Speaker 1: Welcome to how I eat in a day where it's
Speaker 1: not about what I eat, but how I eat. Let's
Speaker 1: do this first things first, going to check in with
Speaker 1: the body. Are we hungry? How hungry are we? I
Speaker 1: am hungry, yes, and I want a full meal. Let's
Speaker 1: choose it. This is Victoria Garrick. She's a former college
Speaker 1: volleyball player who's gotten kind of a falling on TikTok
Speaker 1: talking about body image and health, and she's showing on
Speaker 1: TikTok how she approaches something called intuitive eating. I'm staring
Speaker 1: at the fridge because sometimes that helps me. When I
Speaker 1: don't have an immediate craving, something might pop out at me.
Speaker 1: And it did. Sahitas, Yes, do we have tortilla? Yes
Speaker 1: we do. Victoria find some salsa too. In the video,
Speaker 1: she microwaves the food, eating some chips and salsa off
Speaker 1: the kitchen counter. As she waits, she's clearly enjoying it,
Speaker 1: closing her eyes after a bite and nodding vigorously after
Speaker 1: eating another chip. She even does a little dance. And
Speaker 1: then her food is ready and she sits down to eat.
Speaker 1: This is divine. That first bite is hitting. She eats
Speaker 1: another chip, then goes back to her fahita. Then she
Speaker 1: takes a brief break, saying that she feels like she's
Speaker 1: been moving too quickly. Where's going to slow it down?
Speaker 1: Get back too mindful. It's like moment by moment she's
Speaker 1: paying attention to her body, how the food tastes, but
Speaker 1: also whether she's still hungry. I'm getting to a point
Speaker 1: now where I'm like kind of full, but I'm not
Speaker 1: totally done eating, so just trying to determine when I'll
Speaker 1: be done, and sure enough, once she's full, she says,
Speaker 1: she stops. All of this is part of intuitive eating,
Speaker 1: which is about healing people's relationships with food. Intuitive eaters
Speaker 1: say that the way we eat has been screwed up
Speaker 1: by diets and all the various rules about food. The
Speaker 1: diets teach people that were so focused on calorie counts
Speaker 1: that we can't actually tell what our bodies need anymore.
Speaker 1: TikTok is full of these kinds of videos, people like
Speaker 1: Victoria talking about what they eat in a day and
Speaker 1: how they go about eating. Some of the videos are
Speaker 1: just about eating in ways that aren't about dieting, about
Speaker 1: having dessert and carbs, the kinds of things. Lots of
Speaker 1: diets say are off limits, but also eating healthy stuff
Speaker 1: like oatmeal or an apple. Think about the last time
Speaker 1: you eat something. What made you eat those things? Was
Speaker 1: it lunchtime or were you just getting hungry? And what
Speaker 1: made you choose that particular food. Did you crave that
Speaker 1: thing specifically or maybe you chose it because you felt
Speaker 1: like you should like it was the healthy choice. And
Speaker 1: then when did you stop eating? Did you finish your
Speaker 1: full plate or just some of it and you were done?
Speaker 1: Were you full? Did you feel satisfied? These are the
Speaker 1: kinds of questions at the core of intuitive eating. The
Speaker 1: movement was started by two dietitians in THEES. This is
Speaker 1: a lease rush one of those dietitians. You want to
Speaker 1: be aware of your instincts. You want to be aware
Speaker 1: of what emotions might pull you away from your natural instincts,
Speaker 1: and you want to be able to use your caring,
Speaker 1: self compassionate, loving, cognitive part of your brain to help
Speaker 1: you find a way to eat the nourishes you and
Speaker 1: gives you spatisfaction. That all sounds great, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but what does that actually mean? Intuitive eating? Yes, gives
Speaker 1: you the freedom to choose whatever it's going to satisfy you.
Speaker 1: Also takes into consideration how does your body feel based
Speaker 1: on your on your choice of eating. Like a last
Speaker 1: just said, intuitive eating is eating what satisfies you, eating
Speaker 1: in ways that make you feel good. Some people would
Speaker 1: call it regular old eating. Eating when you're hungry and
Speaker 1: stopping when you're satisfied. Sounds easy enough, right, But intuitive
Speaker 1: eating exists because we can't just eat, or at least
Speaker 1: many people can't. There's no way around it. We've just
Speaker 1: gotten so screwed up about eating. Intuitive eating advocates say
Speaker 1: that's why people need to relearn how to eat. They
Speaker 1: say that our bodies don't need rules because we naturally
Speaker 1: know when and what we should be eating. M or
Speaker 1: our bodies knew at least we knew when we were babies.
Speaker 1: We cried when we were hungry and stopped after we
Speaker 1: were fed. That's the intuition that we have to relearn.
Speaker 1: So what changed? Why don't we know anymore? Well, you
Speaker 1: can blame diets, and intuitive eating does blame diets. Deprivation
Speaker 1: always leads to seeking what you can't have, and diets
Speaker 1: are depriving. You know, culture dominated by diets. This is
Speaker 1: a pretty radical idea. Is intunivating. The solution, Yes, is intunivating,
Speaker 1: the remedy, the healing that comes from deprivation, and a
Speaker 1: sense of lack of trust in oneself. Yes, we are
Speaker 1: constantly being told that eating fewer calories is not just
Speaker 1: good but even virtuous, That dieting will make you thinner,
Speaker 1: and losing weight means being healthier. But those things are
Speaker 1: actually totally wrong. That's what this whole series has been about.
Speaker 1: Our ideas about weight are messed up. Diets don't actually
Speaker 1: make most people thinner in the long term, and they
Speaker 1: probably aren't the best way to get healthier either. The
Speaker 1: battle to lose weight it's actually a losing battle. And yet,
Speaker 1: in spite of all that, dieting still has a hold
Speaker 1: on us. We're just not always calling them diets anymore.
Speaker 1: We keep believing that being thinner is better, even though
Speaker 1: that's questionable. Intuitive eating sells itself as the solution to
Speaker 1: all this, as a fix for so many years of
Speaker 1: messed up ideas about food, weight, and health. It says
Speaker 1: the people have put their faith in diets and food
Speaker 1: restrictions for far too long, and that people should put
Speaker 1: their faith in intuitive eating instead. Naturally, I was intrigued
Speaker 1: by this. Intuitive eating seemed to offer a way forward
Speaker 1: past dieting and into something new, But I was skeptical too.
Speaker 1: If there were no rules about eating, would people still
Speaker 1: eat in healthy ways? And what happens to their health,
Speaker 1: not to mention their weight. In our final episode, You're
Speaker 1: gonna come with me on a journey to Intuitive Eating University.
Speaker 1: That's not actually a real place, but there are classes
Speaker 1: that teach people what intuitive eating is and how to
Speaker 1: put these ideas into practice, something that's a lot harder
Speaker 1: than it sounds. By the end of this episode, you
Speaker 1: may well be convinced that it's time to ditch dieting.
Speaker 1: But then we also have to ask does it work.
Speaker 1: I'm Bloomberg News health reporter. I'm a court and from
Speaker 1: the Prognosis podcast. This is Losing It. Welcome to your
Speaker 1: first day at Intuitive Eating University. Take a seat. I
Speaker 1: hope you brought a notebook and the syllabus. Of course,
Speaker 1: let's go meet our instructor. I found her on where
Speaker 1: Else TikTok. My name is Sammy Prevett and I am
Speaker 1: a registered dietitian, certified Intuitive Eating counselor, certified personal trainer
Speaker 1: and the founder of Fine Food Freedom. She also offers
Speaker 1: online classes like the one we're taking. Intuitive eating has
Speaker 1: been around for nearly thirty years, but it's become incredibly
Speaker 1: big in the era of social media. It's also taken
Speaker 1: off at a time when more people are fed up
Speaker 1: with diets. Intuitive eating very explicitly defines itself as anti diet.
Speaker 1: According to TikTok, videos with the hashtag intuitive eating have
Speaker 1: gotten more than a billion views. Some of those are
Speaker 1: Sammy's videos. Sammy is thirty one, peppy, and has blonde hair.
Speaker 1: She makes these really accessible videos about intuitive eating. Intuitive
Speaker 1: Eating Breakfast Edition. Here you will see I have one
Speaker 1: of my two because I already ate the other one.
Speaker 1: Frozen waffles covered with peanut, butter, cheese, seeds, livered almonds, raspberries,
Speaker 1: as well as topped with honey. Sammy will give viewers
Speaker 1: tips and little exercises to do, like challenging them to
Speaker 1: eat a food they forbid themselves to have. She encourages
Speaker 1: people to feel free to eat in ways that diet
Speaker 1: culture forbids, and here to remind you, I think you
Speaker 1: are allowed to eat ice cream whenever you want. I know,
Speaker 1: sounds crazy, right, Well, if you're like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not Why write what diets have you been on
Speaker 1: that I've told you can only have ice cream at
Speaker 1: a certain time. Sammy has this very plain spoken way
Speaker 1: of talking that's appealing. You feel like she's talking too
Speaker 1: straight and probably because of that and other reasons will
Speaker 1: get into later. Sammy's TikTok's are pretty popular. She has
Speaker 1: more than six hundred and fifty thousand followers. Sammy is
Speaker 1: one of the dietitians and certified Intuitive Eating counselor. Out
Speaker 1: of practice, she started called Find Food Freedom. They call
Speaker 1: themselves non diet Dietitians and they offer coaching along with
Speaker 1: the online classes I took to be a certified Intuitive
Speaker 1: Eating counselor, Sammy and others went through special training and
Speaker 1: even coaching by the founders of Intuitive Eating. Do you
Speaker 1: want to understand what intuitive eating really is? This is
Speaker 1: Sammy teaching and Intuitive Eating training that I went to
Speaker 1: a little while ago. At first, I honestly wasn't sure
Speaker 1: what to expect. I figured though, that a lot of
Speaker 1: my attitudes about food were about to get challenged big time.
Speaker 1: Do you have a desire to find food freedom but
Speaker 1: are also feeling afraid to give up the pursuit of
Speaker 1: weight loss and don't really know how those interact together.
Speaker 1: Do you genuinely want to improve your health? Do you
Speaker 1: want to understand how it impacts health? Have you been
Speaker 1: dieting for what seems your entire life? Do you have
Speaker 1: shame and guilt associated to body size? Do you feel
Speaker 1: uncomfortable or discomfort in your body? All? Right, now that
Speaker 1: we've met our instructor, it's syllabus time. Intuitive eating has
Speaker 1: ten core principles. We'll go over some of them today,
Speaker 1: like the first rule of intuitive eating, which is you
Speaker 1: do not talk about intuitive eating. Oh wait, that's fight club,
Speaker 1: My bad. But actually the first principle of intuitive eating
Speaker 1: is to reject diets, specifically to reject the diet mentality.
Speaker 1: That means tossing the South Beach Diet book, getting angry
Speaker 1: about how when a diet didn't work you felt like
Speaker 1: it was your fault, un following social media accounts that
Speaker 1: make you feel bad, telling up how much time you've
Speaker 1: spent logging food in the new map, think about how
Speaker 1: many hours of your day are spent on the obsession
Speaker 1: about food or body image. And I want you to
Speaker 1: think about what would you do with those hours, those
Speaker 1: minutes every single day, if you could get them back right,
Speaker 1: take it seriously, think about it, I for one, would
Speaker 1: be a lot better at some of my hobbies like pottery.
Speaker 1: During the training, it became clear just how much dieting
Speaker 1: takes over people's lives and how sad they were about it.
Speaker 1: They got really emotional. Sammy asked people how long they
Speaker 1: had been dieting for trapped in a cycle of weight
Speaker 1: loss and weight regain. So let's look at some of
Speaker 1: these answers coming through years since I was twelve, ten years,
Speaker 1: my whole life over forty years, since high school thirty
Speaker 1: plus years. Then Sammy asked people what they thought would
Speaker 1: happen if they chose a different path, and they gave
Speaker 1: such hopeful answers. Here's Sammy reading those out from a
Speaker 1: chat in the online training. I would be the best
Speaker 1: version of myself. It would take away the guilt. I
Speaker 1: would not be thinking about food always right. I would
Speaker 1: think I would feel free. Did you hear that last one?
Speaker 1: I think I would feel free to me? This reflects
Speaker 1: how constrained diets make a lot of people feel like
Speaker 1: they're running on some kind of treadmill. They can never
Speaker 1: get off. Rejecting diets means letting go of them in
Speaker 1: an abstract sort of way, rejecting new and paleo and
Speaker 1: whole thirty. But it also means rejecting diets in terms
Speaker 1: of what you wanted them to do for you. No
Speaker 1: longer holding out hope that there's some new program that
Speaker 1: will work for you, no longer believing that you can
Speaker 1: change your diet, change your body, and change your life.
Speaker 1: In fact, along with rejecting diets, Intuitive eating asks people
Speaker 1: to also cut weight out of the equation. Stop worrying
Speaker 1: about your weight when you eat, even stop weighing yourself entirely.
Speaker 1: The scale is just a false idle. That was a
Speaker 1: lease again, the co founder of Intuitive eating with self care,
Speaker 1: self compassion, tuning into hunger, fullness, and enjoyment satisfaction. Our
Speaker 1: bodies are going to be what they're going to be,
Speaker 1: and it's about learning how to be liberated from a
Speaker 1: belief that you have to change your body in order
Speaker 1: to be acceptable. Discomfort with diets is actually where intuitive
Speaker 1: eating first began back in the es. Remember how I
Speaker 1: said earlier that Elise Rush is a dietitian. You can
Speaker 1: think of dietitians as food and nutrition experts. Many of
Speaker 1: them work in medical settings, including to help people lose weight.
Speaker 1: When Alice was first starting out, what you wanted was
Speaker 1: to work with kids living with developmental disabilities, but that
Speaker 1: didn't end up happening. Instead, doctors were sending patients to
Speaker 1: her for weight loss to help improve health metrics like
Speaker 1: blood pressure and blood sugar, and I wasn't interested in that.
Speaker 1: Alice had previously struggled with an eating disorder, so she
Speaker 1: doesn't of doing this kind of work. Then she comes
Speaker 1: across some books that sparked a totally different way of
Speaker 1: thinking about eating and weight. One of them was a
Speaker 1: bestseller called Fat is a Feminist Issue. It was written
Speaker 1: by the psychotherapist Susie Orbach and is still known today
Speaker 1: as a classic anti diet book. The other book, called
Speaker 1: Overcoming over Eating, was also geared at helping people stop dieting.
Speaker 1: Lease is intrigued by this idea of letting go of
Speaker 1: dieting and helping people trust themselves instead of depriving themselves,
Speaker 1: so she gets together with another similarly minded dietitian named
Speaker 1: Evelyn Tripoli, and they write a book. It's called Intuitive Eating,
Speaker 1: first published it's sold more than five hundred thousand copies
Speaker 1: to date. Back to our lesson plan, we were just
Speaker 1: talking about how the first principle of intuitive eating is
Speaker 1: to reject the diet mentality check. The next principle is
Speaker 1: to honor your hunger a k a. Eating when you're hungry.
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned earlier, that doesn't sound like it should
Speaker 1: be so hard, but remember we've absorbed all these rules
Speaker 1: about food from diets. Intuitive eating teaches that because of this,
Speaker 1: we have to rediscover things like hunger and fullness. First
Speaker 1: things first, how do you know that you're hungry? Your
Speaker 1: stomach growls, right, Maybe you feel a little sick, dizzy
Speaker 1: or tired. And for that matter, how do you know
Speaker 1: you're full? You can actually feel it in your stomach. Right,
Speaker 1: Maybe you're not as interested in your meal anymore. Again,
Speaker 1: we're in class, so your homework assignment today is to
Speaker 1: track how hungry and full you are over the course
Speaker 1: of a day. This is actually an exercise Sammy private
Speaker 1: assigned in our classes together. As you're eating, think about
Speaker 1: enjoying your food. Are you able to savor it and
Speaker 1: take pleasure in eating? Then, when you're finished, how does
Speaker 1: that fullness feel do you feel a little too full,
Speaker 1: does it feel pleasant? Or maybe you're not full at
Speaker 1: all and you need to eat more. But it's not
Speaker 1: enough to just tune into your bodily cues about eating,
Speaker 1: Sammy take it away. To be able to listen to
Speaker 1: the body, to be able to be intentional and aware
Speaker 1: of hunger and fullness, we have to drop the guilt
Speaker 1: and shame associated with food because so often what will
Speaker 1: happen is people will want to listen to their hunger
Speaker 1: and fullness and satisfaction, but they can't even tap into
Speaker 1: that because there's so much noise going on in their
Speaker 1: heads saying you shouldn't be eating that, why are you eating? That,
Speaker 1: you're such a bad person. I bet a lot of
Speaker 1: people listening right now have had these kinds of feelings
Speaker 1: about food. I know I have, But it's kind of
Speaker 1: crazy to think about because when you step back for
Speaker 1: a second, I'm sure you can see that you're not
Speaker 1: a bad person for eating a brownie, and you're not
Speaker 1: a good person because you had grilled vegetables at dinner.
Speaker 1: And yet we get these kinds of messages all the
Speaker 1: time about food, which brings us to the third principle
Speaker 1: of intuitive eating, we have to make peace with food.
Speaker 1: Intuitive eating argues that the reason we overeat a k
Speaker 1: a binge is because of restrictions on food. Dieting has
Speaker 1: some form of restriction. We do that restriction as long
Speaker 1: as humanly possible, right until maybe we don't have access
Speaker 1: to food, or stressful life event comes up, or simply
Speaker 1: we just can't do it anymore. And then we usually
Speaker 1: binge or feel out of control around the foods that
Speaker 1: were restricted. We say, see, this is why I have
Speaker 1: to be on a diet. I can't be trusted around X,
Speaker 1: Y or Z food. Right. This also aligns with how
Speaker 1: researchers think about scarcity, which is that it leads people
Speaker 1: to focus disproportionately on whatever is in short supply. If
Speaker 1: I'm trying to avoid sweets and there's a dispenser of
Speaker 1: chocolate covered almonds at work, I'm going to think about
Speaker 1: them a lot. An Intuitive eating argues that I will
Speaker 1: at some point eat those chocolate covered almonds, and probably
Speaker 1: over eat them. Actually, you hit a breaking point where
Speaker 1: you say about that I would like some cars. By
Speaker 1: intuitive eatings, logic diets are actually creating the very issues
Speaker 1: they're trying to stop Okay, so learning how to intuitively
Speaker 1: eat means getting rid of food rules. Now, what does
Speaker 1: intuitive eating mean? Basically just having whatever you want to eat?
Speaker 1: Sammy says that this is sort of a misconception because
Speaker 1: what you want might actually change once you let yourself
Speaker 1: have it. That's the idea. Anyway. Now, when we are
Speaker 1: going to big getting stages of our intuitive eating journey
Speaker 1: and trying to make peace with food, we do allow
Speaker 1: all foods and it will feel We call it a
Speaker 1: couple different things. You might hear celebratory binge phase, honeymoon phase,
Speaker 1: where we're eating a lot of those fun foods or
Speaker 1: those playfoods, or those foods that were restricted for fifteen
Speaker 1: plus years. Sammy teaches that over time, you get used
Speaker 1: to it. Once you've given yourself permission, those foods may
Speaker 1: not seem as exciting anymore. When there are no good
Speaker 1: or bad foods, food is just food. You can have
Speaker 1: it when you want it. Any good college class wouldn't
Speaker 1: be complete without a case study. So here's an example.
Speaker 1: A Lease Rush, one of the founders of intuitive eating,
Speaker 1: gave me. She had this one client who loved to
Speaker 1: eat grilled cheese sandwiches, but wouldn't let herself eat them.
Speaker 1: So I said, well, how about having grilled cheese every
Speaker 1: day for this coming week? Until I say it again,
Speaker 1: that's right, grilled cheese every day for a week, prescribed
Speaker 1: by none other than a dietitian. What do you think
Speaker 1: of that? If your reaction to that was really you're
Speaker 1: probably not alone. It's worth thinking about why that was
Speaker 1: your reaction, Probably because it's really really hard to shape
Speaker 1: diet culture and the messages it sends. I'd also gently
Speaker 1: remind you that we're in coast today to learn to
Speaker 1: make peace with food. Remember, but you almost can't do
Speaker 1: that without principle four of intuitive eating, which is challenge
Speaker 1: the food police. That refers to the way diets have
Speaker 1: conditioned us to make all these moral judgments about food.
Speaker 1: In this example, Elisa's client has been thinking of grilled
Speaker 1: cheese as bad even though she enjoys it. Maybe she's
Speaker 1: eating salads for lunch instead because salad is good. And
Speaker 1: who was telling her that exactly? Other people or some
Speaker 1: little voice inside herself. That voice is the food police,
Speaker 1: as I learned from Sammy's class. And you challenge the
Speaker 1: food police by letting food be neutral, cutting out all
Speaker 1: the moral judgments about it. So let's go back to
Speaker 1: Elsa's client, who has been told to live her best
Speaker 1: grilled cheese life. What happened with that? She came in
Speaker 1: the next week and I said, how did it go?
Speaker 1: And she said, after about three days, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to look at any grilled cheese, and all I wanted
Speaker 1: was a salad. Imagine a world in which grilled cheese
Speaker 1: isn't bad and a salad isn't good. They're just foods.
Speaker 1: They both fuel you, even if one of them is
Speaker 1: more nutritious, and you can choose the grilled cheese because
Speaker 1: you're going to enjoy it more without feeling like the
Speaker 1: size of your body means you need to make a
Speaker 1: different choice. Intuitive eating says this world doesn't have to
Speaker 1: live just in our imaginations, that it is entirely within reach.
Speaker 1: You might be wondering by now whether people gain weight
Speaker 1: when they intuitively eat, and the answer is yes, that
Speaker 1: could happen. People could also lose weight, or their weight
Speaker 1: could stay the same. Anything could happen. It seems to
Speaker 1: me that the whole point is to take fear out
Speaker 1: of the equation, to not think of your weight changing
Speaker 1: as a consequence. Instead, the point is to develop a
Speaker 1: new relationship with food, to see it as both fuel
Speaker 1: for your body but also a source of enjoyment and pleasure,
Speaker 1: and also to develop a new relationship with your body.
Speaker 1: Recognize that you may never be in as small a
Speaker 1: body as you would like to be, or as beauty
Speaker 1: ideals say you should be. You might look the way
Speaker 1: you look your whole life, and that would be okay,
Speaker 1: because intuitive eating says that people can be healthy no
Speaker 1: matter what they weigh. But I still couldn't help but
Speaker 1: think about healthy eating. If we could eat whatever we wanted,
Speaker 1: would we still make healthy choices? Elise and other intuitive
Speaker 1: eating teachers say that we would. I think that's a
Speaker 1: big misconception that having that food available will lead you
Speaker 1: to only eating that food. If you're really listening to
Speaker 1: your body, you're not going to feel very well. If
Speaker 1: that's all you need, you might start craving a salad
Speaker 1: after a few days of eating grilled cheese sandwiches like
Speaker 1: Alice's client. Alice says that making peace with food is
Speaker 1: emotionally healthier for us, and that when it comes to eating,
Speaker 1: mental health is as important, if not more important, than
Speaker 1: physical health. Intuitive eating also does teach people about nutrition,
Speaker 1: which they call gentle nutrition. It is the last principle
Speaker 1: of intuitive eating principle number ten, and was the final
Speaker 1: lesson of the course I took. Alice says that eventually
Speaker 1: you're not eating only so called bad foods or so
Speaker 1: called good foods. You have a nice balance of many
Speaker 1: different kinds of foods so that you can feel good
Speaker 1: and get satisfied. And who doesn't want to feel good
Speaker 1: and get satisfied. Even before I started reporting this series,
Speaker 1: I have thought a lot about food and weight. They
Speaker 1: are incredibly thorny subjects. We get so many messages about
Speaker 1: them in society, especially as a woman. And also they
Speaker 1: are completely unavoidable. You've got to eat, and no matter what,
Speaker 1: you're going to weigh something, so you're faced with countless
Speaker 1: fraud decisions each day about how to handle it. Intuitive
Speaker 1: eating seems like it could offer a solution. Listen to
Speaker 1: what your body needs. Let food be fuel and also
Speaker 1: a source of pleasure. Stop judging yourself for what you eat.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be thin to be healthy. In
Speaker 1: some utopian world where what you eat doesn't matter and
Speaker 1: there's no baggage or judgment about food and weight. This
Speaker 1: is the way you might design things. It's very appealing.
Speaker 1: In other words, there's a clear draw. But in the
Speaker 1: real world you feel like you can't do that because
Speaker 1: if you eat chocolate cake when you want to eat
Speaker 1: chocolate cake, you worry about gaining weight and harming your health.
Speaker 1: Intuitive eating gives you permission to eat and think about
Speaker 1: your weight more on your own terms. Can you truly
Speaker 1: make peace with food and your body if it means
Speaker 1: that you change the world around you? Doesn't? And that's
Speaker 1: not the only issue I ran into when I started
Speaker 1: digging deep into intuitive eating, Like, for example, there's the
Speaker 1: question of whether eating this way will actually make you healthier.
Speaker 1: First the good Calling food the enemy may sound melodramatic,
Speaker 1: but that is genuinely how it feels. Sometimes, Shifting to
Speaker 1: think about food as fuel and also a source of
Speaker 1: pleasure felt pretty empowering to me. I began to ask
Speaker 1: questions about how hungry I was in a given moment,
Speaker 1: and why some kinds of foods felt off limits, whether
Speaker 1: I really needed to feel bad after eating chocolate as
Speaker 1: an afternoon snack. Also, until this, I hadn't realized how
Speaker 1: many diet foods I eat, even though I'm not on
Speaker 1: a diet, they just have this hold on me on
Speaker 1: lots of us. Really, when I see a hard boiled egg,
Speaker 1: I almost immediately remove the yolk before eating it. Why
Speaker 1: diet culture? I buy race cakes as a snack. Why
Speaker 1: diet culture? Even the trend in recent years towards cauliflower
Speaker 1: versions of everything from pizza crusts to pasta's diet culture?
Speaker 1: Are we eating these things because we actually like them?
Speaker 1: Intuitive eating, to its credit, asks these kinds of questions,
Speaker 1: and it brings some important insights to the table. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about how dieting takes these things we rely on
Speaker 1: for life and twists them, turning them into bad things
Speaker 1: like calories which fuel our bodies each day. And it's
Speaker 1: holbalism which takes those calories and uses them to keep
Speaker 1: us going. Yet we're afraid of having too many calories,
Speaker 1: and we blame our metabolism for being too slow. Not
Speaker 1: to mention, dieting makes us hate our actual bodies, which
Speaker 1: do so many things for us besides look great in
Speaker 1: a pair of pants, like breathe pump gallons of blood
Speaker 1: each day, he'll broken bones, fight off viruses. Intuitive eating
Speaker 1: points out how wrong it is to demonize the very
Speaker 1: things keeping us alive. It also tries to take the
Speaker 1: judgment out of food, treating food choices with gentleness and
Speaker 1: understanding instead. No good or bad foods again, every offids
Speaker 1: are emotionally equivalent. This appealed a lot to me too.
Speaker 1: All this thinking inspired what I like to think of
Speaker 1: as the great chocolate covered almond experiment of Yes, for
Speaker 1: anyone who listened to episode one, we're talking nuts again.
Speaker 1: What can I say? I've actually been eating a lot
Speaker 1: more since that episode. I hadn't realized before how rarely
Speaker 1: I eat them. We tend to think of nuts as
Speaker 1: high calorie foods, but studies have found that they actually
Speaker 1: have fewer calories than we thought. Of course, in the
Speaker 1: world of intuitive eating, that also shouldn't matter. Nuts aren't
Speaker 1: good or bad. They're just food, and you can eat
Speaker 1: them if you want to. Chocolate covered almonds are probably
Speaker 1: my favorite, probably because of the chocolate part. We have
Speaker 1: them at work, and honestly I usually try to avoid
Speaker 1: them because I've been thinking of them as not the
Speaker 1: healthiest thing. Right, intuitive eating inspired me to buy chocolate
Speaker 1: covered almonds and bring them home. I ate them as
Speaker 1: an afternoon snack one day while watching TV. Another day
Speaker 1: in the evening, I even shared a few with my partner,
Speaker 1: and then the bag was done and I felt fine
Speaker 1: about it. The earth didn't chatter or anything, my pants
Speaker 1: still fit, nothing really happened. I like treating the almonds
Speaker 1: like they weren't dangerous a threat to everything I hold
Speaker 1: near and dear, Like I could have them and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't really change anything. They were just chocolate covered almonds
Speaker 1: after all. Still, I wondered if I was really eating intuitively,
Speaker 1: was I doing it right? So I put the question
Speaker 1: to Sammy, the intuitive eating teacher. Kudos to you for
Speaker 1: that experiment, and you know, kind of digging deeper there.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason I was second guessing myself so
Speaker 1: much with the chocolate almonds is that they seemed like
Speaker 1: maybe still a pretty healthy food at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, even if they were liberally doused in chocolate.
Speaker 1: I explained that to her. Was I still at the
Speaker 1: end of the day buying into diets in some way
Speaker 1: giving myself permission to eat but not too much permission?
Speaker 1: Is there right or wrong food? Absolutely not. This is
Speaker 1: going to be different for every one, And what I
Speaker 1: would invite you to do is get curious about whether
Speaker 1: it's chocolate covered almonds, whether it was the chocolate part
Speaker 1: of the chocolate covered almonds. You know, what are the
Speaker 1: messages you've gotten around chocolate covered almonds? Sammy is saying,
Speaker 1: where did I get the idea that I can't eat
Speaker 1: the chocolate covered almonds? My guess is it's because of
Speaker 1: the chocolate part. Sweet treats like this are completely villainized
Speaker 1: by our culture, even though depending on where you live,
Speaker 1: they're also kind of everywhere. As a result, I've kind
Speaker 1: of developed all these ideas about how often it's okay
Speaker 1: to eat these kinds of desserts and also at what
Speaker 1: times of the day self imposed rules that lead me
Speaker 1: to avoid chocolate covered almonds at work. She also said
Speaker 1: that what I experienced when I brought them into my
Speaker 1: house is called food habituation. The big fear people here
Speaker 1: when they're like, Sammy, you don't understand if I have
Speaker 1: unconditional permission to eat I'm just going to eat chocolate
Speaker 1: covered almonds, pizza cake, cookie, ice cream, brownies, like all
Speaker 1: these foods for the rest of my life. But Sammy says,
Speaker 1: actually you won't. So what you did is you normalized
Speaker 1: chocolate covered almonds. Right, You brought them into the home
Speaker 1: and said, I'm going to allow myself to eat these
Speaker 1: whenever I want, however much I want, and they're here
Speaker 1: and they're normal, and then by the end of the
Speaker 1: week you're like, you know, I'm kind of like good.
Speaker 1: The point isn't to like ruin chocolate covered almonds for
Speaker 1: myself and never have them again. The point is to
Speaker 1: stop being afraid of them by simply making them available.
Speaker 1: If diet rules have made them feel off limits, make
Speaker 1: them neutral instead. The idea is pretty simple. If you're
Speaker 1: craving chocolate covered almonds, eat the chocolate covered almonds. But
Speaker 1: when I was talking about this with my editor Kristin V. Brown,
Speaker 1: she raised this interesting question. Here's she said, Can we
Speaker 1: really trust the food cues our body are sending us? Like,
Speaker 1: if you're stressed and eat a bunch of snacks, that's
Speaker 1: not because you're actually hungry, And there is a difference
Speaker 1: between physical hunger and emotional hunger. In fact, our environment
Speaker 1: is pretty optimized to make us feel like we want
Speaker 1: to eat, even if it isn't actually lunchtime. We smell
Speaker 1: the fries being cooked, or see an enticing picture of
Speaker 1: a slice of cake in a store window. Scientists sometimes
Speaker 1: call things like this the obesogenic environment. It basically means
Speaker 1: the kinds of unhealthy environments that surround us each day.
Speaker 1: I asked Sarah Dowset, a psychologist who teaches an intuitive
Speaker 1: eating class called Diet Culture Dropout, about that. She told
Speaker 1: me that we can eat the fries or a slice
Speaker 1: of cake. It's okay. Even if you don't feel so
Speaker 1: good afterwards. That feeling will pass and you can move
Speaker 1: on enjoying food and taking comfort in It is demonized
Speaker 1: by our society, but they actually shouldn't be. If food
Speaker 1: offers us comfort in a difficult time, maybe that's actually good,
Speaker 1: not bad. It happens, and it doesn't make you a
Speaker 1: bad person. Might do a behavior exercise where I ask
Speaker 1: people to list five forbidden foods. I was just telling
Speaker 1: Sarah that I have a bit of a sweet tooth,
Speaker 1: so for you, it might be the chocolate and the
Speaker 1: cinnamon buns. And to get five helpings of those foods.
Speaker 1: So five sittings of those foods and allow yourself to
Speaker 1: eat them just for that, just for that one time,
Speaker 1: to take away the guilt, just to engage in the
Speaker 1: pure pleasure of eating those foods. It turns out that
Speaker 1: my chocolate covered on and experiment was pretty on point.
Speaker 1: So okay, that's one part of intuitive eating, ditching diets
Speaker 1: and food rules along with them, trusting your body, actually
Speaker 1: enjoying your food instead of fearing it. And believe me,
Speaker 1: I can get on board with all this, especially after
Speaker 1: all we've learned about diets. But there's another part of
Speaker 1: intuitive eating too. Maybe you remember this from our lesson earlier.
Speaker 1: Intuitive eating means eating without worrying about your weight. I
Speaker 1: can appreciate the value of looking inwards and questioning why
Speaker 1: you eat the way you do. Are you enjoying it?
Speaker 1: Is it serving you? But applying that knowledge moving forward
Speaker 1: as I live my life was harder than I thought
Speaker 1: it would be. Like does that mean no checking nutrition
Speaker 1: labels anymore? Or that you shouldn't choose foods just because
Speaker 1: they sound like healthier choices. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, healthy eating is important. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: lose track of that. All this, by the way, turns
Speaker 1: out to be something other people find challenging too, especially
Speaker 1: letting go of the weight calculation. But at last, Rush,
Speaker 1: the Intuitive Eating co founder, we spoke with earlier says
Speaker 1: it's absolutely critical. That is a very difficult part of this.
Speaker 1: And as long as you're thinking about losing weight and
Speaker 1: you're not going to be able to start trusting your
Speaker 1: own body. In other words, diets and food rules make
Speaker 1: a lot of background noise, and as long as they're
Speaker 1: doing that, you can't listen to what your body is
Speaker 1: really saying. Here's Sammy again, the entire your purpose of
Speaker 1: it is to bring back trust and connection with your body,
Speaker 1: so to quiet the external noise and rules of diet
Speaker 1: culture and to be able to turn inward and trust
Speaker 1: your body's cues. But there are limits to turning inward.
Speaker 1: As I took intuitive eating classes and experimented with not
Speaker 1: feeling guilty about eating chocolate covered almonds, I kept coming
Speaker 1: back to this one thought. Does such an idealistic way
Speaker 1: of thinking and eating work in the real world. Like
Speaker 1: Sammy just said, intuitive eating means tuning out all of
Speaker 1: the pressures and messages of the world and just listening
Speaker 1: to your body. Is that even possible? The world that
Speaker 1: we live in is full of pressure to eat better
Speaker 1: and look thinner, But our world is also set up
Speaker 1: in a way that it's often hard to do these things,
Speaker 1: especially when money, time, and other resources are limited. We
Speaker 1: live and work in places where it's hard to access
Speaker 1: nutrient dense foods and easy to access the opposite, where
Speaker 1: it's easy to drive but hard to walk, where long
Speaker 1: hours at the office and other obligations like taking care
Speaker 1: of your kids mean that healthy meals and exercise don't
Speaker 1: always fit into a day. We can try to quiet
Speaker 1: the external noise and rules of diet culture and listen
Speaker 1: to our bodies, but there is plenty of other noise
Speaker 1: out there already guiding how we eat and live. In
Speaker 1: this way, intuitive eating seems a lot like dieting to me.
Speaker 1: The goals of intuitive eating are different from a diet, obviously,
Speaker 1: but its way of getting to that goal is sort
Speaker 1: of the same. Both tell us that it's on us
Speaker 1: to achieve whatever we want, while we'll sort of ignoring
Speaker 1: the realities of life. Both insist on individual change in
Speaker 1: the face of societal barriers. I don't know if we
Speaker 1: can do that, and I'm skeptical that our bodies naturally
Speaker 1: know how to be healthy. I don't think that the
Speaker 1: biggest problem here is that we just haven't been listening
Speaker 1: to what our bodies are telling us. I wondered whether
Speaker 1: anyone had tried to answer that question. That brought me
Speaker 1: to Jatta Banasi, a researcher at Columbia. Jatta recently did
Speaker 1: an analysis with colleagues that looked at whether intuitive eating
Speaker 1: is actually linked with health benefits. Remember, lots of studies
Speaker 1: usually focus on weight loss. They didn't do that. Instead,
Speaker 1: they were looking specifically at measures like blood pressure and
Speaker 1: regulation of blood sugar, but not a lot of studies
Speaker 1: had actually measured this, only about ten. There were some
Speaker 1: signs that intuitive eating could improve these kinds of health
Speaker 1: outcomes more than say, dieting, but that wasn't always the case.
Speaker 1: To say these interventions are really what we're looking for
Speaker 1: to promote the parameters is still difficult to to say
Speaker 1: it's not possible at the current time. Seven of the
Speaker 1: ten studies they looked at found that intuitive eating was
Speaker 1: more effective than a control group dieting in improving cardio
Speaker 1: metabolic outcomes like glucose regulation, lipid profile, inflammatory markers, and
Speaker 1: blood pressure, but the results on those measures weren't consistent
Speaker 1: across studies. Like with glucose regulation, two studies found intuitive
Speaker 1: eating helped that more than the control group, while four
Speaker 1: found no relative effect. So it's unclear weather intuitive eating
Speaker 1: leads to better physical health, but the results were way
Speaker 1: more clear when it comes to mental health. This kind
Speaker 1: of intervention can be used to promote a better relationship
Speaker 1: with food and body. Intuitive eating can help us feel
Speaker 1: better about eating and our bodies, but when it comes
Speaker 1: to our health, even though we have some promising signs,
Speaker 1: the science is very mixed. We just can't say right
Speaker 1: now that intuitive eating makes us physically healthier. The relationship
Speaker 1: between the two is still to be determined. So keeping
Speaker 1: that in mind, what's the value of intuitive eating if
Speaker 1: it doesn't make you physically healthier, If it actually makes
Speaker 1: you physically unhealthier but you're in a better place mentally.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that, but I think
Speaker 1: it's hard to have confidence in a system that can
Speaker 1: only do so much for you. Feeling better about yourself
Speaker 1: is good, don't get me wrong, but it can only
Speaker 1: go so far, especially if physically you're not feeling all
Speaker 1: that good. There are things that we have to do
Speaker 1: for our health that aren't always gonna be something we
Speaker 1: want to do, and maybe harsh rules about what's good
Speaker 1: and what's bad have screwed us up, but I think
Speaker 1: sometimes people do need that, to be told to eat
Speaker 1: your broccoli or get enough protein in your diet. Every
Speaker 1: day diets have definitely taken it way too far, but
Speaker 1: rules aren't always bad. People come to dieting to improve
Speaker 1: their health. Intuitive eating pitches itself as a better way forward,
Speaker 1: except we don't actually know that. People also come to
Speaker 1: dieting to change the way they look. Intuitive eating makes
Speaker 1: it pretty clear they can't do that for you. Changing
Speaker 1: how you look isn't the point. But even in this world,
Speaker 1: the same beauty ideals are perpetuated. I saw that as
Speaker 1: I researched this episode, a lot of the prominent intuitive
Speaker 1: eating personalities look a certain way thin, white, blonde. Are
Speaker 1: people just following them because they want to look like them,
Speaker 1: because they hope intuitive eating will get them that body.
Speaker 1: How much of it is still about that elusive hope
Speaker 1: of losing weight at the end of the day, being
Speaker 1: white and thin cells. This is Delina Sodo, a registered
Speaker 1: dietitian who's Dominican and lives in Philadelphia. Delina has brown,
Speaker 1: curly hair and a big, expressive smile. She's also thin
Speaker 1: herself and so when we see these big accounts, a
Speaker 1: lot of the time, I think that people are gravitated
Speaker 1: to them more because they fit that mold of what
Speaker 1: the beauty standards that we have created are. She also
Speaker 1: sees this as a problem, although there's a lot of
Speaker 1: us trying to push back on that narrative, because again,
Speaker 1: intuitivating isn't eat like me, look like me, right, it's
Speaker 1: allowing yourself to um kind of like make peace with
Speaker 1: your body and fight that weight neutrality. Except weight neutrality
Speaker 1: isn't the norm today. There are all these really widely
Speaker 1: held societal beliefs that being thinner is not only healthier
Speaker 1: but better. Weighing more can sometimes even feel like there
Speaker 1: is a moral judgment attached to it. The list of
Speaker 1: people who are still very focused on the scale includes doctors,
Speaker 1: family members, friends, co workers, and classmates. Intuitive eating says,
Speaker 1: you're just supposed to choose a different path and have
Speaker 1: different beliefs. But how do you do that throughout everything
Speaker 1: you've thought you knew and start all over again? Maybe
Speaker 1: the real question is what exactly are we trying to
Speaker 1: accomplish here? Anyway, Dieting is trying to get people healthier
Speaker 1: by making their bodies smaller, and by this point we
Speaker 1: know that you can't really use dieting to make people's
Speaker 1: bodies smaller. Intuitive eating isn't trying to do that. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's about making people feel better about their bodies and
Speaker 1: how they eat, and it's based on the idea that
Speaker 1: you don't have to be skinny to be healthy. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, intuitive eating isn't necessarily going to
Speaker 1: lead to better health, and even if you feel better
Speaker 1: about eating in your body, you still have to live
Speaker 1: in a world where thinner is treated as better. In
Speaker 1: that sense, intuitive eating only solves part of the problem.
Speaker 1: You can try to change the way you think about
Speaker 1: all this stuff, but you can't change how everyone thinks
Speaker 1: about it. So you can certainly try, and that'll make
Speaker 1: it harder for you too to stay the course. Let
Speaker 1: me be clear, people have really messed up attitudes about
Speaker 1: food and people in bigger bodies. We can and should
Speaker 1: try to change that. But if it's just one person
Speaker 1: at a time, will it work. Maybe at some level
Speaker 1: these problems are unsolvable anyway. There's a reason people have
Speaker 1: turned to dieting for hundreds of years. It has this
Speaker 1: irresistible pull. We're drawn to the idea that everything in
Speaker 1: our lives will be better, or if we just lost
Speaker 1: that stubborn weight, that getting skinnier will stop us from
Speaker 1: developing terrible sounding diseases or dying early. We want that
Speaker 1: for ourselves and the people we love. We all want
Speaker 1: to believe it's within our reach, but we can't actually
Speaker 1: guarantee any of it, that we won't develop terrible sounding
Speaker 1: diseases or die early or anything else. And we can't
Speaker 1: guarantee weight loss either, even if we do all the
Speaker 1: right things. It would be great to send you away
Speaker 1: with this utopian new approach to eating that will solve
Speaker 1: all of our problems. But I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: that because giving you a simple answer to complex questions
Speaker 1: is exactly what diets have done for countless years, and
Speaker 1: the answer isn't eating. And even though intuitive eating brings
Speaker 1: some valuable new ideas to the table, probably not intuitive
Speaker 1: eating either. I hope instead that you'll walk away thinking
Speaker 1: about change, how we can make it easier to be healthier,
Speaker 1: but also how we can be more inclusive and let
Speaker 1: people make their own decisions that freedom intuitive eating tries
Speaker 1: to bring to the process of eating. I think we
Speaker 1: could all benefit from that in ways that go far
Speaker 1: beyond our dinner plates. Losing It is written and reported
Speaker 1: by me Emma Court. Kristin V. Brown is our editor,
Speaker 1: Magnus Hendrickson is our senior producer, Stacy Wong our associate producer,
Speaker 1: and Blake Maples is our audio engineer. Our theme was
Speaker 1: composed us and performed by Hannis Brown thanks to Francesca
Speaker 1: Leavy and Tim Annette. Be sure to subscribe to Prognosis
Speaker 1: if you haven't already, and if you like our show,
Speaker 1: please leave us a review that helps others find out
Speaker 1: about it. Thanks for listening, See you next season.