We are now well into the calendar year and it is time to check in – for those of you who said this was the year you were going to stick to that diet and keep that weight off…. because you are on the diet culture hamster wheel.. how is that working out? Well, step off the dizzy diet carousel because here is a little secret– diets are set up to make you fail.
One of my favorite quotes reads “The more extreme the approach the less sustainable the results.” I have found from personal experience that the 0-100 mentality and extreme challenges are not able to be maintained and usually wind up making me feel worse in the end. These things usually start with the best intentions which is why it’s so disappointing when it always ends up the same way. If you feel diet culture has taken over your life like many others out there – you are not alone.
It wasn’t until very recently that I started to learn and adopt the Intuitive Eating (IE) principles into my own life. And truthfully, before diet culture ever existed, Intuitive Eating would just be called *eating*! Essentially, it’s all about re-learning your body’s inner thoughts and feelings. There are 10 “rules” to IE written by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch that are meant to teach a person how to get back in touch with their hunger/fullness cues to help foster a healthy relationship with food. Realizing that food won’t solve all of our problems and that we only have one body are two examples of ways the principles of IE creep into our daily lives. By creating a healthy relationship with food, we can unlock all of the other wonderful things food can bring into our lives!
Personally, most of our family gatherings are planned around a meal, whether it’s Shabbat or Sunday brunch, I am arriving hungry and leaving satisfied- sometimes more (and that iso kay!). I love to enjoy time with my cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents while also being able to enjoy my dad’s homemade challah and rugelach with no judgement.
Once we can begin to formulate positive thinking around food and meals it can be a good stepping stone to building a solid relationship. We were all born with the innate ability to sense hunger and fullness as well as, give food the unconditional, freedom it deserves.