How many times have you had a client come to you, saying that they want to lose weight? As a personal trainer, you probably have a go-to plan for helping your clients achieve their weight loss goals. But what if there was another way - a way that didn't involve restrictive diets or counting calories? Enter intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is all about listening to your body's natural hunger cues and learning to eat in response to those cues.
It's a more holistic way of looking at nutrition, and it can be helpful for both weight loss and overall health. So let's dig into what intuitive nutrition is and how to do it!
1. What is intuitive eating?
Intuitive eating is a way of eating that involves listening to your body's natural hunger cues. It's about learning to eat in response to those cues, rather than following a set of rules or restrictions.
Intuitive eating can have many benefits, both for weight loss and overall health. Some of the key benefits include:
- improved body image
- increased self-esteem
- better physical health
- reduced risk of developing eating disorders
Intuitive nutrition is becoming more aware of your own body's hunger cues. Begin by paying attention to how you feel physically and emotionally when you're hungry, and eat accordingly. You may also want to keep a food journal to help you track your progress — not in terms of calories and macros, but in terms of how certain foods made you feel afterward.
2. The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating are the framework for how to relate to food more holistically.
They are:
1. Reject the diet mentality
2. Honor your hunger
3. Make peace with food
4. Challenge the food police
5. Trust your body
6. Respect your Fullness
7. Discover the pleasure of eating
8. Cheat sometimes
9. Eat mindfully
10. Move your body for joy
Each principle is important in its own way, but a few, in particular, are worth highlighting:
- The first principle, rejecting the diet mentality, is key because it sets the tone for the rest of the principles. If you approach intuitive eating with a "I'll start tomorrow" mindset, you're likely to fail.
- Principle number two, honoring your hunger, is essential because it ensures that you're eating only when you're truly hungry, not out of habit or boredom.
- Principle number four, challenging the food police, is important because it allows you to make your own decisions about food, without outside pressure.
Take a look at the various principles, and see how they impact your and your clients' own nutrition.
3. How can you help your clients implement intuitive eating into their lives?
Intuitive eating can be a challenge to attempt alone, so we highly recommend working with a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. However, there are some things you can do to help your clients get started:
- Encourage them to read the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating.
- Help them identify their hunger and fullness cues.
- Teach them how to listen to their bodies and trust their intuition.
- Encourage them to be patient and gentle with themselves as they work on changing their relationship with food.
- Help them find a support group or online community of like-minded individuals who can offer encouragement and accountability.
4. Common Obstacles to Intuitive Eating
There are a few common obstacles that can stand in the way of intuitive eating:
- Fear of weight gain.
- Belief that one must diet or count calories to lose weight.
- Discomfort with feeling hunger or fullness.
- Negative body image.
- Guilt over "cheating" on a diet.
- Lack of knowledge about healthy eating habits and nutrition.
- Stress and anxiety about food choices.
Help your clients identify any roadblocks they may be experiencing, and offer encouragement and support as they work through them. Intuitive eating is not easy, but it is worth the effort! With time and patience, your clients will be able to develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies.
This intuitive eating challenge can help you understand what is happening. When you are thinking about food all the time, and you feel bad about your body, and food doesn't seem as interesting, it can be a sign that you are healing. Try to focus on the good things in other parts of your life.
5. The Benefits of Intuitive Eating For Both Your Clients And You as a Personal Trainer
Remember that nutrition is outside the scope of practice for certified personal trainers. If you don't have a certification of some sort in nutrition, you need to make sure that you are referring people to the right information sources. However, that doesn't mean that you can't learn about intuitive eating and how to support your clients in their journey to better health.
Intuitive eating is a relatively new term, but the philosophy behind it has been around for centuries. Intuitive eating is based on the idea that we are all born with an innate sense of what is healthy for our bodies. When we override our intuition with external sources of information such as diet books, nutritionists, or friends and family members, we can create problems with our relationship to food. Intuitive eating means trusting your own body to tell you what it needs and wants.
There are many benefits to intuitive eating for both you and your clients. When you support your clients in their journey to better health through intuitive eating, you are helping them to develop a healthy relationship with food. This can lead to improvements in cholesterol levels, lower rates of emotional and disordered eating, better body image, and higher self-esteem. Intuitive eating also helps to reduce stress, improve metabolism, and increase levels of contentment.
Conclusion paragraph: Intuitive eating is a powerful tool to help your clients lose weight and maintain their health. By understanding and following the principles of intuitive eating, your clients will be able to make healthy choices without feeling restricted or guilty. We hope this article has helped you see the benefits of intuitive eating for both you and your clients. If you’d like to learn more about how to help your clients implement these principles into their lives, check out our course on Intuitive Eating today!
