How Intuitive Eating Leads to Intuitive Living

Written by Isabel Vasquez, RD, LDN

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you are at least interested in beginning your journey towards intuitive eating. You may be sick of dieting and eager to try something else. Maybe you want to be healthy and not be in a constant battle with your body anymore! If so, you are in the right place. Amazingly, the effects of developing a better relationship with food and your body often extend beyond the obvious. In this post, I want to talk about how intuitive eating can extend beyond the plate to other aspects of life!

First, think about being on a diet (whether you’re formally calling it a diet or not). Your mind is occupied with things like counting calories, what you don’t like about your body, what your next workout will be, when/what you’re allowed to eat next, and guilt over eating certain foods. Beyond restricting food, you might be restricting joy in other areas of life without fully realizing it. When living with a diet mentality, restricting joyful movement is common as well. You do the workout acceptable by fitness influencers instead of the movement that would bring you joy! You make decisions based on what you’re told you “should” be doing instead of tuning in to what would be best for you in the current moment. You might skip social events involving food, or if you do go to these social events, your mind is preoccupied with how you can fit the food into your diet. You are probably constantly running on low, so you aren’t fully energized and able to be present in the moment.

Now let’s imagine a completely different mindset - one based on intuitive eating. You’ve ditched the weight-centric thoughts so no foods are off limits, any workout is acceptable, and life becomes fuller. Your thoughts aren’t all consumed by food because you allow yourself unconditional permission to eat, and you honor your hunger. You aren’t afraid to go to your partner’s favorite restaurant just because it doesn’t offer “low-calorie” options or because it has a dessert you’ve binged on before. You aren’t afraid to go on vacation when there isn’t a fitness room in the hotel. You can be more present in your life instead of being clouded by the pressures of diet culture.

This can set the stage for you to be a better partner, daughter, sister, colleague, and more! It’s as if we are stuck in a diet shell, confined by the rules of diet culture, but when we break free from it, we open ourselves up the world outside of that shell. When your mind is free from diet thoughts, it opens you up to a fuller life. You are free to revisit your dreams, your values, perhaps your spirituality, and your INTUITION.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive” - Howard Thurman

Our intuition is underrated. It is who we are! Habitually, we ignore our intuition. In my own journey, someone shared with me the quote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive” by Howard Thurman. In other words, by being true to ourselves, we are not only giving to ourselves, but contributing to those around us. 

There is a big difference between merely surviving and THRIVING, and what your mind is occupied with can greatly impact that difference. Freeing the mind from preoccupation with food and the body opens it up to explore other areas of ourselves. Granted, it also opens it up to perhaps painful memories, trauma, and uncomfortable emotions, but without facing them we will not be living life to the fullest. I fully acknowledge the difficulty in confronting any deep-rooted struggles underlying disordered eating behaviors, so in these situations, working with a licensed therapist can be helpful in conjunction with working with a dietitian.

Now, no matter what, it is almost impossible to completely avoid feeling the impacts of diet culture. Even when you’ve committed to ditching diets and embracing intuitive eating, the weight loss ads will still be there, the fitness influencers will still be promoting their fitness plans, and the weight-centric comments will not disappear. However, you will consciously minimize how much of this you are exposed to and you will be better equipped to manage it when you are confronted by it. It doesn’t mean there won’t be tough days, but you will be living for yourself instead of living to achieve an unrealistic socially constructed ideal.