Your body decides your diet
Our body is very intelligent. It has a multifarious and complex network. All the organs work in harmony and work towards self-healing and overall wellbeing. Our bodies give us cues about everything, even when we are hungry. Relying on your body’s intuition about when to eat and how much to eat can help solve a lot of health problems.
Intuitive eating helps a person tune in to understanding body signals and breaking the cycle of chronic dieting. Humans are born intuitive eaters. For instance, babies cry when hungry, and stop crying when they are full. Kids naturally balance out the intake of their food from time to time, eating only when they feel hungry. However, with age that power of inner intuition gets lost and then people are trained to finish everything in the plate.
Contrary to this, intuitive eating is a style of eating that promotes a healthy attitude toward food and your own body. The rudimentary idea is to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. It all begins with a person getting trained to trust his body and its intuition. Differentiate between emotional and physical hunger. While emotional hunger is driven by emotional need, physical hunger is where the body signals you to replenish nutrients.
Mindful eating implies that a person is well aware of the nourishment food provides. He has to trust his inner wisdom to select the food that satisfies both body and taste buds. Follow these rules.Reject the diets: This eating plan entirely rejects diet plans because it is believed that dieting is not sustainable.
Respect your hunger: Generally, diets become unsustainable because often such diets leave the body half-fed and food-deprived. One must follow the cues given by the body.Make peace with food: Certain foods are forbidden, which makes them even more tempting. In intuitive eating our body gets leverage to eat everything, but moderately.
Challenge the food police: One simple guideline is to keep the “food police” away. Listen to your body’s needs and eat accordingly.Respect your fullness: As a principle, eat when hungry, stop when full.
The author is an expert in nutrition science at Intelligent Ageing, Delhi