Latest / Cameron's Conversations: The last weight loss podcast you'll ever need. / Episode 105: Does intuitive eating work for weight loss?
Transcript
- Cameron: Welcome to the Cameron's Conversations podcast. And in today's episode, I thought I'd talk a little bit about the idea of intuitive eating. So I think intuitive eating is one of these things where it's, again, something that's become quite popular probably over the last three to four years. And actually, I think there's definitely some merit in it. Like most things, there's definitely value in it. but sometimes what it becomes is a bit of ⁓ an easy option. And what I mean by that is that sometimes what you see online is people saying, ⁓ you just need to intuitively eat, like you don't need to worry about, ⁓ like just follow what your body says. Now, unfortunately, my body would probably have me eating pizza every single day of my life because that's just what I actually fancy at the time. And even having done lots of really, really good work. with structure, my nutrition and getting into good rhythm and I really very much enjoy my fruit. I have to make a conscious effort to eat veg, right? I do enjoy it. I absolutely do. But naturally I probably lean towards being one of those kind of like slightly lower veg, higher fruit kind of people. That's the reality. I just enjoy fruit a lot more. I'm much more likely to grab a piece and it could even just be the behavioral economics of it that it's just, know, fruits there. You don't have to prep it, you just eat it. Whereas maybe with veg, obviously you're cooking a lot more of the time, but. It's a great example of where intuitive eating definitely has value. And I often talk to clients about the idea of being mindful when we're eating. a lot of us, for example, do lots of distracted eating, right? We sit and we are, and I've been guilty of this before, is like, you're working whilst you eat, you're working, you're working, you're working. And then you wonder why you can't stick to your calories and you're really hungry later and you don't quite get it. And it's because hunger isn't just one thing. It's not just the food you eat. It's also how full you perceive yourself to be. And if I'm distracted eating and barely noticing the tastes and textures of the food I'm eating, well, I'm much likely to be hungrier afterwards. So that's an example of where like mindful eating can be really, really helpful. And then that way, if you are sitting, being present, enjoying your food and actually tasting it, enjoying the textures of it, just being a little bit more present in what you're doing, you will probably find that you experience more fullness, which is a real win. That makes life easier. So that's really, really helpful, right? So in a way, you could almost listen to your body a little bit better than because actually your fullness is sitting quite high, which is great. And there's definitely a place for that. But for most people, intuitive eating out the gate will not solve the problems around nutrition. As I say, it can kind of seem like an easy, like, ⁓ well, don't have to track it. I have to worry about this. I don't have to do that. That all sounds great. But generally, unfortunately, the people that intuitive eating will work best for are the people that A, already have a good overall structure to the nutrition, B, like lots of fruit and veg, and C, tend not to slip into eating lots of snacks and sugary stuff or really high calorie density foods, right? Because those things add a lot of calories and if they do that, then the intuitive eating's probably not gonna work so well. So it will naturally work better for people with a better overall dietary structure. And for some people, they've grown up in a food environment that was really, really quite well structured. They were still able to have things fairly freely, but they also had loads of fruit and loads of veg, and it's in their natural rhythm to eat loads of fruit and veg. Like I see that within my girlfriend. She is much better at eating veg naturally than I would want to be. She loves cucumbers. She'll love this, she'll love that. And she'll actively seek it out. Whereas I very much structured veg into my diet. I mean, I really like some things like broccoli, for example. perhaps it's bloody love, and there are other examples, but it is more of a conscious choice, where like I say in my case, put some fruit in front of me, I'm much more likely to inhale that, because that is my preference. I grew up eating loads of fruit, but our meals tended to be smaller portions of veg than hers, and I can see that difference, right? Now, that is the perfect example of a bit of variance there, that actually intuitive eating, probably if it came to her veg intake, she would do a much better job than I would. because my intuition around it isn't so strong for veg, it's much stronger for fruits. So, and it would actually be the same in the other way around for her, she probably wouldn't eat as much fruit. But the point is this, that when it comes to something like intuitive eating, I think it can be really helpful, but I prefer the approach of mindful eating. And to be clear, when it comes to intuitive eating, typically when it's talked about, it's almost like listening to fullness signals, listening to hunger signals, like, oh, I am hungry, therefore I'm going to have... this thing and it's like the idea that our body will naturally want us to have veg and whatever. But we live in an environment where the foods that we have, the tastier, very calorie dense, very flavor packed foods, the hyper palatable foods are always going to be stronger than that intuition because it's not really built out right. When people kind of talk about like, we're kind of like self limiting for hunger, et cetera, et cetera, that all sounds good. I'm not necessarily convinced that that's actually the truth. We all reach a point of fullness, yes, but I think in the environment we live in with the abundance of food, with the abundance of calories available, it doesn't quite work that way. But what I do see time after time with clients is in the long term, I see a lot of clients develop a much better, I would call it mindfulness, but in this scenario, we could call it intuition with food. I can tell when clients will say, actually, being on holiday, can't wait to get back and eat more veg and more fruit. and that's definitely an overall sense of intuition that's better. So I do think there's absolutely validity in it. I think though if it's where you're starting when you've got a weight loss goal, I don't necessarily think it's the best approach. For some reason the line of it's a bit like trying to bring a knife to a gunfight, like it just doesn't quite work. It's not to say it would be completely unhelpful to start to be like, oh, what am I feeling? What do I want right now? I'm more aware of kind of where we are. Maybe there would be utility in that, but it's certainly not gonna be enough. it's not gonna be enough to overcome some of the kind of bad habits around really calorie-dense food that we have. So I think just a bit of awareness there can be super, super helpful as well, because actually, yeah, there is probably a little bit of a balance to be had where we need to have a bit more structure and routine and to create more fullness for ourselves so that that intuitive eating actually lends itself to be a more effective tool. So that was just some thoughts around intuitive eating. And I think there's a lot of merit in it, for sure. But I also think that as a weight loss tool at the very start of your journey, it's probably not the right one for most people because certainly in my scenario, in my case, and what I see with a lot of my clients, I just don't think it would work out the gate. I think if I was to lead with that approach with clients without the structure and things that go underneath that and underpin it, it just would fall to bits. I don't think you would get any results at all. So something worth thinking about when we are kind of seeing about intuitive eating and thinking, ⁓ maybe that's the way to go. And it's like a, you know, silver bullet. The reality is there is no silver bullet. Even calorie tracking is a bloody handy tool, right? It's a bloody handy tool in the long term, but we probably don't want to be doing it when we're 85. So it's still something that is a tool to be used, has its utility and at some point phased out, right? I don't track year round. That's not the case for me. There are periods of time where I won't track because I don't need to anymore to maintain my weight, but I've... managed to get there by tracking in the first place, which is an important caveat. But if that was helpful and you are interested in coaching because you are struggling a bit on your own weight loss journey and you feel like you'd like to kick on and actually finally make some serious progress, then in the show notes there is a link to my WhatsApp and you can pop me a message with coaching and I will send you over bit more information on how one-to-one coaching works. Otherwise, have a great week and speak soon.