Intuitive Eating & Body Confidence with Terri Pugh

54. Why learning IE feels tough for a while

August 16, 2022 Terri Pugh Episode 54
Intuitive Eating & Body Confidence with Terri Pugh
54. Why learning IE feels tough for a while
Intuitive Eating & Body Positivity
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Show Notes Transcript

I'm going to tell you how learning to play pool lefthanded, learning to drive, and becoming an intuitive eater are all very similar! I'm gonna get scientific on you for an episode! I love the psychology behind the process of learning, and this week I'm going to explain why it's important to not beat yourself up for not learning intuitive eating in 5 minutes, and why it's actually a good thing that it takes a while to get it.


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Please note, this podcast is intended to be general information for entertainment purposes only. Any figures quoted are correct at the time of recording. As always, please seek the support of a registered professional before making changes to your diet or lifestyle⁠, or if you feel that you are affected by any of the topics discussed.

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A quick heads up - my transcriptions are automatically generated. I do not type them manually. For this reason there may be errors, incorrect words, bad spelling, bad grammar, and other things that just seem a little 'off'. You'll still be able to understand what is being said though, so please just ignore that and enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the intuitive eating and Body Positivity podcast. I'm Terri and I'll be talking about all things intuitive eating, body positivity, and health at every size, and shaking off weight stigma, diet culture, and food rules, so that we can all have a better relationship with food and our bodies. 
 
 

Hello. Let's start with the obligatory weather report. That's what you're getting at the beginning of every episode at the moment, isn't it? Ah, the weather has cooled down a little bit. Which is lovely because my God doesn't it mess with everything. 
 
 

It messes with your sleep. It messes with how comfortable you are in your body. It messes with, you know, what you like to wear. So much that the heat gets involved with. It's alright for you people who live in these hot countries that are used to it and have air conditioning and things like that, but we're just not cut out for it here in the UK. We're really not. 
 
 

So anyway. It's cooled down a little bit, which is lovely. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. I love the sun. But I like it to a certain degree, like late twenties is enough for me. I don't know what that translates to in the other kind of currency of temperature, but late twenties is good for me and it means you can do stuff and it's comfortable. And I'm not up for this mid to late thirties lark that's going on at the moment, no? 
 
 

Done some nice stuff in this last week. Went to a christening on Sunday that was so nice. It was really lovely to go and see people that I haven't seen for ages and catch up with people. And isn't it nice when you see people and everybody genuinely interested in what everybody else got going on? 
 
 

So I had lots of people interested in what I'm doing, what the business is doing, and how everything's going. And the same back. I was really interested in everybody else's life's. Life's?Lives! Yeah, it's just really nice to see people that hadn't seen for ages. It was so lovely. You may have seen on my Instagram stories though, that the best thing ever about that day was the ice cream van. 
 
 

So the parents had organised for this ice cream van to come and just hand out free ice creams and they were incredible. They were really good ice creams. There were lots of different cones but I like mine in a tub, so I had a tub and it was full of this whippy ice cream, and I had mine with a raspberrysauce   and marshmallows and a flake, and some more marshmallows and a wafer. 
 
 

Ah, so good. My husband had an Oreo one, so there was loads of chocolate and lots of Oreo crumble in it on it around it. So good, so good. W hat a blooming, brilliant idea that was, especially in the heatwave. But there's ice cream van was there from quite early, so she'd also, or they had rather, also put on a really nice hog roast. Ohh, it was so good. So there was pork and rolls, and then there was some really nice pasta, salad and homemade coleslaw and some salady bits. It was just really lovely. 
 
 

I didn't have the bread. I looked at it and I thought you know what? I don't actually need a bread roll, so I had some of the pork. I had some stuffing and I had some of the salads and the pastas and stuff and actually I enjoyed that much more than I would have enjoyed the bread roll. But the ice cream turned up before this and it was so hot cause I don't know if you know, but we've had a heatwave here. It was, it was so hot that we had the ice cream before the main course, so we had ice cream before the savoury, sweet before savoury. 
 
 

And who cares? W ho actually cares? I still had my meal. I still enjoyed it. I didn't ruin my meal by having this ice cream first. I really enjoyed the ice cream then. I enjoyed the savoury meal and the ice cream van was still there and we could just keep going as much as we wanted. And some people went up for seconds but I was done. I was happy I'd had enough so I didn't go back for another ice cream. Which is unheard of, because I love ice cream. 
 
 

So yeah, it's good to know that you can take advantage of these things as they happen without stressing when you're intuitive eater because my God, that amount of ice cream for starters would have been the absolute downfall of the week to come if I were still dieting. Because that would have been that. It would have been a case of well that's it, that's ruined it now, hasn't it? But it didn't. I enjoyed the ice cream. I enjoyed some of the food that was there. We had cake. I took cake home. Yeah, that was a big slab of cake, but we took cake home. And that yeah, it was lovely. It was so good. Absolutely perfect. 
 
 

And on Saturday I went for the usual pool practice. If you are not new to this podcast, you will know that I am a pool player, and if you are new to this podcast, well guess what? I'm a pool player. And we have practice every Saturday or most Saturdays. So I went along and it got a little bit crazy and we ended up all playing left-handed. Right, now, what a bloomin farce of a game that was. 
 
 

Let's just say. I can't do anything very well left-handed. I am right-handed. I'm not left-handed and the whole intention was that we all swapped our dominant hand and played with our non dominant hand. Some people did really very well. I did not. I am terrible as a left-handed pool player. But it got me thinking, it got me thinking about how our brains work. 
 
 

So I like to think I'm pretty good at pool but it doesn't come naturally to me. I have to put the graft in. I have to practice. I have to have coaching. I really have to actively, consciously, increase my skills and learn and develop. For some people it comes naturally, but not on the whole. There are people obviously in life that are born with natural talent, and that's that happens in all walks of life with lots of different skills and talents. Some people are just naturally able to do something, but for the majority of us we have to learn, right? We have to actively learn how to do things. 
 
 

And this is the same for intuitive eating. It's absolutely the same for that and so I thought we'd dive into why that is a little bit. This is taking me right back to my days when I was learning psychology at college. I adored psychology and one of the things that really stuck with me and I've used and thought about over and over again as life has gone by is the hierarchy of competency. 
 
 

Now stick with me OK. I know this sounds like we're going to hit loads of jargon. Hierarchy of competency. Terri, what could that possibly be? I speak English. I do not speak jargon. Now, don't panic. I'm not going to get all jargon on you, but I think you will really like this. It will really help you to understand the thought process behind learning how to do something. And it really applies to intuitive eating and body positivity and body confidence and things like that, so it's a good one for us to look at. 
 
 

So this hierarchy of competency is basically the four stages that you go through when you're learning something new and the example that I was taught was driving. OK. Now before I explain how it applies, let me tell you the four stages of this hierarchy are unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent, consciously competent and unconsciously competent. Now, it may not surprise you to hear that I have that written down, because otherwise I end up in this whole garbled mess of consciousness and competency. 
 
 

Anyway, those actual terms don't really matter, right? I'm not expecting you to learn that. But you will see how they apply now, so going back to the driving. This is the example that I learned this by and it's a good one, so i'll use it again. 
 
 

When youare younger, when you're growing up, you are unconsciously incompetent at driving. A nd what that means is you don't know how bad you are at driving, right? You know you can't do it because you haven't learned how to do it, but you don't know how bad you are, right, and you don't even think about how bad you are. You just are completely unconsciously incompetent. Unconsciously unable to do this thing. Y ou don't know about that, though, because you haven't even considered whether you can drive or not yet. 
 
 

Then you start to learn to drive, so you get a driving instructor, for example, and you get in the car for the first time, and they try and teach you, and try and explain how everything works, and as you start to drive you realise you can't do it. And that's not a bad thing, but it's an awareness, and so all of a sudden you are consciously incompetent. And what that means is you now know that you can't do it. You know how bad you are. You know that you don't have the knowledge and the skills and the tools and the practice to be able to put that into action. So you're sat in this car. You haven't got a clue what to do. You are consciously incompetent. 
 
 

But then you have some lessons. You have more lessons and as time goes on, all of a sudden you're actually able to do things you're able to make that car go down the street. You're able to turn the corner. You're able to park it in a parking space. Some people are able to park in a parking space. But all of a sudden you realise actually if I think about this, and if I concentrate, I can do it. I can really do it. And so now you are consciously competent, because now you're aware that you can do it. You might not be completely practiced at it, but you know that you can do it. 
 
 

And then the final of the four stages is when you're unconsciously competent, and that's when you've been driving a million years and when you get in a car, you don't even have to think about it anymore. I mean, if you are a driver, if you yourself are a driver, and you've been driving a long time when you get in the car now (Well, don't get in the car now, but think about when you're getting in the car now) do you think about what pedal you're pushing? Do you feel that you need to think about what gear you need to be in constantly? Do you have to think really hard about how far to turn the steering wheel? Do you have to really concentrate every time you wanna break every time you want to slow down, every time you want to pull out of a junction? No, because these things become second nature and then you are unconsciously competent because you are so competent you don't even have to think about it anymore. 
 
 

It's a good model, right? Are you interested? This stuff absolutely blows my mind. I love learning about stuff like this, so this is really interesting for me. And so when I was playing pool on the weekend, I was thinking oh God, this is really difficult. N ow i think most of the time when I play pool, I am consciously competent because I am not able to play pool in a way where I don't even have to think about it. I have to still line my shots up properly. I have to be stood right. I have to think about how I'm approaching a shot. I have to think about angles. I have to think about where the cueball's going to go. I have to think about these things so I am consciously competent. I can do it. I'm aware of it, I'm thinking about it. 
 
 

When I started playing pool I guess I was not. I was unconsciously incompetent. I was consciously incompetent when I started to learn how to play pool because I realised I didn't really know how to do it. I didn't know the rules, I didn't know how to take the shots and then I was learning and you know it worked through the stages. 
 
 

When we were playing on Saturday and all of a sudden we had to go to left-handed playing once again I was consciously incompetent. I knew that I couldn't do it without learning about it. I knew that I would have to go through the whole process again of learning how to stand, how to hold the cue, how to line the shot up, and how to... there's a lot that goes into standing correctly and playing pool. 
 
 

I would have to learn how to get everything in line again. You know, how I stand, how I line the cue up, how I aim, where I'm expecting things to go and so I was very consciously incompetent. I was thinking, God, it's been a long time since I've learned a skill like that. And actually before that, the last time I learnt a skill was when I went to become an intuitive eater, when I changed my eating habits, when I stopped dieting and I was trying to learn this new process. 
 
 

So let's take those 4 stages and let's apply it to eating behaviours. So this is how I see it. You're gonna like this. 
 
 

When you are dieting, when you are happy dieting, (because if we've all been in that place, haven't we where we think that this is it, this is the thing I'm going to do for the rest of my life, I know what I'm doing here. I am happy here it is working for me. Happy days) you don't know at that point about intuitive eating. You don't know about how bad your relationship is with food. I mean, you might do. In all fairness, you might know about that. But you don't know about intuitive eating. You don't know how to do it. You don't even recognise that you don't know how to do it because you haven't thought about it. You haven't even considered doing intuitive eating. So at that point, you are unconsciously incompetent at intuitive eating, cause you haven't even thought about it. 
 
 

But let's take this one step further. You are unconsciously competent at dieting. Is this confusing? You are unconsciously competent at dieting because you've got to the point with dieting where you know the plan inside out. You know the syns, you know the points, you know the macros, you know the calories, you know what you need to do in order to make that diet plan work. So you are completely competent. You are dieting without even thinking about it. You are able to rattle these numbers off and rattle this plan off. Without even thinking about it, so you are unconsciously competent at dieting. 
 
 

But you are unconsciously incompetent at intuitive eating because you haven't even thought about intuitive eating yet. And then you fall out of love with that diet, because all of a sudden it's not working so well anymore and you hit that plateau, and you're not losing weight and you're realising that actually there's food that you really miss, and you're not enjoying the food that you're making anymore. 
 
 

You know... all this stuff that starts to creep in, and then you start looking elsewhere and intuitive eating catches your eye and you think, Well, I'd quite like to do that. I'm so sick of dieting. I'm so sick of it messing with my life. I'm so sick of restricting all the time and then having these binges at the weekend and then spending my week trying to claw it back. I'm so sick of that. I'd like to try and choice of eating. And then you're in stage two, which is consciously incompetent. 
 
 

You've had the realisation and you know what you want to do. You know what you want to change and you're looking into it, but you don't know where to start. You have no idea what to do or how to do it. You have got some books. You've watched some videos. You've followed some social media profiles. But you don't know what to do to put it into practice. You think you've got an idea of the principles of intuitive editing, but you don't really know and you don't know who to trust. You don't know what professionals on social media to trust, and you are very aware that you don't know what you're doing. And at that point, you're consciously incompetent. 
 
 

Alright? You're still with me. Still with me? And then as you start to put things in place, and you start to practice intuitive eating, you start to have an idea of what you're doing you move into the next step which is consciously competent, and now you have an awareness of what you're doing. 
 
 

You are understanding the principles. You are learning the intuitive eating lingo. You are understanding what people are saying. You know people who are talking on podcasts. For example, some of the things that I say might not have made sense to you right at the beginning, but maybe some of them are actually making sense and you understand them now because you're starting to learn more about it. Or maybe other podcasts that you listen to, or books that you read, or blogs that you read or social media posts that you see. 
 
 

You're starting to understand what some of these things mean, and not only you are understanding the words, but your understanding, the relevance and the importance of the things, you're starting to put it into context and you're starting to make it all make sense in your life. And this is consciously competent. This means you now know that if you are thinking about it you can probably do this. It's not natural yet. It's not intuitive at its best yet, but you are starting to realise that actually I think I've got this. I think... I think I understand it, and I think it's starting to make sense. 
 
 

You know that when you sit down to eat, if you are conscious about it and you are mindful about it, that you can tune into your hunger and fullness signals. You can understand whether you're satisfied or not. You can think about whether you're enjoying your food. Whether you're enjoying the surroundings, whether the food that you've put on your plate is actually what you wanted or not, all of these sort of things. This is complete, conscious competency because you can put some thought into it and you can. You can do this. You can get it done. 
 
 

And then the final step, where you are unconsciously competent, is when it is total natural intuitive eating. You don't have to think about it anymore. Eating is easy, food is enjoyable. And you just naturally are swayed towards what type of food you want to eat. You don't have to stop and really consider what you want to eat. You don't have to overthink every meal. You just recognise that you're hungry, naturally know what you want to eat. Naturally know when you've had enough. That's intuitive eating complete. That is unconsciously competent. You don't have to think about anymore, you just do it. 
 
 

And these four stages of learning, they apply to body image stuff just as much as the food. 
 
 

So you don't realise at the beginning how bad your thoughts are, how negative your thoughts are towards yourself. Maybe you just do it, you just don't realise you haven't thought about it. And then you start to have a realization that actually I'm not really very kind to myself in the way I think about my body. I am negative, I criticise myself, that sort of thing and then as you start to practice. This better way of thinking and a more positive way of thinking and reframing the natural thoughts. You think, okay, this is hard. I don't even know how to apply this to myself yet, so at that point you're consciously incompetent. 
 
 

You know what you want to do, but you know it's going to take some work to actually make it happen. And then as you start to work on it, you start to catch yourself having negative thoughts. You start to see yourself in the mirror and change what you say to yourself for example, you start to wear clothes that are comfortable for you rather than the stuff that is uncomfortable and doesn't fit you all that kind of thing. 
 
 

Then it's hard work, but you're consciously competent because you know what you need to do. You know what you need to change. And then the final step is when you no longer need to consciously correct yourself, it just happens. Maybe you'll look in a shop window and your response will be 'urgh... ohh no, i'm awesome'. You know, you go to criticise and then you change it around and you do it without even thinking. Or when you hear somebody else criticising themselves and your response is, come on, be positive. You know, let's find some good things in you. 
 
 

If that's your natural thoughts, your natural ingrained state of thinking, then you are unconsciously competent at the body image work. And that's not to say you have to have completed any of these things. With intuitive eating, all the body image work, you don't have to have ticked the box and said, yeah, I'm finished now. You can always still be working on this stuff, but if it is becoming second nature, then that's that final stage of learning. 
 
 

So now you have some kind of understanding of how these four stages work can you now be a little bit kinder to yourself when you're frustrated because you haven't quite got something? Because there's one of the principles you haven't quite nailed yet because you're still in the point in time where you're trying to make sense of it, and you're trying to see how it fits in with your life. You know we've all got to go through these stages. 
 
 

I know it's frustrating but it happens all through our lives with everything, and this should really be no different. There's the driving like I've already explained. When you're a small child when you're learning to tie your shoelace is that's exactly the same process. When you learn to read and write. When you learn how to, I don't know, dance for example. Maybe you're learning a dance style. You're going to dance classes or something. When you're learning a trade. Maybe you're learning a trade like you're learning how to be a plumber or an electrician or something. You have to go through all of these stages of learning and intuitive eating should not be any different. 
 
 

Part of the problem with dieting is that we just blindly follow these plans that are set out for us. We don't question things we don't need to understand it, we just follow the plans. Well, actually if you are going to have something as major in your life as a plan, you should do the homework to understand it. But we don't because it's all laid out for us. There is no need for us to learn about it. We just do it because it's all set out for us. 
 
 

So when we come to intuitive eating, it's different because you have to go through the process of learning about it. And it is important to learn about it because firstly, it's not a one size fits all plan like the diet plans. It's not all written out for you in a handy little book. You do have to learn how it applies to you. How your body feels how it suits your lifestyle. How it suits your family for example, and your work life. And you have to see how your relationship with food fits in around all that and how your relationship with your body impacts on all of that. 
 
 

So to do that work and unpick all those things and dive into it a little bit more means that you can understand it and you can learn how to do it. You can learn how to get to a place where you just do it naturally? You have to do the work to understand yourself and your history with food in your body and where your thought patterns come from, because if you don't do that you can't unpick them, and you can't replace them with the new thoughts and beliefs. So that's really good. It's a good thing to need to learn. It's a good thing to take your time and really try and understand it. 
 
 

I mean, can you imagine if a plumber or an electrician didn't really take the time to learn about it? They didn't really take the time to learn about the history behind the cable that they're putting in. You know, what size cable it needs to be and how much power it needs to hold. Or, I mean, I'm not an electrician, but you get the gist of what I'm saying, right? You would like an electrician to know the ins and outs of the trade and understand why things work in the way that they work. To know that they're going to do the right job and a safe job and a good job. so it's exactly the same. This really should be no different. 
 
 

We should be learning. You should go through the process of unravelling things and figuring out what works and what doesn't work and learning how to apply it to yourself. So don't beat yourself up all right. I know it's frustrating. I know the process of learning intuitive eating and learning how to be kinder to yourself can be a real real a real battle, but also can be just, I said it before, but frustrating. 
 
 

It can drive you crazy because you just want to know and you just want to be able to do it. A nd then you have days where it feels like you've gone 2 steps backwards, when you're just going one step forward, but you know it's part of the learning process. A child might start to tie its laces, think they've got it, and then something doesn't quite work so all of a sudden they can't really tie their laces again and they've just got to practice and practice and get it back. It's the same sort of thing. It's the same sort of thing. It's just learning, so don't be yourself up all right. 
 
 

I know it feels like it's going to take forever, but I promise you it won't. J ust take your time, learn it, understand it, and one day my dear friend, you will be unconsciously competent at intuitive eating and being nice to yourself. Sounds good, doesn't it? It's doable, I promise. 
 
 

If you want some help to go through these processes, if you want some actual materials to help you work through everything that goes with the intuitive eating, if you want to be guided through it, if you want to dive into some subjects a little bit more and find out how they apply to you, come and join the membership. 
 
 

Come and join the Eat From Within membership. It's all about understanding, really understanding, intuitive eating and body image, and your body confidence and things like that and putting it into context and helping you to pick through it. Helping you to learn, helping you to go through that... what's it called... hierarchy of competency? Go from being consciously incompetent to unconsciously competent with me. 
 
 

That's catchy. That's a tagline right there. 'Eat from within membership. Go from unconsciously incompetent to unconsciously competent with Terri Pugh'. Do you think you'll catch on? Not so sure. 
 
 

The link is in the show notes though. Come and join me. Come and join me. If you've got any questions just send me a message. I'll answer them for you. 
 
 

The other thing - come and join the chat forums. Come and join the chat forums. They are building into a really nice friendly place to be. There's some really nice people sharing their experiences supporting each other. It's totally free, you don't have to be an Eat From Within member to come and join the Eat From Within chat forums. So that link is also in the show notes. Come along and join in the chat. Surround yourself with information. That I can't stress that highly enough. Surround yourself with people who are on the same path and information that's going to support your journey and you will come on in leaps and bounds, I promise. 
 
 

Right, lovely to chat to you. I will go a little lighter on the psychology next episode. I hope you've enjoyed it. I really like looking at things like this. I really do think that it's nice to have the light hearted stuff. It's nice to just chat about things related to food and the body, but also actually you know you're listening to this because you want to develop your eating habits into something better or you want to build up more body confidence andI think it's good to have an understanding of how these things work as well, so I really hope you've enjoyed this. 
 
 

It's been a little bit more scientific than I would usually bring to the episodes, but yeah, I really hope you've enjoyed it. I'd love to hear your feedback. Drop me a message. Drop me an email. Comment on the social media post that gets released for this episode.You'll see it on Instagram. It'll have the cupcake on the front and the episode title. Come along and let me know what you think of it. I'd love to hear whether you enjoyed this kind of episode or not. And then if you love it, I'll do more. If you don't love it, I'll stay away from it in the future. 
 
 

Right, have a great week. I will speak to you next week. Bye bye.