INTUITIVE EATING: HOW TO EAT ACCORDING TO A DIETITIAN

When it comes to trying to improve our diet, many people tend to focus on what we eat rather than how we eat. But after speaking to dietitian Ursula Philpot – who you may remember from our previous article WHAT TO EAT ACCORDING TO A DIETITIAN – it’s clear that the way we eat is a lot more pivotal to our health than we might think.

The basics…

Ursula says that “in an ideal world you’re aiming to eat like a small baby. Where you give them a range of foods on the table, they pick a bit of what they want according to their instinct and they eat until they’re full”.

She believes that problems arise as we grow up and we live in this environment where we have a million decisions around food based on so many different things and hardly any of them are to do with how ‘hungry am I?’ and ‘what do I want to eat?’.

Intuitive eating is a big movement in the US at the moment and Ursula hopes that its ideals will venture over to the UK in a big way too. “I think we over intellectualise food. I think we apply too many rules.”

To put it in its most simple terms, Ursula says we should just think ‘what do I fancy?’, have enough of it and then stop when we’re full – roughly trying to eat something from each food group but otherwise not worrying about it terribly.

Intuitive eating…

So how can we learn to eat more intuitively? Ursula says that “people do have a deep down instinct. It’s about becoming more in tune with your body, which is particularly hard if you are a binge eater. It takes time, but you can develop those skills.”

Intuitive eating can also be difficult for somebody who is very overweight and has been overweight for most of their life, as they will always feel hungry and will hardly ever feel full. Equally, for someone who is underweight and starving, they will rarely feel hungry and will get full very quickly. However, this doesn’t mean that steps can’t be taken into learning the skills of intuitive eating.

Ursula says: “Your body, your head and your heart will have an idea of what they want, so if you go into a café and look at the glass counter, you’ll have an immediate instinct as to what you want – then the debating and intellectualising it comes in. What you need to go with is your first instinct. It’s about gradually tuning in to what your body is saying.”

The seven hungers…

According to Ursula, a great way to think about intuitive eating is in terms of the ‘seven hungers in the body’, as taught in the book Mindful eating by Jan Chozen Bays. Here’s a brief overview of what they are:

1. Eye hunger: We are very stimulated by sight, so a beautifully presented meal will be a lot more appealing to us than a bucket of slop – even if the ingredients are the same. To satisfy eye hunger, we can really feast our eyes on the food before we put it in our mouths.

2. Nose hunger: Most of what we think of as taste is actually the smell of the food. To satisfy your nose hunger, practice sensitising yourself to the smell of your food, isolated from taste, by taking a pause before eating to really take in the aromas.

3. Mouth hunger: What we think of as tasty, appealing food is often actually socially conditioned or influenced by our upbringing. Generating greater awareness and a sense of open curiosity around the flavours and textures in our mouths as we eat can help satisfy our mouth hunger.

4. Stomach hunger: A rumbling tummy is one of the main ways we recognise hunger. And yet, it doesn’t necessarily mean our body needs food. Listen to the stomach’s cues and start to familiarise yourself with them. Assess your hunger on a scale from 1-10 before a meal, then halfway through check in again and do the same.

5. Cellular hunger: When our cells need nutrients, we might feel irritable, tired or we may get a headache. Through mindfulness, it’s possible to become more aware of our body’s cravings for specific nutrients and to develop some of the inner wisdom we had when we were children.

6. Mind hunger: Constantly being influenced by the current fad diet or the latest nutritional guidelines or research paper, we are deafened by our inner voice telling us that one type of food is good and one type bad, meaning it’s very difficult to pick up on our body’s natural cues. Mindfulness can help calm the mind and allow for a more sensitive awareness of the other cues our body is sending us.

7. Heart hunger: So much of the time, what and when we eat is linked into our emotions. To satisfy our heart hunger, we need to find the intimacy or comfort our heart is craving. Try noticing the emotions that you’ve been feeling just before you have an urge to snack and you might be able to find other ways to satisfy them.

Ursula says that sometimes these hungers “don’t all tally”, which makes it difficult to understand how much food and exactly what our body wants to eat. “Sometimes your eye hunger is really overwhelming, but actually when you sit down to eat the food it doesn’t taste as nice as it looks. Or sometimes it’s the opposite.” It’s all about learning to read your own body as best you can.

How to eat as a binge eater…

Ursula says: “With binge eating, intuitive eating is getting in touch with all those different hungers and working out what’s driving your food decisions.

“At the start everyone will think they’ll just overeat everything and won’t be able to stop, but we’re not suggesting you eat constantly over the day. You have set meal times: You have three meals a day and two snacks. You can have anything you want at those three meals and those two snacks. If you want salt and vinegar crisps for lunch and dinner one day you can have them. The chances are you won’t want them the next day or the day after.

She adds: “When you’ve had binge eating disorder, what you might need to do to start with is take out the ‘super trigger foods’ – the foods that you don’t have any control over. It will give you much more chance of feeling in control of your food.”

Ursula says that variety is important, especially for binge eaters: “Obviously if you’re just choosing one type of food you’re going to become bored of that pretty quickly. It is better if you can have some sort of balance of food but you shouldn’t say ‘oh I can’t have this’ or ‘I can’t have that’. If you want lasagne for breakfast, have it!”

(More on binge eating in another article soon!)

Techniques to practise…

In an effort to become more in tune with your body, Ursula’s advice is this: “Sit down eating really, really helps and taking your time over eating. So not eating while you’re watching telly or while your reading the newspaper or doing anything else. It’s fine to chat to somebody, but try and focus on the food as best you can.

“Focus on the texture of the food, the taste, the different sensations you get from eating and chew slowly, put your knife and fork down between mouthfuls. Take something to drink but don’t drink too much. Pause, reassess, how do I feel? How full is my tummy? Take it slowly and mindfully and reassess hungry constantly.”

Right, got that? But how long exactly are we meant to eat for? “After about 20 minutes your brain is fully aware of how much you’ve eaten but if you eat in less than that time it takes a while to catch up.”