28. Will I gain weight if I start Intuitive Eating?

A lot of people ask if they will gain weight when they start Intuitive Eating. It's almost an impossible question to answer because everyone is different, but there are reasons why you might put on weight. Those reasons aren't bad, weight gain isn't bad, and weight gain isn't even inevitable. This week I'm talking about all of this.

Also, find out what popped up unexpectedly on my Facebook memories that caught me off guard, what I thought of my recent photoshoot, and a little mention of Halloween since it's next week.


Read my blog post about Intuitive Eating at Halloween: https://terripugh.co.uk/halloween

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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.

Related Topics:

Intuitive Eating, HAES, Health At Every Size, Body Positivity, Body Confidence, Body Positive, Anti Diet, Non Diet, Diet Culture, Food Freedom, Fat Acceptance, Fat Liberation, Self Care, Weight Loss, Eating Disorder, Eating Disorder Recovery, Disordered Eating, Nutritional Therapy, Slimming World, Weight Watchers, Cambridge Diet, Cambridge Plan, 121 Diet, Lighter Life, Noom, Coaching, Healing, Health, Wellness, Calorie Counting, Macros

Transcript

0:09

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 rules, so that we can all have a better relationship These weeks fly around. I can't believe it. I'm actually recording again. Honestly, I can't believe how quickly these weeks go by. You know, when you're waiting for something and it like Christmas. If Christmas was a week away, it would feel like forever. But these weeks they fly around in no time, I love speaking to you, so I'm happy with that. How's your week been? Has it been good? My week's been good? Yeah, really good. What's happened this week? Last night went out for some food with some friends, Don't get to have Thai very often because my husband's So it means that we only get to have Thai or I only get to have Thai when I go somewhere And we went out just for an evening out just for a catch up and some It was good. It was really good. The food was amazing. I had these vegetable money bags. Have you ever had them? They're I guess pastry filled with vegetables and then bunched up into what looks like And they came with a plum dipping sauce. Oh, they were so good, really, really lovely. And then after that, I had chicken pad thai, which was noodles, vegetables, chicken peanuts, fried egg. That's just so good. I really prefer Thai to Chinese. Somehow it seems to taste a lot cleaner. You know, Chinese can taste a bit greasy sometimes. I don't find Thai is like that. So good. So lovely. Terrible service, though. Service was really slow and that actually contributes to the whole experience If you go out, you want the whole package, you want decent food, some nice drinks and good service. Sadly, we didn't have good service last night. It's a real shame because the place we went to is actually really good. Just let themselves down a little bit. Shame. Then we went to another pub for some drinks and some So we went outside in the smoking area. It was heaving. It was absolutely rammed. It was crazy busy. And this meant that the smoking area was very smoky. Now I'm not a smoker. I used to be, but I'm not anymore. But I don't come at this from a"well, you really shouldn't but my God, was it ever smoky? My throat dried out really quickly. And then I ended up coughing and coughing and coughing because And it was really uncomfortable. It makes you wonder how we used to manage with pubs being I am sounding like a right old woman today, aren't I? But when we used to go out years ago, the clubs used The pubs used to be full of smoke, and part of the experience was getting up the next morning and your hair stinks of smoke. Oh, God, it's gross, isn't it? And it was just the same when I got up this morning, Even after a good wash, you can still smell it a little bit. That's gross. Anyway, you didn't come here to listen to This week I also had a surprise on my memories on Facebook. This video popped up and it was a family event some years ago. Not that long ago, really? Five years ago, maybe five, six years ago. And I looked really different and it took me quite by surprise. It really did. And I watched this video a couple of times, looking at myself, thinking, I can see the difference in my face. I can see a massive difference in my body And because I hadn't expected to see it, I wasn't prepared for it and it caught me off guard a little bit, But I was certainly taken back a little bit, and took me That's not who I am anymore. That's not what I look like anymore. Do I wish that I still had that body and that look and that size? If I'm honest with myself, yes. Am I happier now? Absolutely. And this is what I now have to weigh up when I Would I rather be in that whole disordered eating dieting hell, food freedom intuitive eating space? The intuitive eating wins for me every time. The intuitive eating and the bigger We also got the photos back from our family photo shoot this week. And I've got to say I opened those photos with some anxiety. I was really nervous to see what these photos were going to be like. And as we looked at the photos as a family with them on the big TV screen in front of us, it was really hard not to be It was really hard to not pull myself to pieces I had to keep reminding myself of the fun that we had, We had such a good time taking those photos. It was so much fun. I was really grateful that we were all there and all having And I really do love the photos. I really love the photos. I know you can hear the but come in, can't you? But that doesn't mean that I'm completely in love I'm not, but that's okay because I was able to have a different I was able to look at those photos and attach all the feelings to them. And I love that so much. But I was also able to look at the photos and be accepting of what I look like. And even that is a massive shift mentally for me. Previously, I would have been upset. Even at my smallest I would still have found something to be upset about. But in these photos, I was not upset. I really was not upset. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that my body is bigger now and I But you know what? Those photos just And even if I don't love what I look like, I can still be accepting of who I am. And that is a massive shift. That is a massive shift that intuitive eating gives you when considering your weight and your body and your size and what you look like and what you look like to other people, because that's Photos are there for other people to see as well, to accept how you look for yourself and to accept that other people is a whole piece of work. It's a massive piece of work, and it takes a long But the change when you get it is amazing. So I might not be in that space of total body love, but I am absolutely in a place of acceptance, and that is so, so valuable, When I started intuitive eating, I knew full well that I could I thought it was probably likely knowing what my body does and all the books and everything you It all tells you that it's a possibility that you might gain weight when you start A lot of this is because you stop dieting. Dieting is predictable because the whole aim of dieting is to lose weight. So although you can't necessarily guarantee how much you'll lose or when you'll lose it or how But you do know that you are heading for weight loss, but that weight loss is or a lot of things usually, but the overall restriction usually boils down to it being lower calories than you need. That's what anything you take away usually ends up being. You take out carbs. You lose weight usually because you're restricting the amount If you're counting macros, you are usually that those macros equate to if you're on some kind of point It usually boils down to the fact that you've reduced the amount of calories that you're taking in and that's And so when you stop dieting and you start eating more intuitively, what happens is you generally tend That's just the way it is. You take out that restriction element, and suddenly calories than you would be eating before. That aside, though, you can't really tell what You might stop dieting and gain weight. You might stop dieting and your weight plateaus and just sits at around the level. You might lose weight initially through intuitive eating, and then it comes back. Or then it stabilises. You can never tell what your body is going to do. So when I get that question that says, Am I going to gain weight when I start intuitive eating? It's a really difficult question to answer. When you start eating intuitively, you start eating according So you start tuning in and listening and feeling and determining what you want How hungry are you? How full are you? What sort of food do you want to eat to satisfy you in the moment? And that's different for everybody. So there is no set plan to be following. There's no set amount of calories to be consuming. There's no set types of foods that you are around to like to eat. So when you start eating intuitively, it's going for you than it will for somebody else. If your friend started eating intuitively, it would look very Plus, we're all coming from different places, aren't we? My history with food is going to be different So for me, I know that I've been restricting for such a long time and then bingeing and then My body didn't know where it was. My body didn't know what weight it needed to be at. I had fought and fought and fought to lose these pounds that kept creeping back on and my body was yoyoing So my comfortable weight, the weight that my body naturally wants to be at might not actually be that obvious right It might take some playing around with. It might be that I gain some weight and then I lose some weight and this will be the same for you If you have a history of your weight going down and then up and then down and then up restricting and then bingeing and then Even it's going to take a little while for your body to settle into where it wants to comfortably be. Also, your food intake is going to vary at this time. So when you start intuitive eating, it takes you a little while for you that you like to eat for so long, you might have been told what you can't eat, or it might be that you have some particular That means that you've taken complete food groups out And now you're going to start introducing some It's quite natural for you to go the complete polar opposite of all these food rules and go absolutely mad for all the food that you've not been able to eat and that is totally normal. You have to kind of let your body know that this food is available for you and will always So once your body knows that this food is available to you, you will not necessarily want to eat it all so much. Let's take pizza as an example of this. Pizza is one of those foods that we quite often don't eat when we're on a diet because it It is not a bad food. It is a blooming, awesome food, thank you. Anyway, when you're dieting, you tend not to eat a lot of pizza. And so then if you come off a diet and you give yourself what's one of the first things you are going to want It's going to be pizza."What I can eat whenever I want?" I'm going to eat pizza. I'm going to eat all of the pizza in all of the land. You eat loads of pizza, and then the next day you eat loads of pizza. And then the day after you eat loads of pizza and it goes By the time a few days have passed, other food is looking more enticing because you are used Your body is not trying to get you to eat it. It's trying to get you to eat other things. Now it's bored with pizza now, and this is how the beginning of intuitive eating might go for you. go hell for leather on all of these foods that you've not been allowed And while you're doing that, it's very natural for you to eat Not that it's more than what your body needs. Your body will ask you to eat as much food as it needs. But you might feel like you're eating more food than because all of a sudden, all these foods are open to you because you're suddenly eating more food, you are potentially going to gain a bit of weight. And if you are gaining weight when you start intuitive eating, it's because your body needs to it's because you weren't It's because your body wasn't at its comfortable weight. Now you're eating and allowing that to change. There is a thing called weight set point theory. And basically what this means is your body has a natural point. of weight where it wants to be. So you know, when you diet, you're losing weight and then you stop dieting, that weight That's because your body is trying to get to its natural Every time you diet, you are trying to drag your body And so every time you stop dieting, that weight starts coming back on for your body to try and get back to where it needs And this is part of why a lot of intuitive eaters will say that they gained weight It's a combination of the extra food that you're now eating now, you're not dieting, to now get back to the point that it's comfortable at. There are lots of reasons why your weight set point is what it is. There are lots of things that affect it. So genetics will play a role. You are born with your body type already having been mapped out for you, and then life just So the money that we've got, the area we live in, the food that we have access to, the way our body type is going to be. Then also add into that things like stress, disabilities, hormonal fluctuations. There's all loads of things that are going to control what kind So for us to then try and change all of these things that by eating a certain type of diet or by eating a certain just feels a little bit barmy, doesn't it? If you think all these massive things that were at play, your genes, your environment, work environment, all these sort of things that have a complete, massive overall impact on your weight and your size and your shape for us to try and then control that with a bit of food just feels like we're using a very teeny, tiny little toothpick to chip Do you know what I mean? For us to even think that we can have such a massive impact, permanent through food. It just blows my tiny little mind. Now, obviously, there are circumstances where You can lose a lot of weight very quickly with food, you can support your body systems in a really positive way with the right types of foods. But to think that we can control our determined body shape, size and weight through calories, essentially, it's just not that possible in the long term. So for more people than not, yes, weight gain is going to be, I don't want to say a side effect of intuitive eating, a byproduct, maybe. A byproduct of intuitive eating. It's going to be something that happens for a lot of people. I personally think that the way you deal with this has more of an impact on how you feel than actually trying which brings me back to the whole body neutrality and feeling accepting of the weight. You don't have to be super happy about your weight gain. You don't have to be running around loud and proud about But what you can do is start working towards accepting it. First off, let's praise the fact that when you start intuitive eating, you are How amazing does that feel in your head to think about it? If you're not on that journey yet, if you're not intuitive eating yet, how does that feel to you do you think? How do you think it would feel to release yourself from all these rules around food and just eat what you want without Amazing, right? So let's start by celebrating that you are now going to have And when you settle into your pattern, that you're enjoying and you know what you like and you if you gain a bit of weight through that, it means you weren't It means you weren't eating enough to sustain your body, to fuel all those systems that are working so hard every day. It means you weren't getting enough nutrients. It means that even if you were at your thinnest, you were definitely not at your healthiest something that it needed to claw back as soon as you Secondly, gaining weight is not necessarily unhealthy in the same way that when you lose weight, you don't When you gain weight, you don't automatically become unhealthy. If you gain weight, are you all of a sudden going to have heart disease and blood pressure issues and cholesterol issues and You know all the things that people say that bigger people No, of course not, because weight is not a behaviour. Weight is not something that impacts your health status. All these health markers are determined by other things. You can control cholesterol. You can control blood pressure. You can control to a degree your chances of getting a healthy, balanced diet. Correct. Your weight doesn't necessarily impact on that. There are many, many straight sized people with plenty of health issues. Weight gain does not necessarily equal unhealthy, and you need to keep that in the back of your mind. I understand the worry there. As you know, I've talked a little bit about the fact that I've had some health problems and going to the doctors thing to do because I was sure that my weight was going It turns out it did not. Would you believe it? It didn't. All of my health markers came back perfectly normal, with the exception of the one all of the things that I thought were going to automatically be out of work because of my weight gain I was sure that I was going to have cholesterol problems because everybody who's fat has No, perfectly normal. So don't automatically assume that because you're going to gain weight, you're going That is not automatically the case. There are, of course, other practicalities that come I talk about those a lot in other episodes. Things like clothes, shopping, travelling, overall comfort in your body. There are plenty of things that will change that you will have However, these things are just adaptions. They really are. These are things that you just need to adjust for. You've been spending so long trying to live in this thin ideal that you don't know how to live Now, this isn't to say that if you gain weight, when you intuitively eat the biggest person on the face of the planet, and if you did, you did. But the amount of weight that you will gain cannot be determined by anything before you start. Your body, as we said at the beginning, is totally unique. I wouldn't even be able to guess at how much weight you would gain or lose or not when you But it is a little bit wise to at least prepare yourself for I understand that. It's a scary thought. I really do. Everybody is so tuned into the thin ideas. You're stay tuned in to diet and beauty standards that tell us that we have to be thin and that Trying to work on that at the same time as working on your So I just say to you, be kind to yourself when you're starting out, be kind to yourself as you go through the process, all in one go. Have a bit of compassion for the changes that are going on Celebrate the good stuff and give space for the stuff that you need to work on or that you'll I had a message from somebody this week who asked me how much weight if they started intuitive eating because they were worried that they would just keep going up I get that comment all the time. If I could wave a magic wand and let people know at the beginning of their journey how much that weight gain would be, because wouldn't it just be the best to know when your body But you just can't do that. And when it's a question of clothes and things like that, as much as it's difficult to know that you're going to replace clothes and for some people it feels like money that they can't afford to somewhere in the back of your mind, you have to try and remember that the aim of all of this is to heal your relationship with food and for food to no longer Once you can achieve that, you will be able to more easily see the value and worth in yourself. I know it feels like an impossible task right now to be comfortable but I promise you that once you've made these changes, it doesn't seem to matter so much anymore. It doesn't matter as much as you thought it did. Being thin doesn't have the value that you thought it had when you were dieting and trying Right now how about you start your intuitive Aim for acceptance rather than total body love? Just aim for liking yourself a bit better every day rather than this overall, I am awesome thing that people seem to think is expected of them when they start intuitive eating. Nobody goes from disliking their body to loving themselves There is no switch that flicks that on and off. So let's just start with liking yourself a little Weight gain might be a part of that, but let's just start there. How does that sound? I've just realised that this podcast has hit the 30 I've been sat here for an absolute age. I cannot tell you how long it's taken me to record this I started and the house was quiet and since then every man and his There's been banging and crashing, laughing and joking, doors slamming, The works. The joys of recording in my own home. A couple of things to mention before I sign off. Firstly, Halloween is coming up next week. Are you a panicker about Halloween, and sweets and chocolate and There really is no need to worry about this. I've done a blog post. I'm not going to talk about it now because this episode will end up being hours long up listening to this episode in the middle of summer it will So I will put the link to the blog post in the show notes below Please don't panic. Please don't panic about Halloween. It is so much fun and that shouldn't be overshadowed by the potential for you to have eaten sweets these nice hot drinks and things that you would usually But go and have a look at the blog post. I'll put the link in the show notes for you. Also, just to let you know, I've set myself up Have you seen Buy Me A Coffee? It's basically a way for people to support creators. I absolutely love doing this podcast each week. However, as with lots of things in life, it costs money. There are running costs and equipment costs and time costs and all sorts of things that go along with producing And I genuinely love doing it so I'm not going to stop but if you would like to show some support and contribute of listening, then I would really appreciate that. There is no obligation for you to go and do this. But if you would like to buy me a coffee, actually, mine says buy me a cake, then I would really, It would help support the podcast and keep it going long term and that's what we want, isn't it? I want my content to be available long term. I want you guys to have these podcasts. I want you to have all the social media resources and things like that and at the time of recording this, This is something I do on the sidelines for people, so yeah, I will just leave it there. I will drop the link in the show notes underneath. I don't know why, but when I say that I always actually point down as if you can see me pointing to the notes But I will put the link in the show notes for you yeah, if you feel like supporting the podcast, please just pop along Buy me a cake. Thank you very much in advance. And if you don't, that's all good too. I just love hearing from you guys so keep messaging me. I love getting messages in my inbox from you guys who are questions and just showing a bit of love So all of that is very welcome. Thank you very much. Right. Have a lovely week. Have a really good week. I will speak to you again next weekend, which will if you listen to these podcasts, the day that they come out. So that's exciting, isn't it? The Americans make such a bigger deal of Halloween than I love Halloween. I wish at Halloween that I lived in the States. Every year"I wish I was American"."I wish I was American". Anyway, that's enough rambling from me about something that's Have a great weekend. Will speak to you very soon. Be really kind to yourself. Be awesome. You are awesome. I'll speak to you next week.