138. {REPLAY} Intuitive eating for weight loss

I'm taking a little break. Just having a few weeks off. While I do that I'm giving you the replays of some of my most popular episodes. 

Whether you've heard them before or not, I encourage you to give these replays a listen and see if you notice anything new. Just a heads up, there may be some outdated details like my previous business name and social media handles, so be sure to check the show notes for accurate information.

Intuitive eating helps improve your relationship with food, but the desire to lose weight can often remain, so can you use intuitive eating for weight loss? This week I'm talking about whether or not it is possible to be an intuitive eater and lose weight at the same time.

Let’s have a good natter about the will to lose weight, the correlation between weight and health, mindset, values, goals, and what to do if you’re in that middle ground between wanting to lose weight and wanting to be an intuitive eater.

Get 'Eat From Within - The 3 Steps To Food Freedom' course totally free!

Chapters

• 1:36 Food Galore and Breakfast Experience
• 3:21 Turkish restaurant experience
• 4:46 Reflecting on a satisfying dining experience
• 6:26 Struggling with the will to lose weight
• 8:37 Intuitive eating and weight loss
• 13:21 Restriction in diets
• 14:53 Behaviours and weight loss goals
• 16:16 Health and weight correlation
• 21:51 The mindset of being in a bigger body
• 23:18 Values, goals, and life beyond weight
• 25:31 Using intuitive eating for weight loss
• 27:56 Guidance and support for intuitive eating
• 31:00 Stuck in the middle of the two desires
• 31:28 Talk to me

Transcript

Hello, I'm having a few weeks off, just a little break and while I'm doing that, I'm giving you some fantastic replays of old episodes and this is 1 of those episodes. I have picked the episodes that have been most popular. So I know you're gonna love them. If you've heard them before, have another listen. See if you hear something different. And if you haven't, then great. This'll save you having to scroll back. There might be a couple of details that have changed over time, so things like my social media handles and I used to go by

LifeBite Nutrition, that was my original business name and obviously I'm not using those anymore, so if you do want to follow any links just go to the show notes for this episode and use the links there they will be correct. That's it public announcement over 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, tis me again. I don't know who else you were expecting to hear from, but you've got me again. How are you? How are you doing? Hope you've had a good week. It's been really good here. We've had a birthday in the house. We have been food galore. I don't know if you saw on my Instagram, but we went for the best breakfast ever. There's a really nice cafe near us. Well, when I say near us in town, there's a really nice cafe in town and they do the best breakfast. They have really decent ingredients, really

good quality food. Now I'm not a food snob when it comes to these things, but I do appreciate when people put effort into getting nice ingredients for their meals. So the sausages were really big fat, sizable sausages. And the bacon was really nice. And what else was on there? The bread, the bread was really, really good. It was clearly a very fresh homemade type loaf. Just makes such a difference, doesn't it? What did make me chuckle though is that somebody messaged me on Instagram. They replied to my post, to my story and they said that looks

amazing, but what the hell is that black round thing? It's black pudding. Now, I know not everybody knows what this is. I'm not going to describe it. It's pretty grim. I don't eat it. It went to my husband's plate. But if you don't know what black pudding is, Google it. You will wonder why anybody would think to have that on their meal. But it did make me chuckle. This is why I love hearing from you. This is why I love your messages because it's not just a business back and forth for me. I love having actual

conversation. I love having a laugh and a joke with you guys. It did make me chuckle. It was so funny. So that was the morning. And then in the evening, we went out to a Turkish restaurant. So we got a reasonably new Turkish restaurant here and we went for food there. We've never been before. It was really, really good. So tasty. The flavors were amazing. I can't tell you what I had because I can't pronounce it. I can't pronounce anything that any of our table had. I just know that I chose my food off the menu,

going by what sounded good, you know, in true intuitive eating style. I looked at the ingredients, I looked at the description and I thought, you know what, let's just have a go. Let's just see what happens. Let's see what turns up. Oh, so, so, so good. Really, really, really lovely food. So yeah, good day had by all food wise. I mean, good day had by all anyway, but the food, yes, it was lovely. Nobody had any dessert either, just going back to this meal that we had. Nobody had any dessert. And that's just because we just

didn't want it. Isn't it good when you can make a decision like that? Nobody wanted it. We'd all had plenty. We'd had starters, not that you should choose between a starter and a dessert, but we'd had starters and the mains were huge. They were so, so big. So come the end, we didn't feel the need to have any pudding. Now, if you took me back to dieting times, I'd have had that pudding regardless because it's all or nothing eating, isn't it? It's last supper eating. When you go out to eat, when you're on a diet, you

tend to go for the things that break your diet. If you're going to break your diet, you break your diet good. And that usually for me included having every course on the menu, including pudding, whether I was full or not. But we just had enough and that was good. That was really good. It was nice to go home comfortably full. I did want something sweet later, so I had something sweet later at home, but I didn't feel the need to have a pudding there just because it was there, because we were out, and because I felt

like I had to. So that was really nice. These moments are really satisfying, aren't they? When you become an intuitive eater. We don't go out for food very often. So I'm still, even now, really impressed with myself and really pleased with the progress that I've made when I go out for meals and things because we don't do it that often. But it's really nice when you can recognize these moments for yourself. Yeah, it makes such a difference, I think. It makes a real difference to how you enjoy life and how you enjoy social events too. Okay,

something I hear a lot from clients, from listeners to the podcast, from people on social media is that often when you start intuitive eating, you love what it does for your mindset and for your relationship with food, but you still struggle with the will to lose weight. I've had a few people ask me about this lately, so I thought I'd make it a podcast episode. So Jan, Mary and anybody else who sent this in for me as a suggestion for the podcast, this is for you. Okay, so we're looking at you starting to eat of eating

and you love it. You love what it does for your relationship with food. You love what it does for your eating habits. You love what it does for your mindset and you know that you shouldn't be dieting and you shouldn't be trying to actively lose weight anymore, but you still struggle with that will to lose weight. Maybe that is because you're feeling physically uncomfortable in your body, especially if it's a little bit bigger than it used to be. Maybe there are aspects of life that you feel you can't do anymore, or maybe you feel too ashamed

to do them because of your weight or your size. Or maybe you just like the way you used to look when you were thinner. They're all very natural thoughts when for so many years you've been dieting. So is there a middle ground? Is there a way to use intuitive eating for weight loss? And can you lose weight without dieting? That's what we're looking at today. Now, let's start with principle 1 of intuitive eating. For those of you who have looked at the intuitive eating principles, who have read the book, you will know that the very first

principle is rejecting the diet mentality. It's there at the beginning because it really underpins the rest of the principles. It's key in improving your eating behaviours and the way that you see your body. I do believe that it is the most difficult of all the principles to conquer. I really do. We are told for so long that we should be smaller, we should be thinner, we should be lighter, we should be better somehow. It's all over social media, it's in all the magazines, it's on TV, It's in all the conversations around you. All these messages are

accepted as the norm. So when diet culture is chipping away at you 24-7 like this, it's really difficult to just switch that off. God, an on and off switch would be great, wouldn't it? Just to be able to flick the switch and it be gone. But there is no switch. It's all about the work you have to do for yourself. But once you've got it, it's amazing. You see through all the diet culture BS, you see through all the beauty standard ideals that you're told you should be, and you start to value yourself and you see

that you're incredible just the way you are, you know, in your unique self. Intuitive eating for weight loss just doesn't fit this first principle of rejecting the diet mentality at all. So can you lose weight while intuitive eating? That's a big question isn't it? And there's no real easy answer to it. Maybe you can, maybe you can't. The thing with intuitive eating is it allows you to be guided by your body. When you listen to it, as you know, it will tell you what you need to eat, how much food, what type of food, what will

satisfy you. And the beauty of this is that because you'll be listening to what your body says it needs, it will be allowed to do what it naturally wants to do. And you've heard me say before, your body's got its own genetic blueprint. It knows what it's intended to be. Before you're even born, your genes have decided what you will look like. What color your hair will be, what shoe size you will have, what you will inherit from your parents. Do you like that? Inherent, it's like a combination of inherit and parent. Anyway, it's already been

decided what you will inherit from your parents, what shape and size your body will be. And this is what's known as your weight set point. It's the place where your body is at its happiest and its healthiest. It's where you were designed to be. It's what you're designed to be. So every time you're going to diet, You're forcing the body to fight that ideal weight. And so when you stop dieting, your body makes this effort to get back to that. And often you get this extra bit of weight gain as a protective measure. In fact, that

actually happens while you're still on your diet. Have you ever hit that plateau where it feels like even though you're doing your diet just the way it's supposed to be done, that weight just isn't shifting? And that's because your body is trying to maintain this weight set point, the place where it's designed to be. You see, your body is too clever for that. Weight is not a choice. Weight is pre-designated. Your body is far too clever for that. So maybe when you start intuitive eating you will gain weight, maybe you won't. Whatever happens though, your body

will do what it needs to do to be at its happiest, to be at its healthiest. It's always going to try and get back to that. Don't be fooled by the diets that advertise intuitive eating either. Many, many diets now are getting sneaky and they're trying to factor in intuitive eating into their advertising. And they're saying about weight loss through intuitive eating. But it's really important to remember that if there are any kinds of restrictions in place, it cannot be intuitive eating. Every diet is going to be based on some kind of restriction, whether that's cutting

calories, macros, whole food groups, there's always going to be some kind of rule or restriction in place somewhere. Even those diets that tell you, you can eat whatever you want. You may be able to eat whatever you want, but how much of it? There's always limits in place, aren't there? You can eat anything you want on this diet. Translates as, you can have anything you want, but as long as you count the things that we don't really want you to eat. You know, things like vegetables are always going to be eat as much as you want

and it's encouraged. That's not such a bad thing, right? But they're also going to say, You can have chocolate, you can have ice cream, you can have crisps, you can have bread, you can have cheese, you can have all this other stuff. But only a certain amount. You see, there's always limits. You might be able to have whatever it is you want, but there's always going to be some kind of restriction in there. And if you are eating in a way that is intended for weight loss, you will always be holding back somewhere. You yourself personally

in your eating habits, in your behaviors, you are going to be holding back somewhere. Even if you think that you're not, you will be questioning whether you've had too much food, whether you've had too much of 1 type of food, you're going to be questioning whether you've done enough exercise for the day, have you walked far enough, have you done enough steps. Your food choices will be very much dictated by your weight loss plan. And even if you're not on a plan, your food choices will still be dictated by the idea of what you think you

should be eating to lose weight. Your movement will be dictated by your weight loss goals and a weight loss plan that you're on. You will never truly listen to your body if the end goal is to force weight loss. Another common justification for losing weight is often health. Doctors go straight to advising weight loss for helping with medical conditions, don't they? Or even for preventing future medical conditions. How many of these have you heard before? Being overweight causes diabetes. Eating lots of sugar causes diabetes. Lose weight and you'll reduce your cholesterol. Lose weight and your joints

will feel better. Do you recognise any of those? Diet club consultants will often use them as selling points. They'll use health as selling points for staying on their diets and as goals to aim for. I often heard how you can come off your medication if you lose weight and how X amount of pounds would equate to X amount of pressure on the knees, for example. Now, I can't remember what that I genuinely can't remember what those figures were, what those numbers were, but it was quite scary what were you being told in these groups. So allow

me to reframe this for you. What if the reason that your joints feel better when you're dieting is because you are doing more physically active stuff? What if you're just moving more? What if you are doing better suited forms of exercise for your body? What if you're doing actual movement that you enjoy because you're making more of an effort to do it? We do, don't we? When we're dieting, we make an effort to move more because we think that will help our weight loss. That will give us scope to eat more food. Whatever the reasons are,

we do make an effort to do more physical activity when we're dieting. So what if these joints are feeling better because you're doing more physical activity and your body is getting stronger? It's less strain on other parts of your body when your whole body is feeling stronger, is getting stronger. What if the reason you're seeing improvement in your cholesterol levels is because you're eating different foods and it's having a positive effect on your body? Because again, let's face it, when you're dieting or when you're following a plan of some kind, you tend to be eating certain

types of foods, especially if you're doing something like Weight Watchers or Slimming World, something where there is a set plan that encourages lots of different foods. Quite often that steers you in a direction of having different types of foods and maybe those foods just having a better, more positive effect on your body. Not the weight loss, the fact that you're eating differently is having an effect. But it's also important to remember that correlation does not equal causation. 1 example of this is drowning and Nicolas Cage films. I know right, wondering where I'm going with this. In

the States, there is a correlation between the number of people who died from falling into a swimming pool and the number of films that Nicolas Cage has starred in. Does that mean Nicolas Cage appearing in films is increasing the number of swimming pool drownings? No, because that would be ridiculous, right? But it's the kind of warped logic that we are applying to health and to weight. Health is really a product of behaviors. It's not simply weight. If you eat a wider range of foods, you will naturally eat a wider range of nutrients. If you take up

more movement, especially movement you enjoy, you will feel the physical benefits like becoming stronger, having more flexibility, having better stamina, that sort of thing. You can make all these changes without the goal of weight loss. You see, correlation doesn't equal causation. It's all about behaviours. All that aside, I do know myself that the body does feel differently when you're in a bigger body compared to a smaller 1. I get that. Your body feels physically different. Maybe you're struggling to come to terms with how it looks. There are practicalities that change, such as clothes shopping, travel, accessibility

to facilities, that sort of thing. So I get it, I do get that it is different when you put weight on or different being in a bigger body to a smaller 1. As part of the work to become an intuitive eater though, you're going to have to do some work around the mindset of being in a bigger body. And this doesn't necessarily mean that you have to work on the thought of being in a really big body, but more the acceptance of being in a bigger body than you would like to be in. You will learn

new ways to do things. You will learn more ways to find clothes that fit you. You'll find more ways to advocate for yourself when you travel or where you go somewhere that should have better facilities for you. It's really tough to start with for many people, genuinely is, but this work is really important if you're going to be happy in your choice to stop dieting. And you may not realize it, but quite often we're driven to lose weight by the opinion of others. Once you've listened to this, you might want to go and have a listen

to episode 20. It's all about why you think you want to lose weight and why you really want to lose weight. The reasons that we think we want to lose weight are often very different to the actual reasons. You might be interested in that, so go and have a listen, that's episode 20. Okay, so how can you start to change things? Well, a nice way to approach this is to ask yourself what are your values? What do you want your life to be like? Do you value being more relaxed around food? Do you value being more

confident in your body? Do you value not passing the dieting behaviors onto your children? Do you believe you should be able to eat or be yourself without fear of judgment? What is it that you would value for yourself? What are your goals? You didn't start intuitive eating because you were happy dieting anymore. So what are those goals that you want to set yourself? What are you working towards? What do you want to achieve that is not weight loss related? It can be really helpful to do some thinking around those values and goals so that you can

come back to it when the drive to diet is really strong. Maybe you can take some time to write them down, figure out what they are for you, put them somewhere accessible, put them on your phone, wherever it is that you would like to have them so that you can look at them whenever it feels like a bit of a struggle. Consider what you have in your life that isn't food or weight related as well. What brings you happiness? Do you have a family that doesn't give 2 hoots about what you look like? Do you have

a hobby that is enjoyable no matter what your shape and size? So much more to life than weight. So try and find those things that matter for you and have them alongside your values and your goals. You can bring your mind back to them then. You can bring your mind back to them then. You can bring your mind back to the initial reasons for starting intuitive eating. So can you use intuitive eating for weight loss? This is the question, isn't it really? Is it okay to want to lose weight? Of course it is. I'm not here

to tell you that it's wrong to want weight loss. It's perfectly normal given everything that you've had drummed into you for years and years and years. And I'm not telling you it's wrong to want that. Is it okay to try to lose weight? Yep. You have autonomy. Just like I'm not here to tell you that it's wrong to want to lose weight, I'm also not here to tell you that it's wrong to try and lose weight. I'm just here to give you intuitive eating resources, help you understand why it's not necessarily a good thing to put

your body through weight loss and weight cycling. Weight cycling is yo-yo dieting, if you haven't heard that term before. It's not a good thing to put your body through those things, through weight loss, through weight cycling. But ultimately it's your choice and you have autonomy. You are in charge of your body. You are in charge of what you do in life. I'm just here to give you some help and some resources and some reassurance and a guiding voice should you want to go down the intuitive eating route. I hope that you are because you're here and

you're listening to me, but it's also up to you. Can you use intuitive eating for weight loss? Absolutely not. That is not what intuitive eating is for and I know you would love me to be able to say to you, yeah, go ahead, you can do it, you can do intuitive eating and you can do weight loss at the same time. But you can't because that is not what intuitive eating is about. And I understand, I know the drive to lose weight can be really strong, but intuitive eating and weight loss do not go hand in

hand. They are not compatible. They would not get a match on a dating site. No, no. They would not swipe for each other on Tinder. Oh God, now I feel old. I don't know whether it's swipe right or swipe left. Or maybe it's not my age, maybe it's just because I don't need to date anymore so I don't use Tinder. Anyway, they wouldn't get a match, would they? They wouldn't be compatible with each other in their life journey. God, shut up, Terry. Look, just take your time. Start slowly if you need to. Make the effort to

learn more about diet culture and body positivity and intuitive eating, so much available to you to help you. You've got a lot of diet culture unlearning to do and you've got a lot of new information to absorb. But the benefits of doing that and learning to be happy in your own skin now, as it looks now, without aiming for dieting, without aiming for weight loss, are really vast and you'll be really pleased that you did it. So what if you were to try and just put that aim of weight loss on the back burner for just

a little while? Why don't you just park it for now and see how it goes. Why don't you dive into this stuff head first and see what fits for you. Stick with me, I'll guide you through it. If you want me to help you and pick some of those thoughts, There's a few ways I can do that. You can obviously continue to listen to the podcast. We're at 60-odd episodes now, so there's a lot of information for you to plow back through if you haven't done yet. I'd love to coach you personally if you would like

that. If you'd like more self-guided information, some group coaching sessions, then you're welcome to do the membership, the Eat From Within membership. The links are all in the show notes. You can find out more about anything there or go straight to my website, whatever. If you're not sure which would be best for you, then feel free to book a discovery session with me. You can do that. We'll have a free 30 minutes log. We'll have a cuppa. We'll have a chat for half hour and you can see if what I offer is going to suit you

in any way. But stick with it and give it some time. Try and let that aim of weight loss pass if you can because the benefits of doing that are just so good when you come out the other side of it. I know it's difficult. You're at like the middle of the seesaw, aren't you? You're going from dieting to the absolute polar opposite of that. You love the intuitive eating, you love how it feels, you love the mindset, but there's still that weight loss the other side and you're like, oh, which way do I go? Oh,

maybe a seesaw wasn't the right kind of analogy there. I don't know what the analogy is. Tug of war. That's what it is. Do you know what tug of war is? You know the game where 2 teams pull on the rope and have to try and pull each other over the center line. Oh God, I hope you know what I'm talking about. Black pudding and tug of war all in 1 episode. But that's where you're at when you're stuck in this middle point, you're at this point where you really want 1 and you really want the

other and you can't have them both. But I really hope you stick with it. I hope you go with the intuitive eating option. Have a really great week ahead and feel free to slide into my DMs. Just drop me a message and say hi. I'd like that. I really like that. And don't forget also if you've got anything you want to say, You can now do it through SpeakPipe on my website. So there's a link in the show notes, which you can use. And you can basically go to my website, hit a button, record it like

I'm recording talking to you now, and I'll get your voice message. Cool, huh? Send it on through and maybe I'll use it in the podcast. So if you ask a question through there, then I will play that recording and then answer it for you. Or maybe you've got something funny to say, or maybe you've got a rant about something dieting related. But yeah, do you want me to play it on the podcast for you? And honestly, if you like, I don't have to use your name. Anyway, it's an option. It's there. The link's in the show

notes. I'd love to hear from you.