What is Intuitive Eating?
I know why you are here. And I get it. Either you having been looking at intuitive eating to try and stop dieting or you have started and you are worried about how your body will respond to it. Being in a large body makes this decision so much harder. That fear of ending up in a larger body is very real.
Intuitive eating is all about getting rid of dieting for good. Unlearning the food rules we have picked up from the many diets we have done for years and relearning how to eat in a way that feels good for us.
Intuitive eating is the eating we allow ourselves to do to listen to our body. It helps us listen to our body and trust it. The diet industry invests heavily in making us trust in them rather than ourselves. Diets telling us what to eat and when. Diet plans being sold. Telling us how to move our body’s and “no pain no gain”. It’s no wonder we end up completely confused about what and how to eat and that we completely miss our hunger signals. In fact, diets encourage us not to eat snacks and to skip meals to feel as hungry as possible.
Intuitive eating undoes this damage. And yes, it is damage. Because we pick up disordered eating behaviours like skipping meals. This damage doesn’t just leave us feeling confused but can also make us feel addicted to sugar and thinking about food 24/7. These are things that intuitive eating can help us with by allowing us to eat food without judgement, while we listen to our body.
But it does mean allowing ourselves to eat. And to eat a wide and varied variety of foods. Which is where we can fear weight gain.
Does Intuitive Eating Change our Weight?
We don’t know is the short answer to this. There is no predictor, unfortunately. And that’s because our weight is incredibly complicated. It isn’t as simple as it has been sold to us. Lots of papers have been used to try and work out if Intuitive eating is something that can help with weight loss and the results do not show any way of predicting how and if weight will change.
The reason why that is, is that we are not what or how much we eat and how much we exercise. The complicated things that come into our weight include genetic as well as socio-economics. These are 2 huge things we have very little control over but have such a huge impact on our weight.
What we do know is that Intuitive eating is a weight inclusive approach. You will either maintain your current weight, lose weight or gain weight. But the work we do alongside intuitive eating helps your weight become something that will not come with as complex thoughts. Intuitive eating focuses on healthy behaviours, not weight loss. This is actually the secret to something that is sustainable and long lasting.
There is growing evidence to show that it is far healthier for a person to have a more stable weight than to experience the extremes of weight change that diets bring. We know from lived experience and from science literature that diets may bring short term weight loss but most people rebound with their weight. So intuitive eating helps us stabilise our weight and find the weight our body wants to be at.
What does set-point weight have anything to do with this?
Set point weight theory is unfortunately that, a theory. Hopefully me explaining will help you understand why. Set point is all about your body having the determined weight it is supposed to be. Kind of like your height. Your height is mostly set for you by you genetics if you come from a tall family you are likely to be tall. This is the same for weight but actually far more complicated.
We know that the set point exists because of research on weight science that time and time again leans towards this theory. Set point weight research shows that our weight will change with trauma, stress and moments of starvation. Please read starvation as restriction because your body does not know the difference between calorie counting and starvation. So restrict, your body gets very good at digesting food and absorbing nutrients and it also means that your body gets really efficient at keeping you alive. You end up unsing less calories to live.
This means that your set point weight can only go up because your body is adapting to help you live. We do not have evidence to show it will ever go down again.
We do not know how your weight will change doing intuitive eating, but if you end up gaining weight, at least there is an explanation for it for you.
Common fears about Intuitive Eating and weight gain
Our fears about weight gain are from society messaging we have learnt throughout our lives. We pick up these messages and internalise them as beliefs. The following are examples of beliefs and/or fears around our body and weight gain: –
- I must control my body so it is a good body.
- I fear being out of control.
- I fear what other people will think of me and how they will treat me if I put on weight.
- I fear what my body will look like if I gained weight.
- I fear my clothes not fitting me if I gain.
- I fear that I won’t be healthy if I gain weight.
Let me just say that any feelings are valid. Completely valid.
How to overcome those fears about Intuitive Eating and weight gain
Overcoming these fears are done during intuitive eating work. Body acceptance, body neutrality and body positivity are all explored. Thoughts and feelings a teased apart and internalised fat phobia and anti fatness is challenged.
Journaling can be really useful here and writing about what weight gain means to you. Trying to get to the “why” is how we move forward with these fears. Why do you think you will be automatically unhealthy if you gain weight is a really common one to start with. And my instagram account has alot of ways to challenge this as well as looking into Health At Every Size can really help here.
Will Intuitive Eating make me fat (er)?
Fearing that weight gain when you are already in a fat/larger body is so so hard and even more understandable. Weight gain might potentially mean for you a loss in how society views you and how you fit in society. E.g in chairs, clothes availability. That loss of privilege is a real hard thing to lose.
This is where challenging internalised fat phobia becomes even more important, as is finding a fat community of your own. That can be friends who are doing the same as you in real life with intuitive eating or finding friends online. Facebook has a few really fat friendly groups which are anti diet as well that you can join and ask for friendship.
Here are a few you can join: –
I could just say to you to put weight loss on the back burner, but I’d rather validate your fears and let you know that these fear can be let go. I have seen it happen and supported people in doing it again and again. It’s never instant unfortunately but try to have some trust.
I am a person who is large bodied (I have taken back the word fat and call myself fat with neutral purpose) and an intuitive eater who coaches other large boded people in intuitive eating. When I say I get it, I really do.
Overall, we have looked at how intuitive eating may or may not change your weight but also at the same time, we have discovered that weight is not something we can easily control anyway. Diets don’t work and we know this because we have lived this reality again and again. If the fear of weight gain is holding you back, try to use the things in this blog to support you. You can always reach out to myself for help with this fear. We deserve better than trying to punish ourselves with dieting and weight loss for the rest of our lives.
Want to explore body image some more?
