Hey there. So if you’re considering intuitive eating work, you might be looking into it and figuring out what it’s about and maybe how it could help you. So I wanted to share with you a few of the benefits that you might get to discover for yourself if you choose to dive into intuitive eating, either on your own or with a food and body therapist like me and the other two people on my team.
So first of all, what I want to let you know is that we are always intuitively eating. And that may sound a little edgy. It is, but it’s also true. One of the benefits that you can really get from diving into intuitive eating work is by getting really curious and asking the question, what is it that my relationship to food, how I’m eating, what I’m eating, what can it tell me about what is happening inside?
So the first benefit of intuitive eating work is that it is a journey of self discovery. We get to really discover what is happening for you on your insides. And this ushers you into a process of getting to know your body, getting to know yourself. So at a basic level, intuitive eating work can really help you get in touch with these signals that are coming from your body.
Basic examples are hunger and fullness. So when you really get in touch with your intuitive eater, you can rely on yourself, right, the cues from your body to know what to eat and how much to eat, without having to rely on a pesky diet at all. A second benefit that you could get from intuitive eating work is that you get to take back your agency over your body and over your health.
So when you are entrenched in diet culture, it takes your power, right? Someone else is telling you about your body, what is good and bad. Someone else is telling you about your health and what you need to do, what you should do to manage it. That is not true with intuitive eating. Intuitive eating really guides you to your inner wisdom and your inner knower so that you can take back your own agency, your ability to decide for yourself how to take care of your body and how to engage with your health.
Another benefit that you could get is developing self respect from validating your own needs and really learning how to get them met. You may have a disruption in this ability to really know and honor your own needs for myriad reasons. But the important thing is that intuitive eating really guides you in checking in and acknowledging and honoring what your needs are and finding a pathway to get them met.
And it might be you learning to meet some of your own needs, or it might be you reaching out for connections to get some of those needs met. Things like, you know, social connection, physical touch, those sorts of things. So when we’re talking about needs, we’re not just talking about food and movement and water and things like that. We’re really talking about needs globally that go beyond just our basic bodily needs.
Okay, so here’s a really important benefit that a lot of people realize through this work. So intuitive eating work helps you to quiet your inner critical voice. So this means that your experience of body shame can really diminish, really quiet down. And we’re really cultivating instead respect for your body, care for your body. And let me tell you, when that really harsh voice of inner judgment, of body shame starts to lighten and lift, it increases your sense of well being through so dramatically.
Okay, so here’s a really important benefit that so many people experience with this work. The inner critic voice quiets and the experience of body shame really diminishes. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s probably not going to be totally gone, but it is much quieter. And you learn skillfulness around working with that voice when it does arise so that in general you can live your life with a feeling of respect for yourself and your well being.
Being raised in quite a profound way when this harsh voice gets a lot quieter and you grow your inner voice that is kind and respectful. And all of these benefits together support you growing your sense of empowerment and your inner sense of confidence in yourself, your body and your ability to listen to your body and respond to its needs. So there’s usually this feeling that arises of just feeling more comfortable being yourself in the world, which is just a beautiful thing to witness when that blossoms.
So all of these benefits together, if we were to find the common thread between them all, what we would see is that they decrease stress. And when your stress decreases, every single system of your body benefits. We’re talking about your physiological systems, your digestion, your immune system, and we’re also talking about your mental health. So all of these things globally, your whole body will improve when your stress decreases from really reducing body shame and decreasing your anxiety around food and doing a better job of meeting all of your needs.
Thanks so much for joining me today. If you’re on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button. And if you’re on my website, please feel free to peruse the website pages, take a look at more of the benefits of intuitive eating. And if you’re curious about your specific situation and want to talk to one of us, please book a discovery call. It is totally free. We would be happy to speak with you.
Till next time.
