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By Heather Rudalavage, Registered Dietician

One of the most challenging pieces of the the intuitive eating approach is that people don’t see how it can work. People don’t trust themselves. They believe they won’t be able to stop eating chocolate or cake or pizza. Maybe it’s because the diet message is so pervasive in our society, or maybe we are just narcissistic in nature, but it continues to astonish me how much my clients rely on external sources to know what, when and how much to eat. Odd because hunger is a physiological response similar to breathing or having to pee. When we visit the restroom, we don’t say, “did I pee too much?” When we take a breath, we don’t say, “it’s not time to breathe yet”. But clients ask me all the time, “how much should I eat?” Or, “I am hungry all the time.”

I just finished reading a wonderful book called, “The Only Diet There Is”, among emphasizing that loving yourself and forgiveness, is the best diet there is, she also addresses the impact of guilt and negativity on our weight. Science may have not been able to prove this exactly, yet, but it seems that our body’s react more strongly to how we feel about the food we eat than the actual content of the food. Astonishing! If we think the food we are eating is “fattening” than our body will treat it as thus.

So, I just can not emphasize enough, the answer lies within. If you drop the dieting mentality and the voices in your head that tell you that a particular food is bad, you will be able to tune in and when you tune in, your body will tell you what, when and where to eat. Sometimes your body may say, chocolate and sometimes it may say a tuna melt, but whatever your body says, listen, because it is the right choice for you at that moment.

Here is the link to a nice article about guilt and intuitive eating : article