Intuitive Eating & Body Confidence with Terri Pugh

33. What to eat when you don't know what to eat

January 09, 2022 Terri Pugh Episode 33
Intuitive Eating & Body Confidence with Terri Pugh
33. What to eat when you don't know what to eat
Intuitive Eating & Body Positivity
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Show Notes Transcript

Intuitive eating asks us to think about what we want to eat and then honour that, but what if you don't know what you want to eat? What if we know what we don't want to eat but have no idea what we do want? I have tips to help you figure it out. 


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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

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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, happy new year. Happy new year. We're back. It's January. Back in action on the podcast. Took a little break over Christmas, obviously. Yeah. Pleased to be back. Pleased to be speaking to you again. 

How was your Christmas? Was it excellent? Did you love it? Do you even celebrate Christmas? I know that some people don't, so this is going out to the public that do. 

I celebrate Christmas. Yeah. I hope for you it was what you wanted it to be, because obviously things are not back to normal yet are they. We know that, but we were still able to do more this year than we could do the year before when we, so yeah. I hope you had a really good one. I hope whatever you were doing, it was what you wanted it to be whether that was busy and social or whether it was just quiet time. 

Yeah. I hope you had a really good one. We had a good one. It was a nice mix of quiet and busy. Oh, food everywhere, man, food everywhere. Who's got food leftover hands up. If that's you, we've still got loads of food left over from Christmas.

This is pretty much unheard of in our house. I've still got cheese left and we all know how much I love cheese and there's still a load of it in the fridge. And chocolate. There's still chocolate everywhere. 

My advent calendar, I only finished a couple of days ago. How mad is that? I've always eaten my advent calendars on the day that they were supposed to be eaten. Now as a grownup my dad still buys me an advent calendar. Isn't that sweet? That's so lovely. My husband and I share it. He has odds. I have evens or maybe he has evens and I have odds. Either which way we alternate the days and this year he didn't eat any of the chocolates. 

So, whereas I went along eating the day that I was supposed to eat and not his days. His days were mounting up. Now that doesn't bother me. It really didn't bother me at all. They were just there. 

And then Christmas came and went and I said, are you going to eat these chocolates? He was like, no, probably not. So I did. And I'll tell you it still doesn't sit right with me eating more than one advent calendar on a day.

I'm a little bit picky about things like this. Advent chocolates are to be eaten on the day, not in a batch. I'm not one of those people that takes out the tray of chocolates from the advent calendar outer and just sits and eats them. I can't do that, but this year I did. I just sat and and then I put it down, and then the next day I had a couple and then I put it down.

Well, this is unheard of, for me. I'm not being funny, in years gone by that would have been gone in seconds, seconds. But I think I just enjoy things like that so much more now because it's okay to eat it. I can just eat it and enjoy it. 

I'm not going to be panicking that there's not going to be any chocolate left later, and if there is. I'm not in a panic because there's too much chocolate in the house. Do you know what I mean? 

So yeah. Unheard of this year, food leftover, it was quite bizarre. 

How are you feeling now that it's January as well? Isn't there so much pressure in January? There are all these diets everywhere and there's all usual diets. You know, there's all the normal ones like slimming world and WW and Noom and all of those, but then in January you have on top of that dry January and veganuary. 

It's so much pressure for everybody. So much pressure. All these companies ramp up their advertising. They must spend millions in the new year because adverts everywhere, absolutely everywhere. 

And doesn't it put the pressure on you when you're trying to get away from dieting, trying to not have an obsessive relationship with food. You don't want it in your face every time you pick up your phone to look at a social media feed. You don't want to see it on the TV in between every episode of whatever you're watching.

And when it comes to things like dry January and veganuary, they seem to be everywhere as well. I think each year they get more and more and more in your face with it, but it's very preachy isn't it? Don't you think? 

You must give up alcohol for January? Actually, you don't have to give up alcohol for January if you don't want to. Who says you should do that? I mean, who came up with this idea? 

It's fine if you want to give up drink for January. That's absolutely fine because let's face it we tend to drink a bit more over Christmas don't we? And that's fine. If you want to do that in January. If you want to cut back on your alcohol. If you want to just have a month off. Absolutely fine. Fill your boots. But you shouldn't be guilt tripped into it.

Same with veganuary. This is a whole other thing. So dry January tends to focus on your health, right? Veganuary, they also put the focus on your health, but with this added guilt trip of save the animals. 

Now, I just want to make it clear I'm not against people being vegan if they're doing it for ethical or moral reasons, but I am against people doing it because they think it is some kind of health thing.

So all the people out there promoting veganuary for health reasons please stop. Thank you. 

It's not always, anyway, let's face it. You can eat a vegan diet and be incredibly unhealthy. You can take all the animal products out and live on chips and crisps. For my American friends that is Chips and fries I think. 

So you see my point, you can actually take all these animal products out of your diet and still live in a way that isn't very health maximizing. So quite frankly, selling a vegan diet on the basis of health is nonsense. Yeah. So don't feel, don't feel guilt tripped into doing these diets, you know. They are everywhere, but you can just ignore them.

We were talking about it in the group coaching session this week. That was our topic of the week. And everybody's struggling, you know. Everybody's struggling. Trying to do the work of intuitive eating and building a body confidence while all this messaging around us is saying lose weight, lose weight, be thinner, be thinner, make you better, make you a better person.

So it's okay to be struggling with that right now, but try and help yourself out a little bit, you know. Mute these things on your social media feeds. Report them, hide them. You've got a hide option on most platforms I think. You can tell them that you don't want to see that content anymore.

You can report them. If you want to go to that degree. You can report them as harmful information because that's exactly what it is, it's harmful information. Yeah. 

So look after yourself. I understand it's difficult at the moment. 

Oh, the other thing that comes with Christmas is I find that I just constantly eat. Just constantly graze on food the whole time, because patterns and routines go out the window don't they? 

So you're no longer getting up, having your breakfast, getting your lunch together, going to work, coming home, you know. It's not like that over Christmas. You're getting up later and you're just having weird concoctions of food all day long, because there is no lunchtime anymore, there is no dinner time anymore. 

And you're using leftovers and you're trying to eat all this food that you've brought in for Christmas that you don't usually put in your shopping basket, you know. We always buy different things at Christmas, don't we? So it's hard to know what you want to eat when you're not really hungry. That's where I'm going with this. 

I didn't eat intuitively over Christmas at all. I never let myself get to that point where I was really hungry. So when you can't feel your hunger, you don't necessarily know what you want to eat and I was having a conversation with somebody this week who was trying to focus on her intuitive eating, and was trying to feel what she wanted to eat at every time she wanted to eat something, but couldn't. 

So, you know, in the principles of intuitive eating you try and feel what you want to eat so that you're giving your body what it's asking for. But what if you're asking that question and you don't know what the answer is? What if you don't know what you want to eat? How do we intuitively if you don't have that intuition of what to eat? 

A good place to start is, are you hungry? I don't know about you, but I cannot decide what to eat if I am not hungry.

If I go and do the food shopping for the week, I don't know what I'm going to want for the week if I'm not hungry, but if I'm really hungry and I go and do the food shop, all of a sudden, I want everything in the shop, so one of the keys to knowing what you want to eat, isn't letting yourself get a little bit hungry.

So on this hunger scale, we want to be, you know, just edging into comfortably hungry. Then, you know, you're ready to eat. 

Now that alone can be difficult for some people. I know that part of my history with food is that whenever I felt hungry, I would panic. Did I have enough food? Did I have enough food to stop me feeling hungry? When am I going to get to eat? I can't be hungry. It's not time to be hungry, but I am hungry. 

You know, it's, it's this panic that sets in with hunger because hunger always means restriction, doesn't it, when you've been dieting. Hunger is usually associated with a diet that is making you hungry. It's not sustaining you so you're always hungry and then we attach hunger to negative thoughts. 

So if you're on a very low calorie diet, or if you're eating at certain times of the day, only that sort of thing, and you're outside of the things that you can eat, or you're outside of the times that you can eat, all of a sudden you're hungry and you've got to wait. You've got that restriction attached to it. 

You can't just unpick that overnight. That doesn't happen because you spent so many years ingraining into you that hungry equals bad, but it's not. So a little bit of work around that is good. 

Allowing yourself to get a little bit hungry and knowing you don't have to panic, you don't have to worry. You can eat. It really is good to be a little bit hungry. It's a sign that your body is ready for food. It's a sign that the food that you ate before has kind of run out, you know, in your body. It's not sustaining you anymore. So now it's time to have some more food. 

That's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. It's your body telling you it's ready to eat now and you should honor that because if you let yourself get too hungry then you really do lose that intuitive control over what you're going to eat. So it's good to get a little bit hungry and feel that hunger and then eat, not to let that go into really, really hungry.

Yep. So first are you hungry? And if you're not hungry, are you looking for something to solve an emotional feeling? Is that what it is? Are you wanting to eat because you're combating something emotional? Is something stressful? Are you trying to avoid doing some work? That's a good one for me. I don't want to do this piece of work. I'm going to go and get some food. What about stress? Did I say stress already? I don't know. What about stress? What about if you're upset about something? Some people naturally turn to food if they're upset. 

So is this an emotional thing? And if it is, are you better off going and finding a form of self-care? Are you going to go for a walk? Right now I'm going to say these things. They're going to sound like the most ridiculous solutions. Like, oh God, she's telling me to go for a walk and have a glass of water or go and have a bath, but that's sometimes what you need to do. Okay. It's not going to solve all your problems, but it will make you feel a little bit better sometimes.

So do you need to actually just get some fresh air? Do you need to go and have a glass of water because water, when we have not drank enough, can make such a difference. It can really wake you up and pick you up and lift your mood. So don't underestimate the power of staying hydrated. 

Okay. So we've checked in, are we hungry? Do we need something else? Is that what we're actually looking for now? 

Also there is the possibility that you are hungry, but you're telling yourself you're not hungry and because of that You wouldn't let yourself feel what you want to eat. We are back to those old dieting thoughts aren't we? 

I can't be hungry. I only at half an hour ago. I shouldn't eat those foods anymore. I should eat more healthily, and that's going to be a common one cause it's January and we've just had a big old blowout over Christmas so now we're telling ourselves that we should eat more healthily to counteract that. So if you're telling yourself all these messages that are trying to stop you eating certain foods or eat at all, you're not going to be able to tune in and feel what you want to. So check in on that as well. 

So then if you are hungry and you're ready to eat, let's start with trying to figure out what you want to eat in terms of general food, because sometimes it's really hard to pinpoint an exact food that you want to eat. 

So it might be really tricky to tune in and think, right, I really fancy some popcorn. That's what I need right now. But you might be able to think I really fancy something salty and with a bit of crunch to it. Do you see what I mean? 

So you might not be able to specifically know that it's popcorn that you're after, but you do know what type of food you want to eat. So that's a good first place to start really? 

What is going to satisfy you? Is it something hot or something cold? Would you like something sweet or savory? Would you like something sour? Would you like something crunchy or would you like something soft? Do you want something like some yogurt or a smoothie, or do you need something that makes you feel like you're eating?

You know, I have this thing where I like, right don't laugh, well you can laugh if you want but it sounds a bit odd when I say it out loud, but I like to feel like my mouth is full of food. So I know if I'm really hungry, sometimes I need something substantial. I need something that's going to feel satisfying in my mouth, and other times I just fancy a bit of a nibble. I just fancy something smaller, softer. 

That's where I'm going with this. Does that make sense? So by taking a moment, just think about what type of food you want. You might begin to figure out what you want to eat or what you've got in your cupboards or in your fridge or your freezer that will satisfy what you're looking for.

Sometimes it might not be an obvious instinctual thing either. Sometimes you might just have a thought around food or a craving, or you might get a picture of food in your head, you know. While you're taking a minute to try and think of what type of food you want maybe you'll get pictures in your head rather than knowing right, this is what I want to eat. Do you know what I mean? 

Your body will tell you, your mind will tell you, in different ways what you're looking for. So, sit quietly, have a think about what foods you want to eat, have a think about how you feel about food at the moment, and then go with it. Trust that. 

Who cares if you've got a plate full of the most random things. Who cares if you have got things on your plate that people would go, yeah, I can't eat that with that.

Actually, you can eat anything with anything so you put on your plate what you want to eat and don't you worry about what anybody else is going to think of that. 

And also remember it doesn't have to be a meal, you know. Meals are these times of day that somebody somewhere has dictated we should eat. We should eat breakfast. We should eat lunch. We should eat dinner. Well, actually we don't have to. So if you don't feel like eating a meal, then you don't have to eat a meal. It can just be whatever combination of things you want to eat. 

This is also a long process for some people, some people just get it. Some people are just happy to not be dieting anymore and their body and the mind gets it instantly and is hallelujah thank you for this, and tune straight into it. 

Some people, it doesn't come that easy, and that's also fine. You have spent years ingraining behaviors and thoughts. You've spent years actually knocking back what your intuition tells you so it might not be like flicking a switch for you. It might not happen overnight for you and that's okay. It really is okay. 

As long as you are trying, and you're having a think about your food before you eat it, to decide if it's going to satisfy you or not, that is half the battle. 

And actually another point to make is that if you know what you don't want to eat, that's also good. That is a good thing. 

I think we've all been in that position where we've thought I'm hungry, but I don't know what I want to eat. I just know what I don't want. I don't want that meal I had planned when I got up for school. I don't want the family meal that I've got planned today. 

Knowing what you don't want is also a valid part of this, knowing what you don't want to eat is your body telling you that that food is not going to satisfy you right now so that's awesome. If you know what you don't want to eat, but you don't quite know what you do want to eat. Fab. That's really good because it's part of the process and its intuitive eating, starting to work for you. It's amazing. 

It can be helpful to mix up your meals as well. We quite often will put lots of the same foods in our shopping basket each week. You know, we go to the supermarket and we wheel that trolley round and we pick up the same things that we've always picked up week in, week out. Well, I don't go to the supermarket if I can help it, you know that right, but I do the same thing online. I do put the same things in my basket every week.

Because that's what we do. It's easy. We know what we're doing. We know what people like in the house, you know, but to mix those meals up can help refresh your taste buds. It can help refresh your thoughts and feelings around food. It can give your body different options for what it might like to eat.

Sometimes that's all we need isn't it. We just need to open the cupboards and be newly inspired by what we're seeing, not opening the cupboards and thinking the same thing as last week. 

But keep going, keep trying, because if every time you eat you have a little think about what's going to satisfy you, you're ingraining a new habit. You're starting a new way of eating. And even if you don't know instantly what you want to eat, that's fine because you're still doing the work and it will click one day. It will happen. 

The more you get into it, the more your body will tell you in different ways. And you might just not be able to recognize that at the moment, because dieting has pushed these things aside. You don't listen to your body when you're dieting. You are told what to eat. You are told what you can pick from a list of. You are told when you will eat, you will be told how much you can eat. 

So you need to give yourself a chance to unpack all of that. Don't be hard on yourself. It's a hard process this, but as you do do it, as you work on it, you will start to feel what your body is asking you for in more detail than you realize.

You will start to learn that if you're a bit sleepy, what type of food you might prefer to eat? If you're feeling a bit sluggish at your desk in the afternoon, you might know what you need to eat. If you are lacking in energy, you might know what your body wants you to eat. If you've got a headache, you might understand that that is possibly your body telling you you're hungry and these things will become more and more insightful for you the more you try and the more you work on it. 

So keep going, keep going. It's hard work, but keep going, because you will get there, I promise you. 

Oh, right. I'm off. I'm going to, I don't know what I'm going to do today actually, it's a lazy old day. I'm not doing very much at all. Just need those days sometimes don't we. Just days where we do nothing. It's lovely. 

Before I go, just a reminder, come and join the Facebook group. I have really ramped up the Facebook group in the new year. This group is going to be so good.

There's lots of stuff in there that I won't post on Instagram or on the Facebook page. I am posting every day for you. I am posting the information that I post on the other feeds, but I'm also posting other things to help you figure out a better relationship with food, other conversation you can get involved in if you want to. 

I'm going to start going live in there I think. I don't know how regularly at the moment, but I am going to get into the group, going live every now and again so that you can chat with me. And I don't do those things on the page or on Instagram. Come on in, come and have a chat with me. We'll hash things out together. 

Yeah. Come on in. I'll put the link in the show notes. 

All right, have a wonderful day, have a wonderful week. I will speak to you next week.