I have decided to start sharing some of the books I have enjoyed and feel can benefit you. There is a great workbook called "The Intuitive Eating Workbook" that can help you understand and implement intuitive eating if you are interested in it. (Of course there is a book as well but I really appreciate the workbook because it gets you involved in understanding you and your eating habits).
Those of us who are prone to gaining weight are usually those who enjoy snacking and eating even when we're not hungry.
This could be for a variety of reasons, including stress eating, comfort eating and eating out of boredom. You may not even realize that you are eating for these reasons, because it takes practice to learn when you really need to eat. Enter intuitive eating.
Intuitive eating
When you're not hungry and you eat,
it's a bit like giving your body energy
and calories that it neither wants nor needs. As a result, it's much easier to pile on the pounds, especially if you gain weight more easily than others anyway.
Intuitive eating is the idea that you don't eat until your body actually needs food. When you feel hungry, then you can eat. It is listening in and paying attention to your bodies messages.
Do you know the difference when your feeding your body verses feeding your emotions.
For most people, the feelings of hungry start around 3-4 hours after your last meal, depending on the size of the meal, so it's easy to fit in your regular 3-4 meals per day.
The benefits of intuitive eating
The main benefit of intuitive eating is that you're not going to eat more calories than you body needs. When you do want to eat, you should eat an amount that is comfortable for you.
This means you shouldn't deprive yourself of food if you're still hungry, but be wary of
eating too much.
On a calorie-controlled diet, you might often feel like you're not allowed to eat the foods that
your body wants, and for many people, they don't eat enough. There is also the idea that
feeling hungry is good for your body as it must be burning fat. This isn't necessarily true,
since your body needs to burn fat in healthy ways, not by starving yourself.
How to start intuitive eating
If you want to start eating when your body needs to and not when a diet plan tells you to,
there are a few things you can do to get yourself into the swing of things.
First of all, listen to your body. Are you feeling hungry? Are your feelings of hungry so strong
that they are starting to interfere with your routine?
Don't let your body get to the point where you feel like you're going to faint from hunger.
Another good habit to get into is to make sure you drink water regularly - sometimes your
body is trying to tell you that you're thirsty, not hungry!