Confused? Frustrated? Fed up? Do you feel bewildered after trying diet after diet and never being able to keep the weight off? In fact, if you’re like most people, you eventually ended up gaining all your weight back plus a few extra instead of losing.
Do you notice that there are no diet fads currently sweeping the market? There’s a simple reason. After over 100 years of dieting, it’s finally clear that all that effort, deprivation, planning, and starvation has only made the American public fatter. In fact, 95% of dieters gain back all their weight within 1-5 years. Diets don’t work.
What does work is honoring and listening to your body.
Before you go on yet another diet consider looking to the natural wisdom of your body. The irony is that we each have the perfect, free, built-in diet available to us right here and now. It’s called listening to your body and it’s simple.
There are just a few simple things to learn:
1) What you resist persists. The most essential step is to love and accept your body as it is right now. If you’re reading this article, you are probably carrying a some extra pounds. That’s a common result of dieting. But most people were born to be of normal weight. You, too! Treat your body well and meet its needs and you will find you return to your own ideal weight easily and naturally.
2) Listen to your body. Treat your body with gentleness and tender, loving care by eating when you feel physically hungry and stopping when you are full. Overeating is usually a form of diet backlash that results from starvation and deprivation. It’s the body’s survival mechanism in action to save your life from the famine it experienced. Try eating small, frequent amounts with the intention of feeling light and refreshed from eating rather than heavy and stuffed.
3) Choose to eat what you really want in each moment, not what you think you should have or what would make you “good.” As you make choices based on your body’s desires, you will find yourself eating better foods in smaller quantities. Sensually enjoy the food you eat. Taste the delicious flavors, enjoy the various textures. And if it isn’t tasting great, get something better right then.
4) Play more, suffer less. Find some kind of movement that makes you feel like a kid again. Or take walks that feed your soul. Make exercise something you love and look forward to instead of yet another chore to feel guilty about skipping.
Accept your body, meet its needs, enjoy your food, and play. Sounds better than dieting doesn’t it? And it works better, too. If you’re looking for a real, long-term solution to ending the battle with your weight, intuitive eating may just be the answer you’ve been seeking.
