Intuitive Eating: Oh, sure, just rewild that appetite.
Image: Tigre dans les jungles, Paul Ranson, 1893, Minneapolis Institute of Art. Used with permission.
Hi friends! Some of you found it concerning that I kept myself home for observation after my first vaxx. I should have been more clear: That was an EXCUSE to do nothing. "Home for observation" should have been in heaviest air and actual quotes. If you have not been vaxxed yet, please know: IT WAS (basically) NOTHING.
Otoh, I hear the second dose IS something. But I am prepared to pay the price of (slightly greater) freedom! Can you believe we might actually see each other!!!! (I will be in the East Bay in June, if you're around. LMK!)
Now then. Last week, A. wrote to ask about Intuitive Eating. She says this:
"Wanted to get your thoughts on a FB group I joined recently.
They are anti diet, anti restriction, anti everything basically. They encourage people to eat whatever they want, whenever they want until they learn the body’s cues. Sounds wonderful until I read that almost everyone has ballooned (forbidden word) in size since starting the program. What are your thoughts?"
OMG you guys. I LIE IN WAIT to be asked what I think about Intuitive Eating, which, as commonly practiced, I consider a DISASTROUS move for binge eaters. (Scroll down for TL;DR.)
Listen, I have been working with binge eating since like the Tudors were in the White House, and in all that time—I've said this before but the numbers haven't changed—I have known two (2!!!) people who were able to go from chaotic bingey eating to stable, non-chaotic intuitive eating, instead of increasing the chaos and gaining weight.
(Crap, I said weight. I said "weight" after I said we weren't gonna keep talking about weight here. But I DO FOR SURE want to let you know that there is no need to accept "ballooning" along with stable eating. It's not an either/or.)
Anyway, the reason IE is such a damn disaster for binge eaters is in this formula: "Eat whatever they want, whenever they want until they learn the body's cues."
To be fair, it's been a minute since I read the Intuitive Eating book, so I don't remember the authors' formulation perfectly, but I doubt it's "whatever you want whenever you want until you learn the body's cues." I'm pretty sure they would say "whatever the BODY (not "you") calls for, whenever the BODY is in need (not "want"), and so gather understanding about the body's cues". Like that.
Reasonable ideal. IMPOSSIBLE ASK.
It's impossible because virtually no one can discern the body's requirements after years of binge eating. Particularly if you're a carby, sugary bingey eater.* You, your habit brain, AND your body are almost certainly habituated to calorie-dense nutrient-poor industrial "food" that has been VERY CAREFULLY AND DELIBERATELY ENGINEERED to make us CRAVE IT CONSTANTLY.
*And you know: most binge eaters are not binging on broiled haddock and quinoa.
Feed that craving, and the result is more craving. It sure seems like what the body is asking for, and it probably is <— not a good thing.
IE enthusiasts talk about the ease and desirability of going back to our instinctual childhood appetites to reconnect with the body's cues but this too seems to me IMPOSSIBLE. How you gonna rewild the appetite in this industrial wasteland of low-nutrition bullshit food?
Why would you even want to go back to some primitive untutored way of eating, anyway? Children DO NOT know all there is to know about food. They and their bodies have to be taught about what, how and when to eat by more experienced eaters, usually parents. Hopefully those parents have proud and artful traditions to draw on.
But in many families, that's not the case. A person can come from generations of disordered eaters—I do—or generations trying to make it on industrial food.
So I'm starting to think I can't claim the label "anti-restriction". I believe that absolutely, you should get calories. You should get protein. You should get delicious, delicious fats! You should get macronutrients and micronutrients. You should be generous with yourself and feel good about it.
But MAYBE you want to consider restricting, yeah I'm gonna say it, restricting endocrine-disregulating binge-sustaining eating-disorder-encouraging lab-engineered highly profitable industrial foodlike things, if you can.
Which, you know, capitalism makes hard! Because the companies making these foods have way more time and money than we do. Foods that are engineered to be cheap, fast, shelf-stable and available everywhere solve a lot of problems for regular folks.
Personally, herein lies my resistance.
TL;DR
Here it is: If you
start eating meals more or less on a schedule
get enough quality fat and protein
limit or eliminate processed carby food-adjacent substances
your hunger hormones will calm down, you and your body will experience satiety, and your body's cues will become 1. blindingly obvious with zero effort on your part and 2. not hard to satisfy.
Understanding the body's cues is REAL. But I don't think you're likely to get there if you eat "whatever you want, whenever you want". That usually leads to calorie-dense nutrient-poor food, which almost always leads to more of the same.
Whew. That's the week.