Intuitive Eating
In the process of disconnecting our everyday lives from natural rhythms (including our natural diets) we have become desensitised and confused in our ability to accurately respond to our needs and instincts.
Nature’s survival mechanism has been to make food nourishing. We have adapted mechanisms for taste preferences – sweet wild foods are usually safe and bitter/astringent foods are often poisonous; we have physiological mechanisms for attempting to correct nutrient deficiencies by inducing specific food cravings; we have natural preferences for energy dense foods because of the survival advantage they offer; and we have a natural capacity for fat storage, again for survival benefit; and so on. In essence, our body is able to provide our minds with very specific signals for meeting nutrition related physiological needs.
In Paleolithic times, hunger was satisfied with whatever foods were available. Excesses were naturally curbed by availability limits. Thus, engaging in non-hungry eating, or overeating particular foods simply for the ‘taste’ of it, was a fairly innocuous, if not advantageous, activity. However, today’s food milieu is far more complex and potentially dangerous in terms of obesity and diet related illness. Furthermore, non-hungry eating is endemic. In contemporary times, food is frequently used either consciously or unconsciously to manage anxiety, stress and to bring comfort when lonely, sad or afraid. Resisting food desires, sticking to a diet plan, and being slim are often considered in today’s society to be praiseworthy. Failure in these areas can lead to feelings of insufficient willpower, worthlessness, hopelessness and feeling ‘fat’/‘bad’. Non-hungry eating is a pattern likely recognisable by the great majority of us. But what if non-hungry eating was not viewed as a failure, but as a sensible ‘self-help’ technique? What if eating is a way of helping yourself in the best way you know how? What if reaching out for food is simply a way of trying to manage a stressful moment in time? Understanding non-hungry eating in this way is a powerful way of seeing stress-induced eating behaviour for what it truly is: a mechanism by which food and eating serves to distract one from an uncomfortable emotional state. Many of us have a calming problem, not a food problem.
The work of therapy is to mindfully re-attune and attend to the messages of the body. Doing so re-awakens natural wisdom and allows healing to unfold.