Intuitive Eating Essay

Intuitive eating is an eating habit tuned by natural body response to hunger and fullness (Patiry). The logical understanding of intuitive eating goes for food when you are hungry, and your fullness will determine your need to stop eating. It is therefore of importance to understand the difference between physical responses such as hunger pangs, headache, nausea, and concentrating difficulties as well as emotional responses such as anger, anxiety, sadness, and disappointments. Understanding one's food urge and responding to that, therefore, makes intuitive eating a better eating habit for many therapeutic practices. It is against the traditional eating habit based food myths and timing. The eating response mandated to mind, body, as well as physical response, helps in maintaining a healthy weight as opposed to considering the number of calories in food (Schlam and Guimera1 996).

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Intuitive works on ten principles based on creating a good relationship between food, body, and mind (Calcar 24; The Original). First, do away the dietary mentality which dictates what one has to eat to be healthy and feel free to get to the depth of your eating understanding (Calcar 25). Secondly, always keep your body well fed biologically with enough carbohydrates and energy. This honoring of one's hunger helps in building trust with oneself and food. Thirdly, intuitive eating recommends making peace with one's food granting oneself freedom to eat. Next principle is to stop the mind fight that directs one to eat a particular food due to the previous eating of another. It is therefore important to say no to such mind fights limiting, for example, eating calories due to the previous eating of chocolate cake. Next, intuitive eating revolves around respecting your fullness as fullness is a body signal which informs the eater that they are no longer hungry and good to go. Respect the signals that of comfortably full.

Next principle is to establish and know your satisfaction factor as it is the most important force in understanding one's satisfaction and content. Another principle is to hone one's feeling without eating. Learn to resolve issues related to emotional self-such as anxiety, boredom, anger, or loneliness without using food. Body is one of the factors of intuitive eating and therefore of importance in respecting the body. Respect the genetic blueprint since people have different genetic makeup making it important to respect your body about eating. Another principle of intuitive eating is exercising to feel the difference. It's good to go for active exercise to keep you fit other than those for burning calories. Lastly, one needs to honor one's health and therefore go for normal nutrition selecting food that makes one feel better (Calcar 35; The Original).

Conclusion

Intuitive eating is highly recommended due to its health benefits. Some of the health benefits include improving digestion, less stress, weight loss, high self-esteem, and improved body awareness among others (Patiry). Intuitive eating improves digestion through its two key concepts of eating when hungry and stopping when one is full. Intuitive eating enables eaters to enjoy a pleasant emotional state as well as reducing the level of stress. This is attributed to enjoying ones food as opposed to analyzing what one eats. Intuitive eaters have lower body mass indexes (BMI) as they learn to respect satisfaction other than eating for the sake. High self-esteem is due to accepting oneself, and one's eating habit when eating intuitively. Additionally, intuitive eating improves body awareness as one base their eating habits on body, mind, and food (Patiry).

Works Cited

Calcar, Erika. "Intuitive Eating." RD North Star Behavioral Hospital, pp. 20-35.

The Original. "10 Principles of Intuitive Eating." intuitive eating.org. www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/.

Patiry, Megan. "5 Health Benefits of Intuitive Eating (+ 7 Ways to Get Started Today)." PaleoPlan, 6 Oct. 2017, www.paleoplan.com/2017/09-05/intuitive-eating/.