy If We Aren't Dieting This Way?

Without having these hard and fast rules for staying away from the "bad" foods, you might wonder how do we still make healthy choices? If we give ourself permission to eat our favourite treats once in a while, how do we stop ourselves from eating them all the time?

Liberation does not mean we have no direction. It just means we are not holding up our guard all the time.

Having direction for your health is important - such as knowing what you want for your health and knowing which decisions align with this. You don't have to throw out all your health goals if you allow yourself a treat once in a while.

Liberation is not about throwing out all concepts of nutritious versus less nutritious food, and just eating whatever we crave all the time. You can focus on the healthy foods, such as whole foods and nutrient-dense foods, for most of your meals and snacks, while still giving yourself permission to indulge in a treat when the time is right.

But how do you do this when you have strong cravings often?

The good news is - we can outsmart our cravings and learn how to reduce them overtime, so that our food choices align more with our health goals. When cutting down on how often you eat a certain food, having a solid plan in place helps to make the process easier and to equip yourself to be able to resist the initial strong cravings.

Intuitive Eating, Mindful Eating, and a Way to Fuse it Together With Healthy Eating:

Concepts such as intuitive eating and mindful eating are really great starting points for getting in tune with your hunger and fullness cues, to have a better sense of food freedom, to reduce the stress and guilt around eating.

Should we be "Rejecting Nutrition Advice?" as Some People Suggest with These Approaches?

Intuitive eating and mindful eating approaches can go hand-in-hand with caring about the health of your body and mind. We don't have to completely reject all our knowledge about nutrition. Nutrition is vital for the health of both your brain and body, which can also ultimately affect your food cravings and your daily health-related choices.

It is ideal to still care about nutrition, but to do it in a way that lets go of worry and guilt around food. We can reject the unhelpful approaches such as the strict diet plans and "lose weight fast" approaches that lead people to be excessively hungry and deprived, more out of tune with their hunger and fullness cues, and increase disordered eating behaviours.

Instead of following strict diet plans and ignoring your hunger cues, you can focus on what is really important when it comes to nutrition - incorporating more of the healthful foods.

Not only can we tune in to our sense of taste, hunger, and fullness, but also how we feel after eating. By noticing how you feel after eating, you can make food choices that make you feel more energized, satisfied, and nourished afterwards. Instead of just choosing foods based on our cravings for the immediate pleasure that the food gives us, we can seek foods that we know will nourish us and will give us those positive feelings for much longer afterwards.

After all, our food cravings are influenced more than just "what we like" and "what we don't like." We might be craving foods that we have associated with as a high reward food through repetition. When eating hyper-palatable foods regularly, we can also dull our taste buds, so we might not enjoy the taste of whole foods as much. While whole foods might not give us such a big dopamine hit, our taste buds and our cravings can change over time. We need to give ourselves a chance to develop a taste for more nourishing foods, and to unpair the hyper-palatable foods with the dopamine reward.

Distilling The Intuitive Eating and Mindful Approaches Down To 3 Main Points:

By taking the essential points from the intuitive eating and mindful eating approaches, and incorporating healthy eating principles as well, there are 3 main points that can help us develop a healthy relationship with food and improve our health at the same time.

1. Hunger and Fullness Cues: Trusting Your Body

   • Using mindfulness approaches to tune in and trust your hunger and fullness cues. You eat when you are hungry because you trust that your body needs something in this moment. You stop when you are full, because you trust that you will give yourself more food the next time that you are hungry.

     
     

2. Savour and Sense

   • Using mindfulness approaches, you really savour the tastes and the satisfied feeling that the food gives you. Being more aware of your experience with the food and of when these feelings plateau can make us not only enjoy our food better, but also feel more comfortable with stopping once the food no longer increases our sense of pleasure. If we tune more into how the food makes our bodies feel afterwards, we can also start choosing food that makes us feel great after eating too.

     
     

3. Direction without Excessive Restraints

   • Reflecting on the reasons why health is important to us and why making healthy food choices can improve our life, we can have direction on what choices we want to make. Instead of focusing on making these choices 100% of the time, we adopt a healthy perspective of “I am not bad if I have this", “this one food is not going to cause damage” and “I can treat myself if and when I want to."

Eating intuitively doesn't mean you have to throw out all of your knowledge of the nourishing foods that make us operate and feel better. You can still care about nutrition and health and develop a healthy relationship with food, by putting these 3 principles into practice.

Wanting some support on starting with these intuitive eating and mindful eating approaches? Registered dietitians can support you in making gradual, sustainable changes to improve their health, meanwhile helping you restore your relationship with food at the same time.

Disclaimer:

The content on this document is not meant to replace direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.