 Image: Link, from Legend of Zelda, cooking food over an open fire. content: food, deconstructing food culture and diet culture Intuitive eating, eat when you feel hungry and quit before your full. No shame and get a workout from time-to-time. Authors and dieticians, Tribole and Resch, describe intuitive eating as a "self-care eating framework integrating instinct, emotion, and rational thought" while challenging chronic dieting fads. This framework proposes that intuitive eating occurs when one builds awareness for hunger/fullness; gains a neutral perspective about food, food cultures, health, and body images; incorporates a variety of strategies for managing emotions; and builds a personally balanced appreciation for the pleasure of food and exercise.
Interoception-building Interoception is our body's way of gauging the internal signals broadcasted as emotions, thoughts, and bodily reactions concurrent to that signal. While not everyone conceptualizes these signals quite the same, interoception awareness causes us to stop, observe, and ask, how did it feel right before eating or becoming full? How did it feel to miss a meal or to engorge beyond fullness? No Food is Good or Bad Depending on the resource you seek, foods subjectively fall into either category all the time. Rather than utilize these subjective, categorical traits, say it with me: food is food, and all food provides some nutrition or sustenance to my body. The Center of Discovery also suggests ditching the labels and accepting that food, in moderation and variation, is fuel. Repeat: Food is fuel. No Body is Good or Bad Positive body image begins with developing a personal appreciation for the body we are given including our genetics, body density, body shape, skin color, ability, neuro-based capacities, etc. Perpetuating positive body image on the societal level occurs when we value peoples' humanities in all of their variety from a neutral perspective. Enjoy Food Mindfully Mindfulness is a form of abstract thinking where we objectively register experiences as they've unfolded. "Mindfulness Eating" (cue upgrade fanfare) begins at foraging and hunting! Just kidding... For some of us. The tenets of "mindfulness eating" include:
Exercise The adage "eat, sleep, and exercise" exists for a reason. So, I'll only reiterate insofar that finding a way to get movement for 30 sustained minutes/day is a solid, minimal threshold, and inadequate sleep leads to impairment at minimum and death at its most fatalistic, unsurprising end. Exercise and sleep are touched on quite a bit with this blog. Manage emotional and Mental Health Vishuddha Das shares lovely insights on how to raise vibrations by 1) avoiding modern, multi-millionaire, news industries which are programmed to manipulate emotions at our lowest state by engaging our stress responses 2) meditate daily 3) embrace all of our emotions 4) listen to positive music 5) stay in shape and have fun. Conclusion and Inquiry While there might be value in some of the above principles, intuitive eating still isn't for everyone. Consider this:
As this is not an exhaustive list of questions you might be interested in asking yourself, I urge you to be as investigative as you desire. This is about what suits your and the context of your living situation, after all.
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