Gentle Nutrition: Let Go of Dieting to Nurture Your Body
If you have been around here for a while you may have noticed a change in the language used to describe Whole You Nutrition. In the past few months, I have updated business materials including the website to explicitly state “anti-diet gentle nutrition.” You might be wondering, what exactly does anti-diet gentle nutrition mean?
Like most humans, I continue to learn, grow, and evolve. This includes how I approach nutrition and client support. One of the biggest changes in the last few years was to incorporate Intuitive Eating into my practice and life.
intuitive Eating: From Skeptic to Certified Counselor
I was resistant to the concept of Intuitive Eating for years, maybe upwards of a decade. I just didn’t get it, it sounded like giving up. I wasn’t ready to give up, in fact I continued spending more and more time and money in an effort to learn the secret to “fixing” my body.
I study dietetics as an undergrad, certain they would share the secrets of successful weight loss with future dietitians. I was disappointed to find out much of the information was the same old diet rules I learned by the time I was 10 years old (but now with tuition payments and finals!). I was so disappointed in fact, that I skipped doing the dietetic internship and found work in as a food scientist (my other major in college). But I wasn’t done trying to crack the code.
Fast forward several years and I was ready to give nutrition another go. I had found that focusing macros and blood sugar balance gave me more energy and less anxiety. Aha, this must be the answer! I returned to school for a master’s degree with a focus on functional nutrition. I was feeling more energetic, slept better, and had a more stable mood, but my weight really hadn’t changed much at all. I was confident that with more time the weight loss part would catch up. Spoiler – it didn’t.
Everyone’s journey to Intuitive Eating is a little bit different. For me discovering the power of nutrition to improve health metrics like cholesterol, sleep better, and reduce anxiety while not significantly changing weight, gave me the first hand experience that weight and health were not connected.
I now recognize that eating “clean” was just as disordered as my earlier years of dieting that included everything from counting calories to saving up “points” for a splurge meal to skipping meals. I was avoiding my favorite foods or eating sub-par versions of them because gluten or sugar would surely damage my health. I was still in a war with food and my body.
Wanting to find peace with food and respect for my body, cracked open the door to revisit Intuitive Eating. This time when I read it, it didn’t sound like giving up, it sounded rational, logical, and obvious.
Why to Choose An Anti-Diet Approach to Health
The first principle of Intuitive Eating is “Reject the Diet Mentality.” There are decades of research that show intentional weight loss (aka dieting) doesn’t work. The first widely credited study to show that diets are both ineffective (~95% of the time) and can actually cause harm was published in 1959 and reviewed data from the previous 30 years. How is that nearly a century later we are still told that losing weight is healthy? Mind boggling.
Sure, diets can work in the short term. There are plenty of stories of people who have lost weight (I have had several “success” stories over my life). The thing is, if diets truly worked, we would go on them once and be done – happy and healthy for the rest of our years. Additional studies show that most people regain the weight (and often more) within 5 years. It is not you who fails a diet. It is the diet that is the problem.
In addition, intentional weight loss diets aren’t without risk of harm. Frequent dieting leads to weight cycling (sometimes called yo-yo dieting). Weight cycling has been associated with poorer health outcomes and increased mortality. It also can negatively impact mental health including increased risk of eating disorders and lower self-esteem.
Instead of focusing on weight loss as the goal, an anti-diet approach focuses on building health promoting habits like eating enough food at regular times throughout the day, moving your body in enjoyable ways, stress management, sleep hygiene, and gentle nutrition. It is about taking care of yourself and your body rather than hating your body until you deem it an acceptable size.
What is Gentle Nutrition?
The last principle of Intuitive Eating is “Gentle Nutrition.” While intentional weight loss doesn’t work and has the potential to lead to worse health outcomes, that doesn’t mean nutrition doesn’t matter. There is good support for eating more plant foods like fruits, vegetables, and beans but intake of these foods remains low for most people.
This is the part I didn’t get when I first found Intuitive Eating. Like mentioned above, I thought it was giving up. I thought about days of eating pizza, chips, cookies and ice cream (the foods that I think are delicious but were always eliminated when dieting). And though there are no food restrictions with Intuitive Eating, it does involve listening to your body. If I am honestly listening to my body (a skill we can all master) I can tell when a food goes from delicious and pleasurable to something I am consuming for another reason like numbing emotions or rebellion to self-imposed rules.
The reason that gentle nutrition is the last principle is because we often need to change our relationship with food first. We need to break down the food rules that have accumulated from past diets or childhood so we can view all food as morally neutral (no small task!). From this place of food neutrality, we are better able to tune into our internal body signals related to hunger, fullness, and satisfaction that allow us to incorporate external nutrition information without the restrictions of the past. It is a “yes and” approach to nutrition rather than “eat this, not that” mindset.
If you are curious about Intuitive Eating, I encourage you to get more information. You could listen to a podcast interview with Evelyn Tribole, read the book, schedule an appointment for one-on-one support, or dive into 12-Weeks of Intuitive Eating for Skeptics.
To learn more about how working with a nutritionist could help you, schedule a free 15-minute call.