Eating Intuitively is relatively simple
The set of instructions further down on the page is all you actually have to do to have the universe line up and be slim, as natural and easy as breathing.
Please read this before filling out your first “Interview”
I will give you specific instructions in a second, but first I want to share a metaphor with you that could totally change your life.
One of my clients told me that my metaphors weren’t working, “Eat like you breathe? What’s that?”, “Treat yourself like you would your infant? Who does that?” She told me it was way more helpful to turn into a “Body Whisperer”.
So, of course I had to get Martha Beck’s book and read about this metaphor. While I will try to explain a couple of the principles that I found particularly helpful, I heartily recommend you get the full version in Chapter 6 of her book, The Four Day Win.
I want you to honor homeostasis (not very visceral is it?) where as Martha Beck wants to help turn you into a “Body Whisperer”. She talks about her friend, who is a “Horse Whisperer”. Her friend can turn any frenzied and terrified equine into a calm, cooperative one. How? She speaks “Horse”. She understands how horses feel and the signals that indicate these feelings, and then talks to them.
And the horses talk back. They whinny, they prance, they nuzzle. They’re happy.
Martha Beck shares this wonderful analogy so that you will become “Body Whisperers” so that your bodies will be happy. It is how she experienced, “Feel(ing) my body decide to join up with me” in her quest to be slim.
Like me, she believes that for you iron willed geniuses out there, “The more you’ve listened to your mind the harder it is to read your body”. She points out that humans are both predator and prey.
And that when you’re depriving yourself, your body feels like prey. It becomes an unmanageable horse chomping at the bit, biting into potato chips, biting whole cupcakes…
She wants you to take breaks from predation.
I want you to do whatever works. Martha Beck and Geneen Roth have brilliant exercises that can help you. My Intuitive Eating Program lets you know how close you are to being a “Body Whisperer”, how close you are to eating intuitively and having your body truly be your ally.
This is what you have to do. If something doesn’t make sense, go to Geneen, go to Martha you may need deeper healing… But this Intuitive Eating Program systematic assessment and feedback can rewire this healing into you for good.
1. Have a variety of delicious and healthy food available whenever you are ideally hungry. (That means salad AND mashed potatoes, lentil soup, and filet mignon, AND sometimes even chocolate). A lot of people have tuned out hunger (who wants to be miserable). Now, having an appetite is a good thing. (See if you can wrap your brain around that!) You’ll know you are ideally hungry when:
* It has been 4 ½ to 6 ½ hours after your last meal (1/2 to 3 hours after you wake up in the morning)
* You can feel a cold glass of water completely coat your stomach.
* You do not have hunger pangs.
2. When you are ideally hungry, please DO eat whatever your body craves (out of that delicious and healthy array of foods).
* You will probably want to start with a low glycemic, very satisfying, protein.
* Your body will probably NOT want lettuce as a sole source of food when it’s ideally hungry.
* Your body will probably want something hot, hearty, and full of protein about 1 ½ to 2 ½ hours after you wake up in the morning.
3. Eat until you are ideally satisfied.
* How do you know when you’re ideally satisfied? Well for some of you, this will be difficult. You will be used to eating bulky food (read: salad, soup, course, bulky stuff) until your stomach gets stretched. But you won’t have had enough calories to tide you over for 5 hours.
* That’s why you need to provide yourself with a variety of healthy and delicious food, both bulky and dense (read: cheese, chocolate, raisins, hotdogs, calorically dense stuff).
* The TASTE TEST: Wait until you are ideally hungry. Take a bite of a really delicious food, close your eyes, and think about it. Let the flavor coat your tongue and really notice how delicious it is. Then eat your meal. Wait ten minutes. Take a bite of the SAME delicious food and notice the flavor.
4. The most important thing you can do is to remember, intuitive eating means NO deprivation. It’s about CAN, SHOULD, and YES to food when you’re ideally hungry until you’re satisfied.
* This means NO SKIPPING meals. Notice how much you eat at dinner if you’ve had to skip lunch?
* This means NO DELAYING meals.
* This means recognizing deprivation (NO, CAN’T or SHOULDN’T) strategies that will make you very hungry or extremely hungry.
5. Remember hunger disrupts homeostasis. Hunger turns your body into prey. Hunger causes rebound splurging and ultimate weight gain.It always amazes me that people go back again and again to dieting, or to “Weight Watchers”, never thinking that a strategy of ignoring or overriding survival cues failed them. They always believe that failed it.
Well, this program will not fail you if you really treat your body well. If you really treat your body the way you would treat your three year old, then please just be patient.
Because a life is a terrible thing to waste.
You are now ready to be interviewed. As soon as you answer the questions, you will get immediate “Feedback”. Together, the “Interview” and the “Feedback’ an “in-office session” has been created. This program works best when you have at least 3 “sessions” a week.
It will take about 5 – 11 minutes to complete the “Interview”, and another couple of minutes to read and digest the “Feedback”.
Click here to get started on a new, intuitive, “yes you can”, “Body Whisperer”, way of living. Interview.
