Intuitive Eating In Eating Disorder Recovery

Years of dieting and losing weight only to gain it shortly after can cause eating disorders or irregular and unhealthy eating behaviors. If you are trying to recover from an eating disorder, or need help with bad chronic dieting habits, intuitive eating might help with the process.

Intuitive eating will help you learn to recognize when you are hungry, when you are full, your food choices, food satisfaction, and more.

It’s important to understand that this is not just another diet approach. It’s not about losing or gaining weight, it’s not even a strict lifestyle change. Rather than following rules similar to the typical diet culture, intuitive eating has a flexible process. It’s more about getting in tune with your body and its internal signals.

You will actually learn about yourself and your body.

How Does Intuitive Eating Help In Recovery From An Eating Disorder?

Eating disorders make you lose touch with your body’s natural signals of when to eat, when you’re full, what food you like to eat, and so on. Intuitive eating usually becomes helpful in the later stage of your recovery plan.

First, your dietitian will work with you. The treatment involves a structured meal plan, which includes scheduled meals and appropriate allowances for food. This is important to restore the body, nourish it with proper nutrition, and establish a normal and consistent eating pattern.

Then, when your weight has been restored to a healthy level, and you no longer feel the need to binge, purge, or feel guilty about food, intuitive eating can be introduced. At this point, you would have also restored some of your internal cues for feeling hunger and fullness.

How intuitive eating helps in overcoming an eating disorder revolves around the key principles of this practice, developed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Let’s take a look at each principle and how it helps in a person’s recovery.

Principle 1 - Reject The Diet Mentality

The diet culture teaches you to restrict your food intake. This principle helps you understand why food restrictions and dieting aren’t sustainable.

Principle 2 - Honor Your Hunger

You and your dietitian will set consistent meal intervals, but you’ll learn to recognize hunger as a healthy sign that you need in order to feed your body for energy and health. It’s not something to either fear or be proud of.

Principle 3 - Make Peace With Food

You can eat all kinds of food that you want and enjoy. At the early stage of your treatment, your dietitian will establish the recommended portions.

Principle 4 - Challenge The Food Police

You must let go of your false beliefs and judgments of food. Don’t feel guilty about your food choices, which you need to expand and experiment on.

Principle 5 - Respect Your Fullness

This is quite a challenging part of an eating disorder recovery. As part of your treatment, you may need to eat more, but that can sometimes make you feel that you’re overly full and uncomfortable. At the start, you need to eat mindfully and take note of how you feel. Recognize what it feels like to be full but not bloated and uncomfortable.

Principle 6 - Discover The Satisfaction Factor

Eat foods that make you feel happy, particularly those that you craved but perhaps ignored when you were dieting or starving yourself. When you feel more content and satisfied in a positive way, your mind and body feel better.

Principle 7 - Cope With Your Emotions

Learn to find ways to cope with your emotions without using food for the fix, or restricting your food. You may need to work closely with your therapist on different ways to manage your emotions.

Principle 8 - Respect Your Body

Many people suffering from an eating disorder have a distorted body image, which may have led them to develop an eating disorder in the first place. If you do, you need to work on accepting and loving your body, let go of any judgment, and just pay attention to what happens in your physical body.

Principle 9 - Exercise and Feel The Difference

Learn to exercise moderately or do enough physical movement that you enjoy every day, rather than overexercising. Move your body and notice how that makes you feel. We all need some form of physical activity for our health.

Principle 10 - Honor Your Health With Gentle Nutrition

Follow your meal plans in your treatment, which can help nourish your body through proper nutrition. Any type of eating disorder deprives the body of the correct amounts of nutrients the body needs to perform optimally.

In Summary

If you have an eating disorder and have been told that intuitive eating might not work for you in the early stages of your recovery, don’t feel discouraged. In most cases, an intervention stage is needed before you can transition to long-term recovery. Remember, intuitive eating is a journey rather than an ultimate destination.

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