We call the eating system "intuitive eating", which makes the individual an expert on the body's hunger and satiety signals...
What is Intuitive Nutrition?
One of the nutrition types that has become prominent recently is intuitive nutrition. It is a method for the human body to listen to hunger and satiety signals and act accordingly. In this method, we aim to make the person perceive his own needs better and eat accordingly. Therefore, we help to approach the perception of body and food in a healthier manner.
The basic idea of this nutrition method is to stop eating when you are hungry and stop eating when you are full. Unfortunately, you can drift away from the intuitive eating pattern while following many unsustainable, stereotypical diet plans. If you have always followed popular diets, you may not know what to eat anymore. Some chronic diseases, setting meal times, following strict rules, and similar plans cause your body to move away from its own intuition about eating. The aim here is to enable the person to trust his own feelings and know his body. The most important aspect of intuitive nutrition is to separate physical and emotional hunger.
- Physical Hunger: It is a biological urge and informs you that your body needs food. If you postpone the gradually developing physical hunger, you may observe stomach rumbling, bowel sounds, fatigue and nervousness. The feeling of hunger ends when you eat.
- Emotional Hunger: It is the desire to suppress mood changes such as sadness, loneliness, stress and joy by eating. Most of the time, feelings of regret and feeling worse develop after eating. It is not a normal or necessary process, so it must be taken under control.
In summary, intuitive nutrition; It does not contain strict dietary rules. Instead, the goal is to help you learn about your own needs and focus on physical hunger, eliminating emotional hunger.
The Importance of Intuitive Nutrition
By human nature, we are born intuitive eaters. When we reach the point of satiety, we display the behavior of ending eating in satisfaction. Behaviors such as crying when we are hungry, staying silent when we are full, and feeling hungry when we spend a lot of energy are also our instinctive behaviors. Our relationship with food evolves over time. However, as we get older, our parents' attitudes, stress, and strict rules begin to enter our lives; This causes us to move away from our intuitive nutrition orientation that has been learned until then. As a result, our physical hunger is replaced by emotional hunger. We acquire new habits, such as feeling obliged to finish the food on the plate and eating dessert after meals as a reward. If you cannot control this situation, you may experience health problems over time. Likewise, continuous weight lossPsychological problems such as self-control and dissatisfaction with one's body may also arise.
In order to gain a healthy eating habit, you need to know what is good for you and what is not, so it is important to gain the habit of intuitive eating. Strict diet programs are often not suitable for everyone; Everyone's body, metabolic rate, needs and fat burning process are different from each other. Therefore, the best nutrition method is the eating habits you have learned over time based on your own experiences. Separating physical and emotional hunger, not filling emotional gaps with food, and teaching the body to make food choices without being affected by environmental factors form the basis of intuitive nutrition.
This nutrition method, also known as eating awareness; It is a way of moving away from the fear of being judged in food choices and fully perceiving the taste and satisfaction of food. We can show more than sixty studies showing that it has many benefits, such as regulating blood sugar and cholesterol . It also focuses on reducing the emotional sensitivity a person experiences during food consumption. As a result, the individual establishes a healthier relationship with his body by moving away from negative feelings such as social and environmental obligations, the general perception of weight loss and gain, and the perspective of others on his body. All of these allow the body to relieve stress and feel more satisfied while eating. For this reason, intuitive eating is also very important in maintaining weight control.
Who Can Eat Intuitively?
Research conducted; It shows that healthy eating habits must be acquired in order to live a healthy and long life. At this stage, the importance of controlled eating and gaining eating awareness is very important. Especially individuals with problems such as eating disorders and obesity can be treated with intuitive nutrition method.
Anyone who does not have a disease that requires a special nutrition plan can balance their food choices by eating intuitively. In this way, it is possible to develop a more conscious and correct eating habit.
Basic Principles of Intuitive Nutrition
Instinctive or intuitive eating; Unlike classical diet plans, it rejects all principles such as calorie counting, portion control, food restriction and so on. Instead, it focuses on relearning the way of eating by transforming the diet mentality. Feelings associated with eating, such as hunger, fullness and pleasure, are the underlying approaches of intuitive eating. This nutrition covers 10 basic principles. These principles allow you to harmonize with your body and remove the obstacles to your harmony.
1- Rejecting the Diet Mentality
Intermittent fasting, ketogenic diet Even though you have implemented many diet programs, calorie counts and more, you may not have reached your goal or still have not gotten rid of eating problems. Many studies show that weight lost quickly is regained faster. Our metabolic rate slows down in response to the cells' low calorie consumption. In summary, the brain rearranges your metabolism to keep your body alive despite the diets you follow. The result is that you gain weight rather than lose it. Unsuccessful and unsustainable diets damage your self-confidence; in fact, the right thing to do is to gain a lifelong eating habit. Therefore, the important thing is that you do not force your body to follow strict rules and acquire a sustainable habit. Strict rules only show short-term results,
2- Respecting/Honouring Hunger
Being hungry is a normal signal that tells the body that it needs energy. Not giving the body what it needs despite biological signals such as stomach rumbling and low blood pressure causes primitive hunger. Long-term hunger is harmful to the body, often resulting in not being able to control what you eat and eating too quickly. Eating slowly and calmly by noticing hunger is what we call pleasant hunger. What is healthy and recommended in the intuitive eating method is to maintain pleasant hunger.
3- Feeling Fullness
Just like hunger, satiety must also occur consciously. This helps avoid the idea of eating when you're full, even though it's not necessary. Knowing that one does not have to finish what is on one's plate while eating is an important step in feeling full. Sitting down to eat when you are very hungry also causes you to eat more than necessary. Gaining intuitive nutrition awareness will help you perceive the body's hunger and satiety state and stop eating when full. For this reason, it is important to eat slowly and thoroughly enjoy the food you eat.
4- Making Peace with Food
When humans set prohibitions for themselves, they are programmed to violate these prohibitions. Therefore, putting labels on foods such as healthy, harmful, or beneficial actually causes people to think more about their eating style. Planning strict eating times and similar methods also lead to obsessive eating habits. Breaking the prohibitions once will result in eating more than necessary, with the logic that it's broken anyway. Intuitive eating includes the logic of allowing eating unconditionally and approaching all foods equally. In this way, since nothing is prohibited, you can eat as much as you need and enjoy the food.
5- Getting Away from the Diet Police in the Mind
Many people say, "Carbohydrates make you gain weight!", "I won't be liked if I don't lose weight!", "I can't eat at this hour!", "I gained so much weight, I can't go out in public like this!" It fits the stereotyped perceptions that have become more widespread with social media and the internet. However, these are sentences that do not have any definite reality and exist in one's own mind. There should be no black and white rules in gaining a healthy and happy eating habit. For this reason, intuitive nutrition is an awareness that tries to remind people that they do not have to please anyone by opposing this diet police in their minds.
6- Enjoying Food
Loving to eat is not a problem, on the contrary, it is a satisfaction. Although many people think of this as a problem, enjoying food while eating is of great importance for intuitive eating. Being at peace with the idea of nutrition helps you better distinguish foods that are good for your body, but it can also sometimes be used as a defense to prevent emotional crises. This is where there is an unhealthy and unrealistic feeling of pleasure. What intuitive eating advocates is to distinguish between the taste of food and the appetite caused by mood disorders. Eating provides the body with the energy it needs. It is necessary to make this an enjoyable and satisfying experience. In this way, it becomes easier to enjoy food, enjoy nutrition, and develop a controlled eating habit.
7- Not Using Foods for Emotions
Eating is a relaxing and enjoyable action, and it is also a normal and necessary biological process. You can use foods to cope with stress, anxiety, sadness, anger and similar emotions throughout your life. This situation becomes a habit over time and the result is weight gain by eating when full, and after eating, these feelings are replaced by regret and sadness. Although eating may help suppress negative emotions for a short time, it will not provide you with a solution in the long run. Therefore, in order to cope with these negative emotions, people need to develop different methods other than eating and rearrange their eating habits.
Thinking about why you like a food, finding what helps you feel positive other than eating, and not seeing food as a vehicle for your emotions form the basis of intuitive eating principles. Instead, you can choose to do popular activities such as meditating, listening to music, reading books, and so on. When emotional attacks come, it is also an important part of learning to remind oneself about the feelings that will come after eating and that eating will not reverse the situation.
8- Loving Your Body
Today's society has strict rules about what the female body should be like. Even though the same applies to men, the situation is much more serious for women. Social media, television programs and many channels on the internet advocate opposing views on how physical features can be better, and this causes many people to feel uncomfortable with their own bodies. However, it is necessary not to be so judgmental towards your own body and to respect it by accepting it as it is.
This critical view, which develops over time due to environmental factors, may cause the person to eat more or less than necessary, finding the solution in crash diets and medications, which can lead to diseases. Contrary to these views, intuitive nutrition argues that everyone has a unique and different body. Therefore, it is important to accept genetic codes, not compare yourself with others and respect your physical characteristics. Because the body is something that everyone has throughout their lives to walk, sleep, move and live, and it is unique in many ways.
9- Feeling the Exercise Difference
Dieting is often easier than moving. This is the main reason why many people fail to achieve success despite the diets they follow. Exercise, which helps the body lose weight by burning extra calories, is also essential for living a healthy life. Therefore, you should know that the main purpose of every exercise is not to lose weight. Eating for weight loss and planning your exercise process will cause you to feel stressed while moving and see it as a necessity. As a result, exercising ceases to be an enjoyable process and turns into an ordeal, and the result of this stress leads to a deterioration in eating habits.
However, moving helps the body feel better, more dynamic and happier. However, at this point, it is necessary to listen to the body and not force yourself to exercise, for example, when you are sick or weak. Knowing that you don't have to exercise on days when you're tired or feeling bad is an outcome learned through intuitive eating. This; It shows that the person respects and trusts his own body and feelings, and does exercise not to lose weight but to live a healthy life. Therefore, everyone should reward themselves by doing a different activity that is good for them.
10- Be Kind to Yourself
In intuitive nutrition, it is of great importance that the person makes choices that suit his body and make him happy. This is a process that requires relearning various nutrition, activity and thinking habits. During the process, getting rid of the wrong habits that the body has learned due to environmental factors is effective in gaining healthier habits. A day without a single food or a single exercise will not cause weight gain, likewise losing weight will not happen in a moment's action.
In fact, listening to your own body helps you better understand what it needs and learn what is good for you. At this point, the person needs to remind himself what a special and unique body he has. In this way, it is possible to understand that the ready-made nutrition plans offered are not suitable for you, and to better perceive your physical and spiritual needs and respond to them. Hearing the body's signals, responding to them, and knowing yourself helps everyone gain the most ideal habits for themselves over time. However, this process cannot be developed immediately and time is required for adaptation. It is of great importance to reinforce the previous principles, maintain integrity and treat the body well. It may not always be possible to cope with emotions or the process alone,
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