Health News
Why Being Intuitive About Eating is the Easiest Way to Be Healthy
There always seems to be a new craze or a new food group being restricted and pinned as the bad guy. All of this conflicting information can be confusing and frustrating.
In reality, the answer is very simple - moderation.
This is because restriction is only going to cause us to crave those foods, but being intuitive about eating will allow us to stop the restricting and begin to listen to what our body wants to tell us.
Eating intuitively and living intuitively (regarding working out and even how you approach life in general), can repair our relationship with food and give us the freedom to start living and stop letting society's standards control our lives.
Why Doesn't Eating Or Living Healthily Work Sometimes?
Simply because it is often based around the idea of restriction. It looks at food as good or bad. We always want what we can't have, right? That is exactly why it usually is not sustainable for the long term unless there is a change of lifestyle.
Traci Mann1, a researcher of eating habits, regimens and self control says that there are three biological changes that happen when following an eating regimen-neurological, hormonal, and metabolic. "...you actually become more likely to notice food. Basically, your brain becomes overly responsive to food, especially tasty looking food."
She then talks about how our hormone levels change and the levels of the hormones that keep us full decrease, while the levels of hormones that make us hungry increase.
Finally, the metabolic biological change. It is common knowledge that eating less leads to a lowered metabolism but Mann says, "[a lowered metabolism] isn't a good thing, because when our body finds a way to run itself on lesser fuel there tends to be more leftover, and those get stored as "reserves", which is exactly what we don't want to happen."
What Exactly Is Living Or Eating Intuitively?
The basis of that is:
- Eat what we want when we're hungry.
- Stop when we're full.
- Don't see food as "good" or "bad".
In essence, it's giving up the "controls" and letting our bodies do the leading.
It sounds incredibly simple, but with all of these engrained ideas about the current culture around food in general, it is hard to rid our minds of these disordered thoughts.
What if I Only Crave "Bad" Foods?
A valid question.
Let me share a secret, our bodies are smart. If we only eat pasta, pizza, and donuts for a week straight, it will start to crave vegetables and "healthier" foods.
A review article2 by the journal Public Health Nutrition about intuitive eating showed that "intuitive eating is linked with lower BMI and better psychological health".
There is a sense of freedom that comes with allowing ourselves to choose foods that we want to eat with no guilt tagging along with that choice.
What if It Doesn't Work For Me?
Fair enough, as we all know that there is no single way that works for everyone.
But here's something else I'd like to share.
A special video presentation by natural health researcher Derek Evans.
In it he reveals:
- Why eating HEALTHY and exercising can't work alone
- Why our bodies return to square one no matter how much effort we put into making it change
- A special leaked Harvard video of a certain nutrient that could be the answer to a fitter body
- How this nutrient even lowers bad cholesterol and BLOCKS 96% of arterial plague
It's no wonder Harvard's governing board applied for a patent on it.
