Taylor-LeighI come to you with the finale of my intuitive eating journey series! This finale does not mean that I will never write about it again, or that I am even done with intuitive eating. In fact, it is the other way around. I am feeling more comfortable incorporating intuitive eating into my daily life.
With that being said, I have some reflections to share about my journey that may go against the hardcore intuitive eaters.
As I have mentioned before, some of the more well-known intuitive eating practitioners or dieticians have one rule, and that is that there are no rules when it comes to eating. They eat whatever they want, whenever they want, and as much as they want of it. To many people this may be a shocking thing to hear- chocolate cake for breakfast, a whole pizza for lunch, a burger and fries and a gallon of beer for dinner?! If that is what your body is telling you, then sure. But that is not entirely the point. The point is to develop a loving relationship with your body, and to become in tune so that you can listen to your hunger and fullness cues – AKA when to start and stop eating, and also what your body truly wants. After a while of tuning in to your inner self, I honestly do not think you will want to eat the above mentioned meal all day, every day. I’d just like to send love to those people who are working on any disordered eating patterns so that they can tune into their inner sensations. For those of us, it’s not so simple to “just eat.” The intuitive eating workbook has helped me immensely with this.
This is where my reflection comes in –
Finding balance.
In the intuitive eating workbook, which by the way, I’m still working on gradually, there is no such thing as labelling food as “good” or “bad,” “healthy” or “unhealthy.” And unless you have a medical or ethical consideration with your food choices, no food is off limits. The attachment of these labels lies not within the food itself, but within our own personal conditioning, our relationship with food, and with what society has conditioned us to believe.
All of this makes perfect sense, unless you are someone like me who cares a lot about the food they put into their body and the impact it has on their well-being. It reminds me of the “if it fits your macros” style of eating that many fitness people do, where they will eat anything as long as it “fits your macros.” But what about the micronutrients? The fiber? The energy (or sluggishness) you get from food?
This is where body attunement really comes in handy.
A bit of my story:
Starting at the ripe age of 14, I began researching food, where it comes from, the impact it has on our society and of course, on our health. In fact, I actually started much earlier. I was the kid who chose broccoli over chicken nuggets, and apples over chips. Fast food caused me gastrointestinal distress, and I found out in a very embarrassing way about being lactose intolerant. To this day I still consider my experience with food to be a blessing and a curse. A curse because my body was, and is, very sensitive to the food I eat, so I felt I couldn’t eat what “normal” people ate. And a blessing because it led me to learn about food and how it operates in the body. My fascination lies not just within the immediate impact, but with the long-term, holistic affects on our total well-being, as well as within populations, cultures, and generations.
The effects of diet on long-term health is the part most often overlooked by society. With doctors trained to prescribe drugs to treat symptoms rather than get to the root of the problem or focused on disease prevention, with big agriculture companies controlling our nutritional recommendations, with fast-paced living that forces us to prioritize drive-through dinners over mindful family meals, and with our goal of satisfying our immediate taste cravings over long-term affects, it is no wonder we do not think about how diet affects our health.
To make a long story short, the past 15 years have sent me down a rabbit hole of both personal experiments and dietary research. Little by little, I uncovered the way I now choose to eat, which is a whole food, plant-based diet. Diet refers to the way I eat, rather than a stress inducing, calorie restricting, fad, and eventually failing and binging “diet.”
From reading and following the work of doctors such as T. Colin Campell, Michael Klaper, John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, and more, I’ve found that a whole food plant-based diet is the most optimal for humans due to its energetic, anti-inflammatory properties. Of course other factors exist that contribute to dis-ease within our bodies and souls. But studies show that the more plants we consume and the less meat and dairy, the better off we will be, both in a matter of weeks, and for generations to come. As a person who understands the interconnectivity of, well…pretty much everything, I know that if I’m feeling physically well from what I eat, then that goodness will spread to my mental and emotional health. The more things I can do to allow for my well-being, the better.
Of course, there are findings that the authors of Intuitive Eating mention about the effects of dieting on our health. In short, dieting long-term has been shown to lead to stress, anxiety, depression, and other physical health issues. If someone is completely happy and satisfied with the way they are eating, then I say to keep on keeping on. I am not trying to convince anyone to go plant-based with this blog post, but rather share my outlook on finding balance with eating intuitively and eating for health. Both can be done.
In order to stand by findings of doing both, some compromise is necessary.
Compromise
I’d be lying if I said I did not want to eat food less than optimal that I know would not make me feel physically well, like fried and processed food. I’ve written about being ethically considerate with intuitive eating and my experience being vegan, but choosing to eat whole food plant-based for health is different. It usually takes a transition period for the information to sink in mentally, and physically takes a few weeks for taste buds to change and the body to adapt. This transition is where people may fall off because the effort it takes may feel like it is going against their intuition.
But let me tell you a little secret. Big food companies make food addictive on purpose! If we grow a garden in our backyard, no one is telling us to buy and eat more more more. But enticing packages and advertisements do. When fiber is stripped (the full-feeling mechanism of food), and exciting flavors are added, of course we want that food!
In my opinion, a little bit of discipline is necessary for worthwhile results. Starting a business takes more time and money than we are comfortable with, being an athlete takes more hours of training than we may feel like doing, and being liberated from trauma takes confrontational healing. Bottom line is, in order to achieve something special, we have to move outside our comfort zones.
Self-discipline in the form of setting boundaries leads to self-compassion in the long run. Sometimes it is necessary to set boundaries for our food and eating habits until it becomes second nature. For me, this comes in the form of reminding myself that a particular food won’t make me feel very good, and the momentary taste isn’t worth the dissatisfaction I’ll feel after. A little bit of effort goes a long way.
We can’t think our way into acting, we act our way into thinking. This means we couple the mental work with the physical work. The more we act and adopt habits conducive to our well-being, the more we continue to eat that way as habits forms. We acted our way into habits of eating certain foods and destructive patterns, so in order to reverse it, we have to adopt, or act our way into adopting, healthful ones.
Conclusion
Does my reflection mean that I am dogmatic in my approach to food? Does it mean that I force myself to eat pure plant foods 100% of the time and restrict myself from all others? Absolutely not. I have some kind of processed food every day.
Registered dietician and YouTuber Abbey Sharp talks about something she has deemed “Hunger Crushing Combos,” where she encourages the combining of a nutrient-dense food with a food that you are really craving, but may be void of nutrition, like chips or ice cream. For example, adding some fruit slices to your ice cream, or adding some veggies and hummus to your plate of chips. This will give you the satiating feeling of the whole food, while satisfying your craving. Abbey also has some other great intuitive eating ideas and has a very inclusive approach to her work. I do differ in my opinion for some of her nutritional advice due to my outlook on plant-based eating for long-term health. Abbey is one of the dieticians I speak of when I talk about them having zero food rules, which can be great for many people struggling, or who are simply happy with what they eat. I appreciate her intuitive eating advice, but still stand by my plant-based doctors for nutritional guidelines.
Personally, I have learned to find my sweet spot. Throughout the past few months of intuitive eating, I have gone to the extreme of eating whatever processed food I want, whenever I wanted. It did not take long for me to discover that my body did not like that at all, but at least I got it out of my system, crushed some fear foods, and learned about what health through food means to me. Everyone’s journey to find this for themselves will be different.
In the meantime, I stand by you in our journeys to listening to our hunger and fullness cues, making peace with food, finding attunement within our bodies, and fueling ourselves the best we possibly can.
Hi I’m Taylor-Leigh & I am finally comfortable saying that I’m a plant-based intuitive eater. I love dancing, taking care of my grandmother, writing, reading, and lots more.