Food Is No Longer The Enemy
How Intuitive Eating Became the Anti-Diet
From the Keto diet, to Weight Watchers, Dan Corica, a 29 year old musician living in Manhattan, has been yo-yo dieting his entire life. Even when his waistline would decline, he realized his happiness wasn’t synonymous with a number on the scale. He spoke candidly on the morality of food, “My least favorite thing is the ‘guilty pleasure’ attitude people feel towards food they love. It’s such a deeply ingrained way of speaking about food.” He said.
‘I love ice cream, but it’s bad for me, so I’m being naughty when I talk about how much I love it.’ It’s so hard to unlearn that because it feels like a universal experience.”
In an attempt to make peace with his body and mind, Dan joined the ranks of thousands of other dieters, and began practicing Intuitive Eating, the “anti-diet” way of approaching food.
Under this mindful eating theory, they encourage honoring your hunger, acknowledging when you’re full, and controlling your inner and outer food police.
When you allow yourself to have what you want, and listen to your body cues on fullness, there is less obsession over these stereotypically “bad” foods, because you can have them whenever you want.
Intuitive Eating was brought onto the Californian wellness scene in 1995, by two dietitians who were interested in creating a guilt-free food reality. Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, created intuitive eating as a “non-diet” approach to the way we consume, breaking the cycle of diet culture and mending our relationships to food. Over the past 10 years, there has been a sharp uptick of interest in the practice of IE, and just this past year, more interest pieces and press covering an alternative approach to food and exercise. The practices of I.E. are frequently associated with the Health at Every Size movement, also known as H.A.E.S. and as a recovery technique for those suffering from eating disorders. Intuitive Eating is most applied to those with disordered binge-eating, as one of it’s main premises is removing the guilt from food.
Intuitive Eatings shifts the focus away from food, and tries to find the underlying emotional stresses that may be causing overeating to begin with.
Emotional aspects can range anywhere from sheer boredom to anxious and depressive eating. IE suggests honoring your feelings and your body, without the use of food in a multitude of ways: Writing in a journal, going for a walk, practicing yoga, calling a friend, or reading a book. This is one of the practices that is easiest to hold on to for new intuitive eaters like Corica.
“Food is no longer the enemy!” Corica exclaims. It is something that sustains me, and brings me joy.”
He goes on, “trying to eat intuitively has allowed me to try and experience real satisfaction-deeper than just ‘fullness’- when eating.” This in itself, is allowing for a deeper connection to food and getting to the bottom of why individuals feel the way they do, instead of food becoming a momentary comfort.
With high demand for exploring the theory and the deeper self, thousands of registered Intuitive Eating specialists have popped up all over the country, with hundreds located in New York alone. Donna Agajanian is just one of the hundred Intuitive Eating counselors based in New York City. After struggling with weight for most of her life, she decided to examine her feelings surrounding food and her emotional actions more closely. After discovering that over-eating or restricting certain foods from her diet came after emotional events of based on how she was feeling, she decided to work towards:
“freeing herself from over-eating by listening to her body and discovering what her emotional connection to food is.”
To Agajanian, the issue of disordered eating is pressing. In the United States, eating disorders now have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness.
50% of girls between the ages of 11-13 see themselves as overweight, and 91% of women in the United States attempt to control their weight through dieting, according to the ANAD (National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders).
There is an issue with the way we’re approaching “health” and food, outside of constantly being inundated with media to “eat clean” and extreme exercise routines. Feelings of shame or guilt that have worked their way into society through the capitalization of diet culture.
In a world where diet culture prevails, there is a chance the Intuitive Eating wrongfully gets associated with it. Dan weighs in: “The hardest part has been staying vigilant about not turning IE into another diet.” Am I able to follow the principles of Intuitive Eating 100% of the time? Absolutely not. It’s hard to forgive myself for that when I spent so much of my life on restrictive diets where total compliance felt like a life or death situation.”