Clay talks to Evelyn Tribole, co-founder of Intuitive Eating, about mindful eating and building a healthy relationship with food. They explore decoding food cravings, breaking free from diet culture, and embracing mindfulness in eating habits for better physical and mental health.
Intuitive eating enhances mental well-being by reconnecting with body signals and fostering self-regulation.
Recognizing subtle signs of disordered eating is essential for mental health and maintaining healthy relationships.
Focus on satisfaction and balance in dietary choices to prevent overeating and build a healthier relationship with food.
Deep dives
Benefits of Intuitive Eating for Mental Health and Well-being
Intuitive eating offers transformative mental health benefits, enhancing overall well-being and daily life experiences. Clients often report rediscovering creativity and joy in activities as their connection with body needs deepens. Embracing intuitive eating fosters a sense of self-regulation and balance, reducing anxiety and promoting mental health alongside physical well-being.
Warning Signs of Disordered Eating and Disconnection from Body Signals
Recognizing signs of disordered eating beyond common disorders like bulimia and anorexia is crucial. Subtle signs include ignoring hunger signals, strict food rules causing anxiety, deprivation leading to primal hunger, and using exercise as a means to justify eating. Disordered eating impacts interpersonal relationships and mental health, necessitating evaluation and mindful self-connection.
Navigating Dietary Choices and Overcoming Disordered Eating Patterns
In navigating dietary choices, a focus on satisfaction and balance over strict rules is key. Habitual behaviors like eliminating foods entirely to control intake may lead to overeating when access is reinstated. Coaching individuals aims at finding middle ground, using habituation to make peace with foods like ice cream, promoting a healthy relationship with eating without rigidity and guilt.
Understanding Habituation to Food Preferences
Eating the same foods over time can lead to habituation where the initial excitement diminishes. By setting eating rules, individuals prevent habituation to food which can lead to fear around consumption. Permission to eat favorite foods can help rekindle enjoyment without causing anxiety. This process of habituation involves giving oneself the freedom to choose and savor the foods without strict rules, which can lead to a healthier relationship with eating.
Exploring Orthorexia and Disconnection from Body Signals
The discussion delves into orthorexia, an obsession with healthy eating leading to unhealthy stress. Highlighting the importance of being present while eating, the guest suggests noticing food sensations and paying attention to eating without distractions. Addressing the impact of diet culture on body image, the conversation emphasizes the need to break free from societal norms and connect with body signals to establish a healthier approach to eating.
Our diet has one of the biggest influences on how we feel and how we perform. But, particularly in the U.S., eating has become rather complicated, given that we have unbelievably easy access to ultra-processed foods and toxic, misleading fad diets (and all the disinformation that comes with them). So on today's episode, Clay talks to Evelyn Tribole, a dietician and one of the co-founders of Intuitive Eating, a framework for eating that is much more a mind-body practice than it is a diet. At its core, it is a system based on using awareness to get in touch with your body's intuition—what it finds nourishing, what it doesn't—after years of it being drowned out by the noise of diet culture. It's something we could all use help with, whether you subscribe to Intuitive Eating principles or not.
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