Tracy Astle
- Nov 21, 2018
- 4 min read

So What Do I Eat?, Intuitive Eating: Part 11 of 12

Happy Thanksgiving! I had to laugh when I realized the post about nutrition would land in Thanksgiving week. It wasn’t intentional, I promise. While you may be thinking, “Leave me alone! The biggest food day of the year is this week. Don’t talk to me about nutrition now,” please keep reading. I’m pretty sure you’ll be glad you did.

The subject of nutrition can seem mind-numbingly complicated. There’s just so much information out there. I am a firm believer in simplicity! Let’s cut through the complexity here. (I have two prior posts that lay a little groundwork if you want to check them out. – 5 Simple Ways to Nourish Our Bodies, 5 More Simple Ways to Nourish Our Bodies)

At The Institute for the Psychology of Eating where I trained, they say they’re “diet agnostics,” and so am I. I believe the best way to eat is whatever way works best for you – on all levels. That said, let’s look at some overarching principles.

1) Relax already! – You’ve probably heard about the French – how they regularly eat all kinds of foods we Americans have been taught are bad for us (lots of carbs and fats, etc.) and yet their rates of obesity, heart disease and such are lower, and their life expectancy is longer than ours. How can that be? Because of how they generally eat – in a very relaxed way.

Another group inspired what’s called the Roseto Effect. In the small Italian immigrant community of Roseto, Pennsylvania they found a strikingly low rate of heart disease and deaths from heart attacks across three generations in spite of their very Americanized diet that was high in “bad” fats. Why? Social cohesion and social support.

These two groups prove that there’s more to nutrition than just nutrients. So, relax. Let’s let go of trying to find the “perfect diet” for us or anyone else. Nutrition is not one size fits all.

2) Nutrition by the numbers – What about all we’ve learned about the importance of reading nutrition labels, counting calories, monitoring macro-nutrients or micro-nutrients, limiting carb, fat, sodium, sugar (or any other number of nutrients) intake? Dr. Gyorgy Scrinis coined the term “nutritionism,” meaning overly reductive focus on nutrients in food undermines how we think about food, how we view the experiences of our own bodies, and how we understand the relationship between food and our bodies.

Simply put, the more a person focuses on the number, the more it interferes with the process of listening to the body. With all of our intense focus on all the various numbers of nutrition, rates of diabetes, heart disease, various cancers, and lots of other health issues have still risen dramatically. Maybe it’s time to start focusing less on so many numbers and start listening, really listening to our bodies.

3) Keep it simple – The author of In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan, summed nutrition up this way – “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

The authors of Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, modified it this way – “Enjoy eating food. Not too much – not too little. Mostly what satisfies you.”

Just something to consider.

An easy formula

Boil it down to Taste, Quantity, and Quality. –

Taste

As much as humanly possible, aim to live by the idea, “If you don’t love it, don’t eat it., and if you eat it, savor it.” (Intuitive Eating, pg 143) Taking pleasure in our food matters.

Quantity

How can we know how much to eat and how to balance it? A safe bet is to practice honoring our hunger and fullness as we talked about in earlier posts. Another helpful item is called the plate model. Aim to fill half your plate with fruits and/or vegetables. The other half is split with 1/3 protein and 2/3 grains. If you're eating a casserole or something like that, just think of what it would look like if it were separated into its parts.

Quality

Plenty of fruits and vegetables, organic if possible – Your mom was right about this.

Processed foods – As a general rule, the less processed, the better.

Fluids – mostly water. It’s hard to overstate the impact and importance of hydration.

The place for chocolate chip cookies – If we pay close attention to how we feel, both body and soul, we can trust we’ll begin to find balance in our eating – of all kinds of food.

I absolutely believe we’re meant to have joy. Does that mean unicorns and rainbows all the time? No. But joy is deeper than circumstances and trials. I also believe that with something as fundamental to our survival as feeding ourselves, a large part of food’s purpose is, “to please the eye and gladden the heart.” We’re meant to take joy in our nourishment.