Intuitive Eating

Ten years ago I was training to become a Dietitian, at the same time I was struggling to shift 10kg. Dieting or starving myself one day, binge eating and gorging the next,  I was trapped in an emotional and physical battle with my mind and my body.  What I wanted more than anything was to be normal, like my size 8 girlfriend who seemed to eat whatever she wanted and still stay slim. I was convinced being slim would make me happy; I desperately envied my tiny friend who I thought had it all.

Four years at University taught me weight loss is about calories in versus calories out. The scientific bottom line….if you use up more calories in a day than you consume, weight loss is the result.  What could be simpler? Yet, in practice what I couldn’t seem to master was how to make that actually happen, let alone sustain it long-term!

I was many years older and a good 10kg’s lighter before I came to understand that there is a way of eating (known to my naturally slim girlfriend) that is simple, sustainable and just makes sense! This I now know is called ‘Intuitive Eating’.

So what is Intuitive Eating?

It’s becoming attuned to our bodies natural hunger and satiety signals to know what, when and how much to eat. It's a process that helps create a healthy relationship with food, mind and body.

We are all born with the ability to discern the physical signs of hunger and satiety that will guide us to know how to attain and maintain a normal, healthy weight. Many of us, particularly if we struggle with excess weight, have lost this natural ability to be self-guided around food and eating because we have been taught to look outside ourselves for the answers.

We want you to know that dieting and struggling with your weight can be a distant memory, as it is now for us.

Intuitive Eating is a big part of the solution and yet our world paradigm remains locked in the old, outdated approach of dieting that teaches us using our willpower to restrict, deprive and override our normal natural eating cues is the answer to being slim.

We have dropped 40kg combined and have stay slim for 16 years. We are passionate about helping others break free from dieting, emotional eating and the battle with excess weight that creates a myriad of pain in all areas of our lives. It is our vision that soon the ‘dieting’ paradigm will be extinct and a new paradigm will reign, one that puts the power back in the individuals’ hands.

So how can I learn Intuitive Eating?

We travel New Zealand teaching ‘Intuitive eating’ in work-shops, we also coach clients one on one in both New Zealand and Australia to help them discover how to apply the philosophy to create weight-loss results. At our workshops we begin by teaching 3 simple principles that will help you begin to learn to eat intuitively.

They are:

1.       Eat only when you are physically hungry

2.       Stop eating when you are satisfied

3.       Eat anything your body truly wants to eat

Over the next 3 weeks we’ll explore each of these principles in greater depth.  In the meantime, ask yourself ….”Am I ready to let go of the struggle with my weight and food? “Am I ready to trust the one person I haven’t been trusting to make decisions about my body and what I put into it?

(Written by Gina)