Intuitive Eating Growth Log

At our Session Today:

In our last session, Adina and I teased out the difference between meal planning as a form of rigidity versus meal planning as a form of self-care. In this final session together, Adina shares a victory, which leads us to the last principle of Intuitive Eating.

ADINA:

This week was interesting. I was definitely pulled back into diet culture several times. For example, I wanted pizza for lunch, but I looked at my meal plan and saw “grilled chicken salad.” I thought to myself, “Ewwww, not grilled chicken salad!” But then I remembered your words, “This is not a diet. This is flexible, not prescriptive. This is suggestive, and this is not set in stone.” I ended up going to the pizza store with my baby and my friend and we had such a good time. While ordering the pizza, I did have that twinge in my stomach, which I now know is the feeling of guilt more than anything.

I was present and I reassured myself that pizza is not bad or dangerous. I even got the slice I really wanted, which was the baked ziti slice. I enjoyed it! I then remembered that I was going to try to add a fruit or vegetable to my meal. My friend had gotten a salad but really just ate most of the fries(!). It was all so clear to me at that moment. She got the salad because of course she wouldn’t actually order pizza. But the salad was boring, and the fries were calling to her. She asked if I’d like her salad, and I was totally in the mood of a salad at that point. I had some of the salad until I was comfortably full. It was a totally new experience for me.

My friend shared how guilty she felt for just eating fries for lunch though. I told her a little bit about what I was doing, and we had a nice talk about it. I also started to realize how Intuitive Eating does lead to Intuitive Living.

In this particular instance, with this friend, I felt safe and comfortable sharing what was going on with me and my food, because I knew she’d be respectful and interested.

In the past, there were people I attempted to share this information with, and they pretty much laughed in my face, saying something like, “No, Adina, it’s never okay to eat pizza!” Or “Maybe if you first lost weight, then you can reward yourself with a treat.”

To me, that is so clearly diet culture. It is shameful and judgmental. It takes all the pleasure out of food and it takes the pleasure out of so many things in life.

Intuitively, I knew I could share with this friend—not by shoving it down her throat and telling her to throw out her scale and never order a salad again. It was the real Intuitive Eating—gentle, intuitive, deep work, and getting to the root cause.

I went home that day and looked at my meal plan, and I crossed off grilled chicken salad from the foods I like. I had such a visceral reaction to it when I saw it on the meal plan. I pretended or thought I liked it because I ate it every single day for months on one of my diets. I literally cannot look at grilled chicken salad anymore. And that’s actually sad because it was something nutritious that I used to enjoy. I crossed off grilled chicken salad from my menu and wrote “pizza and salad” instead.

GILA:

When Adina shared this victory with me, I was reminded why I do this work—why it’s so important and why it’s a message worth spreading even with all the pushback and questioning.

Wow, Adina. Thanks so much for sharing this.

Your story actually brings us to the last principle, which is called “Making Peace with Food.” This is actually the third principle, but I teach it last. I learned this from Rena Reiser, an Intuitive Eating Counselor who taught me this very important point.

Making peace with food can feel so scary and, well, not peaceful at all. After you work through the other principles, it does become easier. This principle is based on many theories, the main of which is called the habituation effect. Habituation happens when the novelty of something new wears off.

All new things generate a certain excitement. A new marriage. A new car. A new job. But eventually, that initial excitement wears off. This is a good thing because we can’t live on cloud nine forever. We need to reintegrate back into regular living.

But dieting puts food on a pedestal, creating so much fanfare around the foods we restrict. Every time we are in restriction mode, the food we restrict becomes that much more alluring. When we inevitably eat it, it tastes amazing because part of that incredible taste is the forbidden fruit syndrome. Then we swear off that food again, putting it back on the pedestal.

Here’s something that’s hard to believe until you actually try it. If you give yourself unconditional permission to eat a certain food, the novelty will wear off and it will not have the same effect over you. But bear in mind that if you have any guilt around eating this food, it’s not called unconditional.

So if you are ready to make peace with a certain food that hangs over your life, do it right. Make sure you work through your guilt before you sit down to enjoy it.

Adina, you did this intuitively with pizza

GILA:

the other day.

You’re an inspiration to me—coming each week, taking the time, the money, and the emotional energy to invest in yourself, your relationship to food, and your relationship with yourself.

These skills will help you be a better mother and to be more mentally available for your children in the feeding relationship. I have full faith in you to continue with this journey.

ADINA:

Gila, I never thought this is the journey I’d be taking with you. Everyone says, “This isn’t really a diet, it’s a lifestyle,” but wow, this is not a diet at all. This is deep work. The work I’ve always had to do and didn’t even know about.

I want to continue with my goals: gentle nutrition, joyful movement, sleep, fluid intake, and making sure I have time, space, and my tool kit of emotional processing. Thank you for giving me back my life.

GILA:

Adina did not lose weight in these last few weeks. She didn’t gain weight either.

She did gain access to her intuitive, better understanding of herself, self-confidence, and freedom from food she never thought she’d have.

Dieting steals so much from all of our lives. We want to lead a healthy life, but we don’t have to continue living under the grips of diet culture. We can regain access to our intuition and learn to truly care for ourselves through the principles of Intuitive Eating.

the end

Gila Glassberg is a master’s level registered dietitian and a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor located in Woodmere, New York. She uses a non-diet, weight-neutral approach to help growth-oriented women break out of chronic dieting patterns, and regain clarity into what is really important to them. She can be contacted through her website: www.gilaglassberg.com, via email at gilaglassberg18@ gmail.com, or via telephone at 570-878-3642. The name of her podcast is Get INTUIT with Gila. Gila accepts some insurances.