(stock photo)
Intuitive eating leads to healthy living
Delicious Reddit

DECEMBER 19, 2005
By Happynews Staff

Our culture's diet craze is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry that leaves the public reeling with facts and myths to sort through. The key to healthy weight management and living is intuitive eating. Remuda Ranch, Programs for Eating Disorders believes balance, moderation and variety can help many achieve healthy lives.
"It's very simple, the key is to listen to your body, eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full," said Juliet Zuercher, registered dietitian and the director of nutrition at Remuda Ranch. "Our belief is to not put labels on food. It all depends on how food is used. Even candy bars are acceptable if you keep in mind balance, moderation and variety."
Remuda Ranch believes that when you don't put restrictions on food, you learn freedom in eating because you don't see certain food as forbidden. The more forbidden the food, the higher the chances are that people will consume it excessively.
"The reason most diets don't work is that many foods are restricted and the minute you crave and eat a forbidden food, you believe that the diet is over," said Zuercher.
It's important to listen to our hunger cues. These are physiological signs. Often, it's just "mouth hunger". For example, something that sounds good because you're in a particular environment, like popcorn at the movies. Emotional hunger comes from loneliness or boredom and food won't help this.
In addition, we should listen to our satiety. Pick the foods that you enjoy and eat an amount that's satisfying, not to fullness. If you eat foods you enjoy, you are more likely to get satisfied. When you deprive yourself of something, it ends up being all you think about. For example, if you really want potato chips and you eat pretzels, you will eat more pretzels to satisfy yourself. Instead, if you chose the potato chips, you would eat less because you're satisfied with your choice.
"When you eat intuitively and listen to your body, you won't think about food all the time," adds Zuercher.
Following is a list of tips for healthy intuitive eating:
-- Balance. Most of the time you eat, do so when you're hungry. Use food as fuel for your body. Balance also means that sometimes you eat simply when the food appeals to you or when it's appropriate in a social setting. Allow yourself to eat for enjoyment. Such balance provides you with physical satisfaction and decreases the likelihood of overeating certain foods due to a feeling of deprivation or denial.
-- Variety. Choose foods from a variety of sources. The USDA Food Guide Pyramid provides a structure for determining the number of servings from each food group that will provide the best variety. Eat different foods everyday.
-- Moderation. Portion size is key. Most restaurants aim to please by offering great value through large portions. Just because you're given a large portion doesn't mean you have to eat it all. Take some home for later.
-- Drink lots of water. Eight 8-ounce glasses of water is a good daily average.
-- Aim for three meals and one to three snacks a day. The idea that snacking between meals is bad is a thing of the past. By eating every two to four hours, you prevent your body from getting overly hungry -- which could set you up to overeat later. The body uses the fuel from food very efficiently when you're eating smaller amounts more frequently throughout the day.
-- Avoid radical and fad diets. Fad diets and yo-yo weight patterns only make your body work harder to maintain homeostasis. Weight fluctuations may increase your body's "set point" -- the weight at which your body wants to stay.