by Golda Poretsky, HHC
http://www.bodylovewellness.com
I want to make something really, really clear.
If you’ve been practicing intuitive eating, and it hasn’t resulted in weight loss, it is not your fault and it doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong.
When I first heard about intuitive eating as an alternative to dieting, I read everything that Geneen Roth ever wrote. And although she has a lot of good things to say, she also implies, again and again in each of her books, that if you eat intuitively you will lose weight. She even uses that trick that every diet marketer in the history of diets uses, writing things like:
“By May I had gained 15 pounds. From May through September, my weight stabilized. In October, still eating what I wanted, I began to lose weight, and over the next two years, I lost 30 pounds. That was five years ago.” [1]
What Ms. Roth doesn’t tell you is that she is an anomaly. There’s no “results not typical” even though they are. There’s no mention of the fact, in any of her books, that dieting wreaks havoc on your metabolism such that intuitive eating may not have much of an effect on your weight at all.[2]
And, perhaps most perturbing, is the fact that practicing intuitive eating with the expectation of weight loss really screws up your ability to eat intuitively.
The truth is that you can’t be intuitive when you’re looking for a particular result.
It’s like reading tarot cards to find out if someone who you want to date likes you back. If you’re feeling desperate enough, you will read all manner of loveliness into cards that say that this person has no interest in you.
It’s the same with intuitive eating. If you’re doing it to lose weight, you will convince yourself that you just want to eat celery sticks when you’re body is jonesing for some protein. You’ll convince yourself that you’re not hungry when you are. You’ll keep yourself in the dieting framework of punishment and reward and restriction. You’ll be reading the cards all wrong because you don’t want to believe what you see.
Intuitive eating is not about control, it’s about trust. It’s about trusting your body’s signals of hunger and fullness, desire and satisfaction. It’s about trusting your body enough to know that it needn’t be so controlled.
When you allow yourself to eat intuitively, you will get results. Those results may or may not include weight loss, but they will definitely include something more. They will include a letting go of the daily stress of worrying about food and weight. They will include feeling at peace with your body and it’s needs. They will include a new spaciousness in your life for joy, an openness to possibilities, a willingness to love and approve of yourself and be the fully-embodied person you were born to be.
If you’re ready to experience these beautiful, tangible results, I invite you to join me for How To Heal From Emotional Eating, a 3 class teleseries which starts in just a few days. Click here for more info: http://www.healfromemotionaleating.com.
Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. To learn more about Golda and her work, click here.
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- [1]Geneen Roth, Breaking Free From Emotional Eating (New York: Plume, 2003) 19↩
- [2] This is one of the many things I loved about Dr. Linda Bacon‘s book, Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight. Linda disclaimed her own weight loss by writing the following. “You’ve heard this before. Every book about weight starts with the weight loss testimonial. It gets your hopes up and sells books. And when it doesn’t work the same way for you, that’s always your fault–you must have done something wrong, if you didn’t get the same results. So let me be clear: My weight-loss results aren’t typical, and I don’t mean to use my experience to promote any weight loss technique.” (Dallas: BenBella Books, 2008) xxii↩
Intuitive Eating And Weight Loss http://t.co/vLPdWx9Z vía @@bodylovewellnes
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Thank you for your honesty regarding Intuitive Eating. I have read many different types of books dealing with Intuitive Eating including some of those written by Geneen Roth. I also went for a few years to group counseling for Intuitive Eating Support. None of these things have helped me and I became more frustrated as I found myself gaining weight, not losing it. The “maintainers” of the IE group (who had MA’s and PHD’s) intimidated me and made me feel ashamed and selfish because I complained that I wasn’t getting the help I needed and gained a lot of weight so I quit (and was belittled for it). The different books I read on the subject were also of little help to me as the concept I got from them was that if I wasn’t doing it perfectly and getting results than it’s no one fault but my own.
Knowing that there is no one perfect way to “Intuitively Eat” and that weight loss is only a possible result, not a given, even if done correctly, does make me feel much better.
What an oasis to find this website! What a joy! Just yesterday I had a breakthrough, with the help of my wonderful husband, finally letting go of stereotypes and loving myself for who I am, not what I weigh or what size I am. This is a safe place!
Thank you!!
Wow, thanks for raising this important point.
Golda,
For me, reading this post created an earthquake in my mind. What? The point of IE is not weight loss? Why was I duped for so long? I think I just didn’t want to believe I will not lose the weight I have gained. And of course there was my experience with a well known IE expert.
In my sessions with this woman she would often mentioned her other clients who lost weight. This kept me imagining my thinner self and with her knowledge of IE I would be thinner again. I know she meant well but the affects were devastating for me, and I was often consoled by Ben and Jerry after our sessions. Needless to say I stopped seeing this woman and continued on my journey of self hatred and weight gain. I was a failure at IE and still pretty much believe I am because of the ingrained thinking about IE equals weight loss. This post gives me hope but for what I am not sure. I just feel hopeful.
I am so grateful you wrote this.
Thank you, thank you GOLDA!
@Patti,
I PAID to join a site that dealt with IE. Turned out it had stricter rules than most diets. I joined only for support and camaraderie with ppl doing what I was doing. Instead it was monitored by the site owner who wasn’t a practising therapist, only had a MA in counseling – no license. The structure was to follow her book moving on in defined stages at her approval. The second stage was logging everything you eat, 1. before you eat logging time, place, situation, feelings – 2. same for after. Many ppl were in that stage for close to a year. LOGGING EVERY MORSEL before and after you ate it. She ear-dropped on threads, pulling out sentences in posts, without permission or warning, that she used to “point out” your skewed thinking. I had a falling out with her after being told, she wouldn’t take a million dollars for something I had no choice but to do. I private messaged her that I felt the comment was unprofessional. (a clinical therapist would have been fired over that) The ppl on the site were great, one in particular lead me to so many insights. Then the owner came up from the rear and ruined everything for me.
Moral of the story, I was doing great until that “expert” insisted I do it righter. Then, after all that mess and after I quit, I binged for 2 weeks. I’m too vulnerable for that nonsense. For me, being with ppl who are on my same path is much more valuable than to be coached/follow a formula on how to do it righter.
Don’t despair. it’s just a setback. Believe in yourself and what you are trying to achieve. No one person has all the answers. No one way is the only right way. Don’t let that experience throw you… for too long.
Hi Golda,
This is one of the best posts that I have read in a while on intuitive eating. You are spot on in saying “practicing intuitive eating with the expectation of weight loss really screws up your ability to eat intuitively.”
If you go into it wanting weight loss, you most probably will not get it because like you said, you will be eating celery sticks when you want something else.
The whole principle is about completely letting go. I have been an intutiive eater for 4 years now and I did in fact lose weight, but the honest truth was that i DID NOT CARE. This approach gives you freedom – that is the whole point on it. Freedom from the mental obsession with food and weight.
Thanks for an awesome post!
Nina