What is Gentle Nutrition? Plus 3 Tips to Get Started
Written by Isabel Vasquez, RD, LDN
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If you’re familiar with intuitive eating, then you know that honoring your health with gentle nutrition is the final principle. Here at Your Latina Nutrition we like to incorporate positive nutrition. That means rather than diet culture’s restrictive rules about what you should or shouldn’t eat, we focus on how you can add nutrition to promote your health.
In this blog post, I’ll share what gentle nutrition is, who could benefit from it, and three tips to get started.
What is gentle nutrition?
Gentle nutrition is the last principle of intuitive eating–a non-diet, weight-inclusive approach to nutrition made up of 10 principles.
The first nine principles help you develop a better relationship with food and your body so you can approach nutrition from a more neutral, kind place. The initial work of rejecting diet culture and fostering a healthier relationship with food and your body that comes with the first nine principles is key to approaching gentle nutrition without letting the diet culture voice take the reins.
Ultimately, when you incorporate all ten principles of intuitive eating, you learn to find food freedom and eat in a way that promotes your health.
To describe gentle nutrition, the authors of Intuitive Eating say, “Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel good.” As you can see, gentle nutrition is about blending pleasure, satisfaction, and health.
It’s also about remembering that there is no such thing as “perfect” eating, despite what diet culture says. You won’t make or break your health with one meal or snack; it’s about zooming out and looking at the big picture.
Some examples of practicing gentle nutrition include:
Ensuring you have carbs, protein, fat, and fiber in a meal you’re preparing. Combining these food groups helps you get in a variety of nutrients, stabilize blood sugars, and feel satisfied.
Adding veggies to a meal you realize lacks fiber. Fiber helps with digestive health, satiety, and blood sugar stability.
Eating ice cream because it’s what sounds satisfying. There’s nothing wrong with honoring your cravings.
Skipping the ice cream because you are lactose intolerant. It’s okay to limit certain foods if you have an allergy or intolerance. It doesn’t mean you’re doing food freedom wrong, you’re simply honoring your body.
Only having a small amount of ice cream because you’re lactose intolerant. Similarly, you can choose to alter the amount of food you have if larger amounts lead to health issues or uncomfortable digestive symptoms.
Eating protein and carbs after a workout, like rice and beans or a smoothie with greek yogurt and fruit. Carbs help replenish the stores you used up during your workout and protein helps restore muscles you’ve broken down.
Eating carbs before a workout like fruit juice, crackers, or bread. Carbs are our bodies’ preferred source of energy so eating them before a workout can help you feel better during the workout.
Making a smoothie and adding nuts, yogurt, or seeds for added protein and fat. Sometimes, smoothies only contain carbs, which won’t hold you over for too long. Adding protein and fat helps keep you satisfied.
Setting an afternoon alarm to remind you to eat a snack. If you always end up hangry before dinnertime, it may help to get in the habit of having an afternoon snack. The alarm can help prompt you to check in with your body to meet its needs.
Preparing meals ahead of time, but allowing yourself to add more or eat less if that’s what your body wants. Meal prep doesn’t have to be diet-centric. Make sure you include a few food groups, and be willing to add a snack if you’re not full from the meal you prepped.
These are just a handful of examples of how you could incorporate gentle nutrition.
Nutrition is so individual, so the best nutritional changes for your health will vary based on your preferences, culture, health conditions, lifestyle, work schedule, cooking habits, activity level, and more.
If you want more individualized recommendations, working with a registered dietitian can help. We’re always talking about gentle nutrition in The Chula Club Nutrition Coaching Membership, our community of Latinas ready to find health without restriction.
What gentle nutrition isn’t
In order to understand what gentle nutrition is, it might be helpful to understand what it isn’t.
Gentle nutrition isn’t:
Tying your moral worth to your food choices
Labeling foods as good and bad or healthy and unhealthy
Always eating salads and never eating white rice
Always eating white rice and never eating salads
Ditching white rice for brown rice if you don’t like it
Making food choices that don’t align with your food preferences
Following food rules that don’t leave room for pleasure
Making decisions based on what you “should” have instead of what you want to have
Shaming yourself for your food choices
All or nothing thoughts or behaviors around food
Restricting your food intake
Who may benefit from gentle nutrition
Being able to practice gentle nutrition requires a certain level of privilege. Yes, adding more fruits and veggies or eating all the food groups sounds great, but if you are facing food insecurity or don’t have access to a variety of culturally appropriate, nutritious foods, then gentle nutrition is irrelevant.
We have to be mindful of judging people’s eating behaviors because 1) it’s none of our business and 2) we have no idea what may be impacting someone’s food choices.
For people who do have the privilege to choose what and when they eat without finances or access getting in the way, I’d say that most people can get to a place where they can practice gentle nutrition. However, the specifics will look different for different people.
What I mean by that is, again, nutrition is so individual. For example, people with eating disorders will have different nutrition needs than those with diabetes or food allergies. And someone with all three will have even more specific nutritional needs.
Everyone is different. That being said, at one point or another, most of us could benefit from some intentionality around what we eat, whether that be eating more regularly, adding more fiber, adding more carbs, or ensuring you eat after a workout.
Notice that I’m focusing on what can be added rather than what needs to be restricted.
We don’t have time for a list of what not to eat. This gentle approach is much more nuanced, so there are no all-or-nothing food rules that say you can never eat certain foods or that you should limit what you eat.
Who may not benefit from gentle nutrition
Not everyone will be able or ready to practice gentle nutrition. As I mentioned above, those without adequate access to food or those facing food insecurity probably won’t be able to practice gentle nutrition to the same extent as people who don’t face these issues.
Furthermore, if you haven’t set a foundation of making peace with food yet, then incorporating gentle nutrition without turning it into another diet may be hard. There’s a lot of nuance to approaching nutrition without the diet mentality, but diets cause us to think very black and white thoughts.
The first nine principles of intuitive eating help you explore your relationship with food, ditch the diet mentality, make peace with food, heal your relationship with movement, connect with your body’s cues, and more.
All of that work is key to being able to approach nutrition in a neutral or even positive way. We don’t want you to have a scarcity mindset around food and a totally fear-based mindset around potential weight changes.
We want you to feel empowered to make decisions that not only honor your physical health, but your mental and emotional well-being as well!
Tips to practice gentle nutrition
make peace with food first
As I shared above, being able to approach nutrition from a gentle or positive space, one free from diet culture, requires a lot of up front work.
Out of the 10 principles of intuitive eating, gentle nutrition is #10. The first nine principles involve fostering a healthier relationship with food and your body and rejecting diet culture. These are all so important to work on first because they allow you to make food choices true to your preferences rather than following diet culture’s arbitrary food rules.
Making food choices that honor your body’s cues and preferences is helpful to learn before diving headfirst into nutrition.
If you don’t have a chronic health condition that requires regular management through nutrition, and you are struggling to honor your body’s food preferences, I invite you to explore that.
How has diet culture shaped your food beliefs?
How has diet culture impacted your beliefs about your cultural foods?
Are you afraid that honoring your body’s cravings will lead to weight gain or body changes? If so, what about that is scary?
What does healthy eating mean to you?
What made you want to find food freedom in the first place?
Reflecting on all of these questions is one small part of making peace with food. I recommend taking the time to work through your food struggles because finding peace with food makes practicing gentle nutrition much easier.
Learn the facts about nutrition to make empowered decisions
There is so much nutrition misinformation out there, it can be hard to know what’s real or not. In the Chula Club Nutrition Coaching Membership, we’re constantly busting myths about the latest fad diet trends so the chulas can make decisions based on actual nutrition info and not pseudoscience.
When you’re ready to start practicing gentle nutrition, learning the facts about nutrition is key. Otherwise, you may just grasp onto the latest headline or an influencer’s false claim about nutrition. (Pro tip: true nutrition is often less glamorous or sensational than the claims made by news headlines or influencers).
If health is important to you, you can make educated decisions that promote your health and help manage any chronic conditions you have (check out our posts on managing cholesterol and diabetes with intuitive eating).
For Latinas, learning the nutritional value of our Latin foods can be especially important because it is not something we’re commonly taught. We are often just left to assume or even actually told that they are “bad”. In reality, they’re jam-packed with nutrients and unfortunately, many people just aren't aware of their true nutritional value.
Learning the facts about nutrition is key so you don’t get sucked into false nutrition info on social media.
Lead with curiosity
As you work on adding nutrition, it won’t be perfect. It’s a time to experiment and explore. So, lead with curiosity.
Maybe you normally have white bread, but in an effort to add nutrition, you try whole wheat bread to add more fiber. If this doesn’t satisfy you, it’s okay. You can swap back to white bread and add whole grains another way.
Something else to consider is that what you’re craving in the moment may be different from what you think will make your body feel good.
For example, maybe you loveeee tres leches cake, but it always upsets your stomach. You aren’t bad if you choose to have it, and the cake itself isn’t bad either. But maybe rather than quickly eating the whole piece, you try having a small amount to see if you can find satisfaction without triggering serious digestive issues.
Choosing to eat less of something because it leaves your body feeling better doesn’t necessarily mean you’re caught in a diet mentality. The intention behind the decision is key.
Practicing gentle nutrition can mean adding different foods and seeing how they leave you feeling. Consider satisfaction, physical sensations, and health outcomes.
I’ll say it again, nutrition is so individual. If you’re recovering from an eating disorder or disordered eating, things will look different than someone without these issues who has diabetes or kidney disease.
Final Thoughts
Gentle nutrition can be an empowering way to promote your health without harsh food rules or restrictions. However, before diving headfirst into gentle nutrition, you may want to work through the first few principles of intuitive eating first so you can set a food freedom foundation and have the tools to approach nutrition from a positive place.
And remember, it’s absolutely possible to incorporate your favorite foods, including your cultural foods, into a healthy eating pattern, even when you have a chronic health condition.
For more support, we offer a 3-part masterclass on intuitive eating to help you improve your relationship with food, your body, and movement.
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