Intuitive eating to lose weight?????
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Sparkle097
Posts: 83 Member
Does this work?
I watched people on YouTube and they were saying you can lose weight while eating mindfully??? I always heard like it’s all calories when it comes to losing weight. But now I’m like confused?! It makes sense to eat when you are hungry but sometimes you can u can under eat or over eat from doing this???
Wat if u eat when you are hungry but you are under eating. For example eating like 1200 calories or below but you don’t know that because you are intuitive eating????
Wat do u think?
I watched people on YouTube and they were saying you can lose weight while eating mindfully??? I always heard like it’s all calories when it comes to losing weight. But now I’m like confused?! It makes sense to eat when you are hungry but sometimes you can u can under eat or over eat from doing this???
Wat if u eat when you are hungry but you are under eating. For example eating like 1200 calories or below but you don’t know that because you are intuitive eating????
Wat do u think?
2
Replies
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I can't do it. Eating that way is how I gained the weight in the first place. Of course it works for some people. But I don't have very good portion control unless I am counting calories.
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Eating what I thought I should when I thought I should was how I gained weight. I’m learning a lot about my body’s functioning and hunger patterns now that I’ve lost it again, and at times I override MFP based on those. But I’ve demonstrated over the course of years that I need more structure than “listen to your body,” so I don’t think that would suddenly magically work for me now.8
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It’s still all about calories to lose weight...those people you’re watching are still in a calorie deficit.6
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It works for some people, not for others. I don't track my food but I have guidelines I follow to keep my calorie amount suited to my goals (lose, maintain, gain)
In order to know I am eating the right amount I track my weight. My trend weight over time tells me how much I am consuming and I adjust my intake accordingly.
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It's still about calories. People who lose weight while eating intuitively do so because they intuitively eat less calories than they burn.10
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For me this works until it doesn't.15
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does not work for me1
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I intuitively eat all the things, so, no.20
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Intuitive eating works for some people because they end up naturally eating the right amount of calories. Some people overeat due to boredom eating, or just shoveling food in while working or watching tv or playing with their phone. Paying attention and listening to their hunger signals helps them eat the right amount. Intuitive eating doesn't work despite calories, it works (for some) because of them, like everything else.
I wasn't really a mindless eater, and I'm really not intuitively good at anything . I'm numbers oriented so counting is comforting to me, I like to see the data and make it work.
You have to figure out how your brain works, and what "system" will get you into a calorie deficit with the least amount of stress and effort. For some it's calorie counting, for some it's following a specific diet or macro distribution, for some it's intuitive or mindful eating.7 -
snickerscharlie wrote: »I intuitively eat all the things, so, no.
This! I dont have this discipline so I have resumed mindful logging to lose those 12lbs1 -
snickerscharlie wrote: »I intuitively eat all the things, so, no.
This! I dont have this discipline so I have resumed mindful logging to lose those 12lbs
Sometimes acknowledging your shortcomings and making adjustments accordingly is all that's required to affect the changes needed to succeed.3 -
Try it for a couple of weeks or a month to give you a better idea and see. If you don’t see the scale move then you’ll know.
I’m sure some days you’ll eat over 1200 and some days you’ll eat less. Calories are king however some are able to lose not counting by eating mindfully most can’t though.0 -
I'm eating mindfully but calorie or portion control? No way! I can't estimate distances, times or sizes of objects. And I can't estimate portion size either. Sometimes a portion feels too big for me, but usually it's bigger than I thought.4
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If losing weight was intuitive, not many of us would be overweight, right?7
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intuitive eating relies on the premise that the body will naturally tend towards an equilibrium, in terms of weight, AND that this equilibrium is 'healthy by how we define it currently.'
This ignores reality. Because intuitively, the body acts in the ways that will keep you alive long enough to breed, and unfortunately, the body developed in a world where you had to gain weight to survive times when food wasn't so plentiful. So staying the same size all year round is NOT what the body is trying to help us achieve. Which is why intuitive eating isn't workable, for most - our intuition is not geared for what we're currently trying to achieve.
From what I've read...
1. The body tends to make people hungry to maintain a minimum level of weight...so if you are the perfect weight, not eating unless you're body seems hungry might work. If you are trying to lose weight, however, your body will make you hungry until you stop losing weight and get back to the weight you originally were, if it can. It's a good survival trait, but not so great when people have food readily available all year round.
2. And many things can alter when your body gives hunger impulses. Gut bacteria, for example, have been shown to influence when the body gives hunger signals, in ways that can make you lose or gain weight if you listen to them, and whether your body is urging you to lose or gain weight depends on which bacteria your gut has.
3. There is little survival benefit for the human body to try to restrict weight gain. Because typically, weight gained during part of the year was needed to survive lean times during the winter, you know? It's a GOOD survival trait to be able to gain weight quickly when needed - until you live in a civilization where you get food consistently, where you aren't HAVING any lean times to take that weight off. Then, not so helpful.
4. Human beings also have a lot of instinctive behaviors that increase the likelihood that you will gain weight unless you are aware of them and going AGAINST your instincts, or at least heading them off at the pass. Like, for example, people will tend to eat the food in front of them, so the more food there is, the more we tend to eat. This can make it tricky to eat out without a little weight gain, if portion sizes are large. People are drawn to sugars and fats instinctively, because we're built that way - theories as to why are simply because these two things indicate more calories, and for a species trying to eat enough to survive, it's good to be drawn to calories sources so you don't starve to death.
So basically - our instincts/intuition is built to keep us alive in times when we needed to be able to hold onto whatever calories we came across, so we could survive the times when there are few calories to be found. And that's not a set of instincts that are going to be as useful when we're not in that situation.
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in·tu·i·tive
adjective
using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive.
So it is impossible to learn to eat intuitively. If you gained weight from BED, it is possible that if you successfully avoid further incidents that you can maintain using intuitive eating and if the maintenance weight is below your current weight, you will be at a slight deficit and slowly lose to your maintenance weight. But if eat too much if you don't consciously track, intuitive eating won't work Mindful eating, which is pretty much the opposite of intuitive, can be learned and works for some people who don't track explicitly.3 -
Intuitive eating works for me when I'm not doing the shopping and the food available is higher bulk/lower calorie.
When I am doing the shopping and have access to the full array of higher calorie and hyper-palatable foods, it doesn't.0 -
no that's how i gained weight1
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kshama2001 wrote: »Intuitive eating works for me when I'm not doing the shopping and the food available is higher bulk/lower calorie.
When I am doing the shopping and have access to the full array of higher calorie and hyper-palatable foods, it doesn't.
Interesting answer. I guess you can naturally be good at stopping when full enough and bad at picking what to fill up on.0 -
CarvedTones wrote: »kshama2001 wrote: »Intuitive eating works for me when I'm not doing the shopping and the food available is higher bulk/lower calorie.
When I am doing the shopping and have access to the full array of higher calorie and hyper-palatable foods, it doesn't.
Interesting answer. I guess you can naturally be good at stopping when full enough and bad at picking what to fill up on.
Oh, I am terrible at stopping when full when eating foods like ice cream and it takes strategies and discipline to stop with pizza.
But when I only have access to lower-palatable foods, I have no problem stopping.0
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