Dieting Options – The Intuitive Eating Approach

Just about every week a new lose weight diet hits the market offering big promises but delivering small results. However, aside from the hype and the fads that are so common in the diet industry, there is an approach to weight management known as intuitive eating that is garnering attention. Intuitive or spontaneous eating is not based on the latest fad or herbal formulas for weight loss, but rather encourages a person to pay attention to the clues the body gives, with regard to how much and when nourishment is needed.

Rather than setting up a “battlefield” of you against your body, which typically takes the form of hating how your body looks, counting calories, restricting food choices and basically punishing yourself day in and day out, the intuitive approach to eating encourages you to “leave the battlefield.” This is accomplished by stopping, listening and paying attention to your inner voice.

Those who have struggled for years with weight and “body image” issues have no doubt encountered endless confusing and frustrating advice on how to diet, based on the current fad or latest research study. Intuitive eating essentially turns that tables and empowers people to tap into their inherent wisdom, giving them permission to ignore the fray of conflicting voices in the diet industry.

The main premise of eating intuitively is acknowledging and accepting that we are highly intelligent “machines” with an innate ability to perceive what out bodies need for health and vitality. It follows then that we should know how to achieve proper weight, if we can learn to tap into this intuitive wisdom and knowledge. Since this approach is so fundamental, and so simple, some have even called it dieting for dummies.

Through an intuitive approach to eating, you are allowed to eat when, what and how much you deem appropriate. Instead of manipulating your meal plans according to a lose weight diet and judging everything in terms of calories, fat grams, grams of carbs and other such measurements, the idea is to listen to the internal cues and recognize just what the body wants and needs.

As a result, daily food choices are based on real hunger and real satiety, as determined by you rather than some external set of standards that may have no relation at all to the status and function of your body. Stepping back and looking at this approach, it is easy to see that a typical lose weight diet and even a diet detox can easily be working against the inherent, intelligent, natural programming of your body.

One of the foremost researchers in the field of intuitive eating is Steven Hawks of Brigham Young University. Hawks has concluded that the “normal” approach to dieting in America does not result in any significant weight loss in the long term. In addition he states that the typical lose weight diet strategies contributes to unhealthy eating habits, food anxiety, and can even encourage the development of eating disorders.

In one of the studies that Hawks and his team conducted, they found that those who followed the principles of intuitive eating showed evidence of improved levels of lipoproteins, had a lowered body mass index score, and had reduced their risk of developing cardiovascular conditions. Hawks summarized the study by reporting that the results clearly showed that eating intuitively had significant positive benefits and was a viable way to mange weight.