Intuitive eating: how to make peace with food

In our society for decades, especially women, are constantly bombarded by an ideal of beauty that is often unreal and unattainable. We have always been told that to reach a body considered perfect, sacrifices must be made, including dieting to lose weight and achieving the so-called “healthy weight”. So,over the years a diet culture has been instilled in which everyone feels compelled to diet and limit their calorie intake or consider certain foods to be “bad” just because they “make you fat”.

This unhealthy idea of nutrition has led us to consider food as an enemy, something to fight against, not as a basic human need and a pleasure. We are constantly bombarded with food information, new discoveries, innovative and restrictive diets. There are so many rules around food that people tend to no longer listen to their own body needs, not to trust their hunger and the normal cycles of the body with regards to nutrition.

Thanks to intuitive eating you can finally learn to listen to your body, to no longer divide foods into “good” and “bad” and to find love for food again. It’ very simple to practice intuitive eating, you just have to learn to listen to yourself, and eat what feels right at that moment until you feel full. You don’t feel guilty anymore and if you crave chocolate it’s just because the body knows what it really needs. But obviously it’s not something that happens immediately. You have to train to start feeling our real needs again and perhaps at the beginning you may still be conditioned by a life of diets and restrictions. But over time this will become the most natural way to eat

The advantages of intuitive eating are many, especially regarding mental health. Food disorders have often arisen from these imposed or self-imposed rules that affect food which, if undermined, you can finally live free from guilt and social pressure that affects food.