The Millstone Times August 2020

♥ HEALTH  &  WELLNESS

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9. EXERCISE—FEEL THE DIFFERENCE Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it’s usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time. 10. HONOR YOUR HEALTH Gentle Nutrition Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel well. Remember that you don’t have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts. SO, WHAT IS INTUITIVE EATING THEN WHAT DOES IT MEAN, TO ME? Intuitive eating is about trusting your inner body wisdom to make choices around food that feel good in your body, without judgment and without influence from diet culture. We are all born with the skill to eat, to stop when we are full, to eat when we are hungry and to eat satisfying foods. As we grow up that can change for a variety of reasons. Many of us lose that freedom and intuitive eating is learning to reclaim it. When we filter out the noise and influence that diet culture presents to us as false truths, we can then truly listen to what our body wants and needs from food. Intuitive eating is a peace movement. It’s ending the war with your body, learning to accept our diverse genetic blueprint. Diet culture would have us believe all the rules we have around food as gospel because they are all, in some way, focused on the thin ideal; that anybody other than a thin one, is wrong. Those food rules lead to an emotional value placed on food and when we put that emotional value on food, we then internalize it as we eat and that leads to thoughts like, “I’m so bad because I ate XXXXXX.” Let me be clear, food is not good or bad and labeling it as such can pose many problems. Nutritionally, just like bodies, all foods are different. Emotionally though, all foods must be equal. One food does not make you bad while the other makes you good. If we can approach ALL FOODS as emotionally equal, we can truly begin to connect with our own inner wisdom. Intuitive eating is about making peace with food and giving up the needless war against our body and how we eat. Intuitive eating is challenging and can difficult to understand. It’s completely opposite of how we’ve been taught to think about food. It’s not black or white, it’s gray, nuanced and there is no one “right way” which is why it can be so confusing. Intuitive eating is a beautiful part of recovery. It is also an essential piece in the prevention of eating disorders. If you are struggling to understand what intuitive eating really is, I suggest you read the book, or buy the official workbook to help you learn more. I also highly recommend finding a therapist or dietitian who truly understands this work as they become essential partners in adopting these principles. Aaron Flores, RDN has a private practice in Los Angeles. He specializes in Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size® and helps people reclaim Body Trust®. In addition to his private practice he is also the co-host of the podcast, Dietitians Unplugged.

32 The Millstone Times

August 2020