Intuitive Eating Can Help Break Unhealthy Dieting Habits

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If you are a chronic dieter and have been dieting on and off for years, you no doubt have developed some unhealthy dieting habits. Many dieters achieve weight loss results, only to then end up being heavier than when they started. It’s the habits and relationship with foods (especially if considered unpalatable) that often cause problems.

Let’s take a look at how intuitive eating may be able to help you break free from the diet culture and your unhealthy habits.

Unhealthy Dieting Habits You Need To Break Now

Over the years, you may have developed habits that you probably didn’t realize were bad for your health. You just happily followed the diet rules to get the results you were hoping for. Here are some of those bad habits.

• Undereating - If you undereat you wouldn’t have been getting enough healthy food daily.

• Overeating - Consuming too much of a specific type of food and not eating a variety of nutritious food.

• Over-exercising – If you don’t enjoy your exercise routines, you can end up not exercising at all.

Unhealthy dieting habits can lead to poor nutrition, making you feel stressed and low in energy. If they continue long-term, you can develop health problems, such as high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol, heart disease, and depression, and may ultimately lead to an eating disorder.

How Intuitive Eating Can Help

When a diet program doesn’t work for you, you might feel bad and think negatively of yourself. You may see yourself as a failure, however, it’s not your fault. Intuitive eating will help you free yourself from feeling like you have to follow strict rules of any diet, and help you see yourself and your body differently. You will learn to listen to your body rather than the latest fad diet.

Here’s how it can help you.

Intuitive Eating Allows You To Listen To Your Body

The body sends signals when you are hungry and full, and you must honor those internal cues to take charge of your eating habits. When you listen to your body, you can eat the food that you need, and feel satisfied rather than deprived.

Of course, it’s not as easy as it sounds, you can’t just go and eat everything in sight, as that will make you overfull. However, with practice, you’ll be more in tune with your body’s signals and know when to eat and when to stop.

Intuitive Eating Teaches You Moderation

When dieting, why do you overeat at times? It’s because you often feel deprived of what you are allowed to eat and what you really want to eat. So when you get a chance to eat them, you feel like you have to eat as much as you can because who knows when you’ll be able to eat them again! It may be your last chance!

With intuitive eating, you learn to eat in moderation and with satisfaction. You are allowed to eat any food you want, but you learn your limit.

At first, you might overindulge if you are still locked into the diet culture. Over time your body will lose the appeal of seeking out those once-forbidden foods, because they won’t be forbidden anymore.

Intuitive Eating Helps You Manage Your Stress Better

Dieting can be stressful! Unfortunately, you might have developed a habit of emotional eating or turning to food whenever you have had a bad day. It can also be that you deprive yourself of food when you are going through an ordeal.

Intuitive eating teaches you to find other ways to deal with your emotions, away from the pantry, or eat food in a way that helps you. Food shouldn’t be your only coping method. You will learn other ways to cope with stress.

Intuitive Eating Allows You To Respect Your Body

Gained another pound? Lost a bit? No problem. Intuitive eating is not about losing weight. You will gain or lose depending on what your body needs, so don’t feel bad about what you see on the scale. If necessary, throw them away!

Intuitive eating teaches you to respect your body and avoid feeling ashamed or blaming yourself for “failing” in your diet. Instead, you should accept that bodies come in all shapes and sizes. There is no one perfect size or shape to achieve, even if the magazine covers try to tell you otherwise. That’s how they make their money.

So you don’t have to exercise until you are dying on the floor. You only have to move your body because it makes you feel good, not because the rule says you must exercise for X number of hours a day to lose X number of pounds. The best way to get exercise is to go for a walk in the sunshine, if and when you can.

In Summary

The diet culture may have led you to unhealthy dieting habits, which you need to replace with good ones if you want to be healthier. Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach that helps you get in touch with your internal cues, encouraging you to break any bad habits and eat healthily. When you understand your body better, you can make better and healthier food choices.

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