Make Peace With All Your Food

Do you ever feel guilty about what you're eating? If you do, you are not alone. With so many high expectations in today's society about what the perfect body should look like it has caused many people to feel both good and bad about their own bodies and life because it's all centred around the food they eat. Dieting is a frequent solution offered and turned to by many that want to lose weight and lower their blood pressure quickly. However, the desired effects of dieting tend to dissipate after a year. Dieting may look successful, but it's a short-lived solution as it has more of a negative impact on your overall health and well-being.

As humans, we are taught when we are hungry we need to consume food for energy and then we stop consuming food when we are full to then work it off through moderate physical activity. Sometimes, through implementing strict diets and food rules we forget that we are supposed to just have a naturally enjoyable relationship with eating our foods that is properly portioned. So how do you enjoy and make peace with all your food? Try Intuitive Eating.

Intuitive Eating is a form of self-care, as you are listening and making food choices to respect your body and its health, based on what feels right to you.

Intuitive eating is possible for anyone to implement in their daily life and by making peace with all your food it is the first step towards improving your health, mind and body. Below are a few important steps to change your perspective to be a more intuitive eater:

1: Get Rid of the Diet Mentality: Following diet books, magazines and articles all can offer you false hope for losing weight. Diet culture promotes quick, easy and permanent weight loss solutions, which are lies that continuously lead you to believe that you failed at reaching your goal. If you think a new diet or food plan being implemented is going to work it will prevent you from discovering how to become a more intuitive eater.

2: Nourish Your Body: Keep your body well-fed, so it can use the energy consumed to burn off when being active. By not ignoring your hunger and listening to your body's needs it is the first biological signal and stage for rebuilding trust within yourself and the food you select to consume.

3. Make Peace With Food: Depriving yourself of specific foods can lead you to eventually "give in" to your uncontrollable cravings and you are more likely to overeat and feel guilty for not being able to maintain control of the food you consume. Give yourself permission to eat the food and regulate your diet to be more balanced and at peace.

4. Battle the Food Police Mindset: Diet culture has made individuals declare certain foods as "good" and others "bad" to eat. The food police is rooted in our psyche and we tend to give all foods labels to what is good or bad based on our own points of view. Challenging the food police is a step towards being a more intuitive eater.

5. Enjoy Your Food: We often forget to enjoy the simple pleasure and satisfaction eating food gives us. By creating an environment where you have just the right amount or portion of food it becomes easier to feel content and satisfied making it easier for you to reach a decision that you've had "enough".

6. Listen to Your Body: Your body gives signals to when you are full and no longer hungry. Observe these body signals, even stop and ask yourself if you are still hungry or becoming comfortably full. This can lead you to be more intuitive when consuming food.

7. Recognize Emotional Eating: It's easy to eat based on our emotions to distract us or make us feel better. However, acting on emotional hunger may only make you feel even worse in the long run. Ultimately, dealing with the source of the emotions head-on is the best way to overcome emotional eating.

8. Honor Your Body: Not everyone has the same body size or shape. Accept the fact you have a different genetic blueprint. Diet mentality has led to people having unrealistic expectations and being overly critical of your body, but if everyone was the same size or shape the world would be a boring place! So take pride in your body being different than others and give your body the respect and appreciation it deserves.

9. Activity Does Wonders For You: Just by getting more active in your life you feel and look amazing! You feel more energized, focused, relaxed, healthy and it boosts your self-confidence. Becoming more active allows you to feel the difference in your body and become more attuned to it.

10. Make Healthy Food Choices: Remember that you don't have to eat perfectly healthy all the time to be healthy. You can enjoy unhealthy snacks or meals at times, what really matters is what eat consistently over time. Strive for progress, not perfection, that is what matters!

Intuitive eating gives you the power back to feel more confident in your decisions and happier in your life. By breaking free from diets and food restrictions, implementing intuitive eating into your life is able to build a stronger relationship between food and exercise allowing you to be healthier in the long term.