Intuitively failing

Intuitive eating (IE) is all the rage these days. It’s the non-diet that basically says FU to diets and instead focuses on listening to your body and feeding it what it wants. You really want ice cream for dinner every day this week? Go ahead and eat ice cream for dinner every day this week, says IE. Just stop when your body says stop, and take the time to really observe what you’re feeling as you eat, how each bite tastes, and what your body is telling you.

The theory basically goes that if you eat what you really want and really pay attention to how it’s making you feel, you’ll eat less of it, be more satisfied, be fueling your body better with the foods that it needs, and eventually will start to re-learn your hunger signals. It’s supposed to be going back to how you ate when you were a kid. Despite your parents telling you to stay at the table until your plate was clean, you knew when you were full. Despite your parents saying you couldn’t have seconds, you knew when you were still hungry.

(Just like anything, there are rules - this is not 'Nam, this is bowling (warning: language!) - to IE (10 of them, to be exact). I’m way oversimplifying the theory, and I actually think that it’s a really good, sound practice, in my non-expert opinion.)

I first learned about IE on a blog, and thought that it was an interesting concept. I then read the complete book and was intrigued (and amused – I read the older version because it was cheaper, and some of the examples are pretty out of date!). At that point in life, I had been using a meal delivery service five days a week for over a year, and while it was convenient and I lost weight using it, it was expensive and I was getting bored. I wanted to eat like a real person again! So, I decided to give IE a try.

Actually, I kind of decided to just give living intuitively a try. And (spoiler alert), I’m kind of both failing and succeeding at it at the same time. How’s that for not at all intuitive?

It is hard. Having to really listen to your body and decided what you want to eat, or what kind of workout you want to do, or when you should go to sleep is really exhausting.

Take eating for example. Usually I bring my lunch to work, because it’s economical and healthier. In reality, that’s not at all eating intuitively. Because I can’t know until I’m hungry what I’m hungry for. I should really bring options, so that I can eat what my body needs. So I totally fail on that point.

On the days that I don’t bring my lunch, by the time it’s late enough to get something to eat (if it were appropriately adult, I’d eat lunch at like 10:30 most days. As it is, I usually eat at noon on the dot.), I’m usually pretty hungry and just go with one of my standbys. Again, healthy meal, but not really intuitive eating if I don’t take the time to figure out what it is I want. And then I go ahead and eat the whole meal. Most of the time, it’s just enough food, but even if it’s too much, I hate throwing it out. Fail again.

And then there’s sweets. I’m obsessed with the froyo place near work (and it’s like a 6 block walk, so I tell myself that I earned it by walking there…) and there’s a chocolate chip cookie in a mug that I’m crazy about with at home. I always eat entirely too much of both. Both taste soooo yummy at the time. Both always make my stomach want to jump out of my body and beat me over the head. Yet I still eat each of them fairly often. Fail.

Obviously, I’m not doing super well at this whole intuitive thing. It apparently takes much more of a concerted effort than I’m willing to give to be good at it 100% of the time. But I think that I’m getting it right at least some of the time, and I’ve been happier and healthier in the last few months since I started than I have been for years. Maybe the way to become better at being intuitive about your body is to just let it intuitively happen. Maybe it’s one of those things that you can’t teach and can’t really learn, but that just clicks into place one day.

Maybe it just hasn’t totally clicked for me yet. But I’m getting there. I skipped the gym this morning because I was out late and tired, and sometimes you need sleep more than you need an arm workout. And I’m going to get froyo in a few instead of eating the grapefruit that’s been sitting on my desk for the past two days. Because sometimes you just have to do what your body wants at the time, and accept the fact that your body will hate you for it later.