It can feel impossible to tune into your body’s intuition after spending years eating based on external rules. Sometimes, even after deciding to reject diet culture, we’re not aware of the residual rules we’re still influenced by. Counting macros, eating only ‘healthy’ foods, eating only at specific times, compensating for eating ‘unhealthy’ foods, distracting ourselves in an effort to ignore hunger, doubting whether we’ve earned the right to eat certain foods, and subscribing to a particular diet (vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free) purely for the motivation of losing weight are some of the ways dieting stays ingrained in the choices we make. All of these approaches to eating lead us further away from our interoceptive awareness – the body’s ability to perceive internal sensations. Continuously denying our body’s signals of hunger and fullness results in only be able to recognize the extreme ends of the scale. It takes some time to recalibrate our ability to acknowledge these sensations.
Hunger
A normal reaction to undereating and restricting (even mental restriction) is to feel out of control around food. That exhausted attempt for control is just the problem – it brings out our inner rebel. The need to control our relationship with food leads to increased cravings, obsessively thinking about food, and potentially binging. In The Minnesota Starvation Experiment, 32 physically and mentally healthy men ate normally for 3 months, followed by 6 months of calorie-reduced instake (half, what is considered generous by today’s diet plans). The reported effects were:
- Their metabolism dropped by 40%
- They started collecting recipes (Pinterest fantasizing, anyone?)
- They would draw out meals for 2 hours
- They stole food
- They started craving highly palatable foods like ice cream and malted milk
- They exercised to earn more rations
- They became apathetic, irritable, moody, and depressed
If you’ve ever found yourself behaving similarly, know that it’s a sign your body was protecting you. After the study, the men had developed a fear of food scarcity and would eat 8,000-10,000 calories a day. It took some men 5 months to recover while some never fully returned to normal eating behaviors. This scarcity mindset is also evident in adopted children of poor countries who after years of living with food security still smuggle and hide food. It takes some time, and unconditional permission to eat, for your body to trust and believe that starvation isn’t around the corner again.
Fullness
If you have a history of restricting, you probably take advantage of any self-permitted opportunity to eat and do so franticly until the food’s gone, whether you’ve reached satiety or not. Being a member of the clean-plate club can be an incredibly difficult habit to break. Leaving food behind can bring up feelings of being wasteful, or sadness that the experience is over. When you habitually eat on autopilot, the bites between start and finish are far from mindful. This isn’t something to feel ashamed about, but rather curious.
Becoming re-attuned to your body’s hunger and fullness cues takes practice. To make the process of becoming an intuitive eater a successful one, it’s important to bring pleasure and satisfaction into the eating experience. Minimizing distractions in order to be fully present in the moment helps us consciously choose what we want and why we want it. Above all, self-compassion in the moments that we don’t get it quite right is going to set us up for a sustainable future of intuitive eating.