Can I Practice Intuitive Eating if I Want to Lose Weight?
Written by Isabel Vasquez RD, LDN
Intuitive eating is a potentially life-changing, non-diet approach to nutrition. It allows you to free up mindspace previously occupied by weight and calories and connect with what feels truly good for you. It also allows you to support your health in a sustainable, authentic way for you.
While we could talk for hours about the pros of intuitive eating, it’s also normal to have reservations about starting your own intuitive eating journey.
One incredibly common hesitation you might have is that you still want to lose weight.
If so, you are not alone.
Many people have this worry when they’re thinking of ditching diets. Letting go of the desire to lose weight doesn’t happen overnight!
In this blog, learn whether you can practice intuitive eating while wanting to lose weight.
What is intuitive eating?
Real quick, let’s go over what intuitive eating is. Essentially, intuitive eating is a non-diet, weight-inclusive approach to nutrition.
When practicing intuitive eating, you listen to your body’s unique cues to nourish yourself rather than external rules and restrictions typical of diets. You also learn to practice skills that help you make peace with food and your body.
It invites you to take a compassionate approach to your relationship with food and your body, recognizing the numerous factors—harmful and helpful—that impact how you feed yourself, your exercise patterns, and how you feel about your body.
As we mentioned above, while practicing intuitive eating, you focus on health-promoting behaviors—ones that research has shown improve health outcomes regardless of weight change—rather than weight itself.
Related: Does Weight Equal Health?
What if I want to lose weight?
Wanting to lose weight does not disqualify you from beginning your intuitive eating journey.
Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows that from 2013-2016, 49.1% of U.S. adults reported trying to lose weight in the last 12 months. And it’s quite possible that within the last few years—especially with all the fear-mongering around pandemic weight gain—these numbers might be higher now.
All that to say, wanting to lose weight is normal. Society conditions us to want weight loss.
Intuitive eating is anti-diet, not anti-dieter.
Here at Your Latina Nutrition, we are against the oppressive systems that cause people in larger bodies to be stigmatized at doctors offices, workplaces, in the media, etc. We are NOT anti-individuals who want to lose weight.
It makes complete sense that people would want to lose weight while living in this society so steeped in diet culture. It’s a society that convinces us that losing weight is the solution to so many of our struggles—physical, emotional, and social.
In your intuitive eating journey, we get to the underlying stuff. Oftentimes, the desire to lose weight isn’t really about the weight itself. It’s about acceptance, desirability, love, safety, comfort, mobility, health, confidence.
For the BIPOC community, it can also be about assimilation and mitigating the chronic health conditions we are told run rampant in our communities (which are actually largely due to systemic issues, not individual behaviors).
These underlying desires are all completely valid human wants and needs! The inner work becomes this: can we find our way towards these things without centering weight?
It is not easy work. It is tough. It is vulnerable. It is scary. But it is possible.
It takes open-mindedness to dig into all the nuances that are a part of this journey, like learning about the issues with BMI, busting diet culture myths, and having tough conversations with loved ones.
If you’re ready to do that, you’re more than ready to start your food freedom journey.
For education on how to ADD nutrition to your favorite Latine cultural dishes, make peace with food, and focus on your health without dieting, check out our nutrition library.
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