This is supposed to be a week devoted to exercise. But an experience of this weekend made me really want to think about gentle nutrition – the 10th principle. This Friday, after a day from hell, we all (we have some guests over) went out for a round of drinks, and then grabbed a takeout pizza on our way home – the fatty, salty kind. It felt rewarding. We were all hungry, and we all ate too much. My whole weekend was impacted by this experience. I felt bloated the next day and anything I ate felt like overeating.  

So I will swap the 9th and 10th intuitive eating principle and focus this week on gentle nutrition.

It’s difficult to feel your fullness when you’re too hungry. In addition, it seems to be more difficult to feel your fullness with some kinds of foods than others (mainly processed vs. wholesome foods), according to the Health at Every Size book. The fullness signals of that pepperoni pizza clearly got in way too late. When I eat my delicious bowl of whole-grain cereals with dried fruit and nuts – I feel the every bite filling me a bit more. I have little problems stopping when I'm full. 

Now this principle has a potential to be misinterpreted if adopted through the glasses of diet mentality. The way I understand it – it’s basically about choosing foods that make you feel good. Sometimes it’s not about what we eat, but why we eat it (the focus being on how a food makes us feel, vs. how we perceive its impact on our weight).

The Intuitive Eating book gives guidelines in numbers of servings of different types of foods. I’m sure you are familiar with most of these guidelines. What may be surprising for some dieters is the often overestimated importance of protein-rich foods. Health at every size gives one simple guideline: enjoy a variety of real food, mostly plants. Variety is a sure way to get all the nutrients we need. Real foods refer to unprocessed foods. The simplicity of this guideline is fantastic.

Having a chocolate, or another type of “play food”, as the Intuitive Eating book calls them, doesn’t mean you’ve broken any rule. The balance should be achieved over time, not every day or with every meal. “Food is just food”, says Linda Bacon (from Health at Every Size): no individual food has the power to significantly impact your health – just overall eating patterns.

I will spend this week reflecting on my eating habits – no judgements – and thinking about how I can gently introduce more wholesome eating habits. I already naturally crave and eat a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, so that part want be a problem. But I am very interested in identifying how different foods make me feel. I will try to use daytum to track my meals and try to recognize patterns.