Intuitive eating to lose weight?????

shaumom wrote: »

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.

IBelieveInDogs wrote: »

I think people are focusing on the wrong word here, the word should be 'mindful' not intuitive. Mindful eating has worked for me.

It is based on asking yourself if you are truly hungry, not just bored, as well as eating slowly, so that your brain can recognise that your stomach is full and stop while you are satiated and not stuffed. It also tells you to eat when you are hungry, so theres no restriction and you should never be starving, or over eat.