If you are new to your Intuitive Eating journey, this may come as a shock to you… you are supposed to enjoy food! Yup, read that again!
Your eating experience is not supposed to just be endured. Food is supposed to be pleasurable. And this is where the fifth principle of Intuitive Eating comes in: Discovering the Satisfaction Factor. Click here to listen to our podcast where we dive deep into this principle.
To begin I’d like to share a quote from the creators of Intuitive Eating Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole on what they explain the satisfaction factor is:
“The Japanese have the wisdom to keep pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In our compulsion to comply with diet culture, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence—the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes just the right amount of food for you to decide you’ve had “enough.””
If you’re wondering if you are eating for satisfaction, I urge you to ask these 3 questions:
- Do you feel satisfied in your eating experiences?
- Do you feel pleasure while you’re eating?
- Do you get away from your meals saying “that was delicious. I am satisfied. I am happy”?
If your answers were no, you’re not alone! Diet culture has us rely on external cues to tell us what to eat and how much to eat. However when we enter into the intuitive eating paradigm, we are relying on internal cues.
When we deny ourselves foods that are “off-limits” based on food rules and replace our craving with something else, we deny the satisfaction of what we ACTUALLY want and hope that the replacement will satisfy us. What really happens is that we go through a roundabout way of searching for something that will satisfy our craving and by the end we end up eating what we were craving, and also eating all the foods before what we were actually craving. We should be keeping pleasure in food! We are denying ourselves of this when we follow diets.
How can I help myself find the satisfaction factor?
- Discover sensory gratification. This means sensing the taste, temperature, smell, and mouth feel of the food. When we enjoy food this way, it doesn’t take as much food to satisfy us.
- Make the eating atmosphere enjoyable:
- Have a clean space
- Use your favorite dishware
- Try to slowing down your eating experience
- Light a candle for ambiance
- Before eating, ask yourself questions along the lines of:
- “What do I feel like eating today?”
- “What food aroma appeals to me?”
- “What food appeals to me visually?”
- “How will that food taste and feel in my mouth?”
- “Do I want something sweet, savory, sour or bitter?”
- “Am I feeling something cold or hot?”
- “How will my stomach feel when I’m finished eating that? Will I be satisfied?”
The answer to the questions above will always be different and that’s good! If a chocolate donut will satisfy you right now, you should eat the chocolate donut! If crunchy vegetables will satisfying you right now, you should eat the vegetables! We will want different foods on different days and that is good. We should be honoring our cravings each day, no matter what those cravings are.
If you enjoyed reading this, I know you will love our other blog: 3 Myths About Intuitive Eating
Want to learn more about intuitive eating?
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One Response
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