Losing Weight with Intuitive Eating is a Myth.
A body at rest tends to stay at rest. Systems tend to stay in the state they are currently in, and it takes a rather strong force to move them out of that state.
Your body wants to stay at the weight it’s at, and it engages the metabolism, hunger and fullness to do so. This desire of the body is easy to overcome, especially when it comes to gaining weight. The reason it’s easy to overcome is the desire of the human brain for pleasure. It’s nice to eat delicious food and that makes you want to not stop. Next thing you know, you’ve overcome your body’s full signal so long that you’ve gained weight.
On the opposite side, there’s no instantaneous, ongoing pleasure that is gained from not eating, so it’s harder to lose weight.
Some people claim that learning to eat intuitively will help you lose weight, but it won’t happen. Your body is giving signals to keep it at its current size. That’s the intuitive part: listening to your body, which says, “Keep me at this size.” Until you develop a habit of eating less than your body needs, you won’t lose weight. With the exception of starvation and pregnancy, bodies want to stay where they are, and will keep signaling you to eat or not eat.
In order to gain or lose weight, you must adjust your intake to overcome this natural tendency. In order to do this permanently, you must make permanent changes. Permanent changes can be helped by a series of tools, like diets or execise, but the pattern to permanent change is the same:
- Believe that it’s possible and desirable to change
- Learn how to make the change
- Practice and improve your skill until your goal is reached
- Move to a steady state that maintains your change
Affirmations are a great way to achieve step 1. By writing and reinforcing your own personal affirmations, you come to believe it’s possible to make the change you want. As you begin to believe it’s possible, start the other steps. Eventually the affirming part will become second nature.
The tool I’m currently improving for myself is portion control I am reducing portions to make weight loss more consistent. Here are some affirmations I’ve written to help me believe it’s possible to reduce portions. My fullness target is to often eat just until the hunger goes away.
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Small portions look prettier on a plate
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Too much food makes me feel bad
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Large portions are simply unnecessary
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Just enough feels perfect
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Too much keeps me away from other things that I love
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Just enough saves money
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Too full is uncomfortable
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Just enough lets me buy better quality
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When it stops looking good, it’s not good to eat any more
small portions look prettier on a plate-LOOOOL So True!!! Anyway, I updated my blog I’ve lost 18 lbs, check it out
Thanks for writing this. I had the same thought–that a body tends to want to maintain the status quo, and so truly intuitive eating should maintain body weight–but no one else in the intuitive eating loop seemed to agree.
I am still working on intuitive eating; once I get there and master that, then I may be able to consider trying to lose weight again. Right now, I gain and gain and gain because of mouth hunger, and I am having trouble coping wth life in other ways. Sigh.
I disagree with you that intuitvie eating is a myth. it is probably the best way of eating and is most natural.
Hi Ericka,
I don’t think intuitive eating is a myth. I said “losing weight with intuitive eating” is a myth. Even intuitive eating, however, is learned as much as it is physically driven. Certainly the body signals hunger and fullness, but the mind drives the definition of “tolerable hunger” and “too full” which are necessary to intuitively eat.
Even babies, perhaps the most intuitive of eaters, are influenced by the people who feed them, since those people control how much and when food is offered.
I just started trying this on Friday, and I have to say it feels right.
Love the affirmations! I have e-mailed them to friends. Also, I really feel for dahlia and balu – when I have a hard time coping with something, it makes it almost impossible not to eat, eat, eat… which of course only adds weight, makes my figure look worse, and creates yet another source of something in my life I don’t like…