121. Back To Basics - Principle 10, Honour Your Health - Gentle Nutrition

Today in my back to basics series I’m talking about intuitive eating principle principle 10, honour your health - gentle nutrition.

Gentle nutrition is very intentionally the last of the intuitive eating principles. 

In this episode I am going to help you find a way to consider nutrition without being overwhelmed or all consumed by it.

I’m explaining how diet plans put a large focus on nutrition, and make you feel guilty for not being ‘healthy’ enough. 

I’ll also explain why terms like healthy and unhealthy are words you should stop using, and give you a new way to think about it.

And I’m going to help you to understand how you can tell from the way your body feels what kind of nutrients you need - in a very gentle, intuitive way.

Transcript

 A quick heads up before you start reading..... 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.

[00:00:00] Hello, welcome back. Welcome back to my intuitive eating back to basics series. In each episode, I'm going to walk you through one of the 10 principles of intuitive eating and help you understand it a little bit better, give you some things you can try, some things to think about, which will mean that you will understand the principles a little bit better and be able to apply them to your life.

If you do not know that this episode forms part of a series, Well, we are, and we are right at the end. You can, of course, stay. You can stay and enjoy this one. Um, but to get the benefits out of it, go back and listen to the series from the start. Uh, it's, uh, yeah, it's a good thing to do, right? Go listen to the whole series.

In this episode, we are talking about intuitive eating principle, [00:01:00] number 10, honor your health. Gentle nutrition. And this principle is all about introducing nutrition. We don't talk about nutrition an awful lot when we do intuitive eating because the focus is about the relationship with food. and how it feels in your body.

But at some point to think about nutrition and the variety of foods that you're eating is, is a good idea. Gentle nutrition is the very last of the principles because, um, to get a really good understanding of one to nine first, all the principles that come before it is important. It's really important that you've made peace with food and your body before you start to worry about the food itself.

And then when you do have an understanding and when you have done a little bit of work that way, you are then in a better position to think about food in a more neutral way. [00:02:00] It is really hard to find a balance nutritionally when you're trying not to diet. Um, diets are, are, Notorious for placing a nutritious focus on their plans.

If you ask somebody who has done a macro counting diet, for example, that's where you count your carbs, your fats, your protein. It's all about nutrition. If you have been calorie counting, you may not have been so concerned with the actual nutrition, but instead it might have been, let me look and see what I can get in my body for the least amount of calories.

And then with that, there's probably an awareness of the types of foods that you're eating to do that. Slimming World, Weight Watchers, similar diet clubs, they all tend to encourage certain types of foods because as much as they say you can eat everything you want to and there's no restriction, of course there [00:03:00] is restriction and the restriction is usually around the less nutritious foods, isn't it?

Slimming World, for example, labels foods as High protein, high fiber, calcium rich, that sort of thing. And you will notice that most of the free foods on the plan are things like Fruits and vegetables. Juicing diets and cleanses, um, the focus is usually just on fruit and veg. They serve very little purpose in that way.

They do not provide the detox that you think that they do. What all these diets and plans have in common is they create this obsession with food and nutrition. So let's take a look at nutrition through the eyes of an intuitive eater instead. It is not about bringing restriction into your life and removing things to start introducing nutrition.[00:04:00] 

It is more about adding things in and maximizing the value of the food that you're eating rather than taking it away. You can't enjoy food if you are worried about what's in it. If you're constantly thinking about the calories, the nutrient content of the food you're just You just won't enjoy it. And enjoyment plays a really big part in how well we eat.

So if you go back and you think about the satisfaction factor, the fullness factor, they're really, really important in being an intuitive eater. So if you are bogged down with the nitty gritty of the food, you are not gonna have an enjoyment of it. Or if you look at it the other way round. If you think that a magic pill can do the job, you will stop listening to your body.

Okay. If you totally believe that there is this magic diet, this juice, this herb, this spice that is going to do everything you need it to do in your body, you will stop listening to your [00:05:00] body. You are right back at square one then because you've lost the intuitive side of it. But at the opposite end of the scale, when you get really bogged down with how nutrient dense your food is, you run the risk of Of venturing into disordered eating again.

Orthorexia, for example. Have you heard of orthorexia? It is, um, an obsession, basically, with eating pure food. And, when you focus so heavily on the nutrients in a food, you risk running into that kind of orthorexic territory, where you're so overwhelmed, you're so overly concerned. with the quality of the food that you're eating, that you start to put restriction in place and you start excluding foods, that sort of thing.

We're looking for balance. We're looking for a really nice mix [00:06:00] of what we're eating. A really nice consideration of the mix of foods you're eating as well, but not to the degree where it starts to dictate what you do and you do not eat. I personally do not like the terms healthy and unhealthy because it doesn't give space for anything in the middle.

You can come up with your own words to describe your food, but I like things like more nutritious, less nutritious, or more helpful. Or more or less health maximizing, you know, there's lots of different ways you can phrase it without saying healthy and unhealthy. Remember also that we eat meals, we eat combinations of foods, we don't eat single nutrients, we don't just eat a plate of carbs, or a plate of fat, or a plate of protein.

There's always More than one nutrient at play at any given time, even on the [00:07:00] strictest of diets, the most restrictive of diets, there's always a mix of things at play. You have to consider everything as a whole, and then when you look at everything as a whole, you can see what kind of balance you want, rather than blaming one nutritional value, one nutrient, maybe, for changes in the way that your body functions.

I once did a TikTok video, right? It was a joke video about how if I didn't cut this enormous Victoria sandwich cake, if I didn't cut that and I ate it all in one go, that technically, technically, I would just have had one slice. It's funny, right? It's a joke. But the criticisms flooded in. That's diabetes on a plate.

That's heart attack on a plate. That's heart disease waiting to happen. Here is where the bigger [00:08:00] picture is so important. I could not personally, myself, eat a whole three tier, giant, Victoria sandwich cake in one sitting. Even if I could though, it is not going to damage my health. It's not going to break my health.

A food does not instantly create health issues in the same way that you don't suddenly have a nutrient deficiency if you have a day where you eat no vegetables. Do you see what I mean? If you're going to apply that extreme one way, you've got to apply it both ways. So eating food that people deem to be unhealthy, Is also, by the same logic, got to be problematic in eating only foods that are healthy.

Do you see what I mean? We are not, all of a [00:09:00] sudden, going to create health problems if you have a day of eating what you feel might be this unhealthy eating. It's balance. Balance over time that matters. So, to consider nutrition from an intuitive eating perspective, The focus will still be on how the food feels in your body.

Protein, for example, it's known to be very satisfying. It keeps hunger at bay for a bit longer than some of the other foods. But if that food doesn't feel good in your body, it's no good eating too much of it. Carbs. If eating a plate full of carbs Makes you feel good. Gives you loads of energy.

Revitalizes you. Awesome. But for me personally, I know I can't have a jacket potato at lunchtime because I know that that will make me want to go to sleep in the afternoon. Just doesn't suit [00:10:00] me and my body to have a big jacket potato at lunchtime. To have a big plate of carbs at lunchtime. Sugar. I know that's a carb.

Hey, don't come at me for that. Um, sugar might make you feel really energized. For some, it might make you feel jittery, anxious, a bit headachy. So you've really got to get a feel for what nutrients are good in your body and in what quantities. Intuitive eating studies have proven that intuitive eaters have a better overall intake of all the nutrients, right?

And this is because when you stop restricting certain foods, you allow space for all nutrients. For all food groups and your body gets into tune and you start to understand what your body needs at any given time and because you're eating in response to your [00:11:00] body you're going to get a wider range of foods in a wider range of food groups and you're going to get a wider range of nutrients in Even if you do not ever consider the nutrients that you are eating, if you pay no attention to it whatsoever, by being an intuitive eater, by eating intuitively, you can be reassured that you're still going to have a really nice balance of food once that initial honeymoon period of eating settles down.

You know, when you start intuitive eating, it can be a bit of a, a free You can go hell for leather on the donuts because You can now, you know, but when that stuff settles down, you will find a really natural way of eating and you'll find that you have this better balance of food intake. Um, nutrition is important [00:12:00] because there's so much that it can do for you.

Even just basic functionality in the body, energy regulation, digestion, you know, there's so much that good nutrition can do to support you. But you need to play around with it and you have to feel it for yourself. There is so much more I could talk about in relation to nutrition. Processed foods and how we feel about those.

Um, how to add foods in rather than take them away. What I think of the word moderation. Um, But this is just an introductory series to just give you a bit of an insight into the principles of intuitive eating. So I won't get deep into all of that right here, right now. I do hope though, that this episode has given you enough of an insight into principle number 10 on your health, gentle nutrition, and you now feel a little bit more [00:13:00] comfortable in not worrying about your nutrition and that when you're ready to think about it.

It doesn't have to look like you starting to bring restriction in again, you know, when you are ready, I would love to help you. Join me in the Facebook group. That's free. Join the Eat From Within membership or get some personal coaching from me. Whatever suits you best. I'm here to help you. All the links are in the show notes.

Go click them and have a look at them.