Principle 3 – Eat anything your body truly wants to eat

I love butter, I love cheese, I love crème brulee! Without these foods my life would not be so rich or satisfying. Lysa and I wholeheartedly know and believe that food is not only meant to provide nutrition for our bodies, but pleasure as well. That’s why it tastes so darn good! We also know that it is possible to eat all foods, lose weight and stay slim. 

The third principle to Intuitive Eating is about allowing yourself permission to eat and enjoy all foods. It’s about being guided by your inner wisdom to know what you truly need in the moment. When you eat the food your body truly wants you stop feeling deprived, instead you feel empowered and satisfied. Many of our clients tell us when they start practicing this principle that they stop obsessing about food, about whether they are making the ‘right’ choice, whether they are ‘good or bad’ that day. In reality food is just food; we are the ones who turn it into the enemy when we try to restrict ourselves. Making food the enemy only leads to eating in secret, and or binge eating. 

When teaching this principle we commonly hear, “But I’ll just eat junk food all the time if I’m allowed to eat anything!” As you begin to practice and truly listen intuitively to your body it will guide you to want a wide variety of foods. We’ve had a client not eat vegetables for 6 weeks because she’d been forcing herself to eat them everyday to lose weight.  After 6 weeks what do you think she craved? Yep, vegetables!

Yes we’re telling you to let go of the ‘dieting rules’ about good and bad foods, healthy and unhealthy foods. This will take some practice, as do all three principles. Learning to eat intuitively will require you to place more awareness on what your body feels and less on what your mind or others tell you to do. 

Eating cottage cheese, half a grapefruit or tasteless cereal for breakfast and obsessing over what I should eat all day are thankfully distant memories for me these days. To choose between eating what others tell me I should or eating what, when and how my body tells me to is a no brainer for me.

Which would you rather choose? 

For more information about Lysa & Gina’s Approach – “The Weigh to Freedom” visit www.lysaandgina.co.nz