Intuitive Eating Myth #4: Nutrition Doesn't Matter

As a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, I believe that food can be a very powerful tool when it comes to living a healthy life. However, nutrition is only one piece of a much larger puzzle.

However, the goal with nutrition in intuitive eating is to learn to stop thinking about nutrition in such a restrictive, dogmatic, anxiety-ridden, restrictive, fad-based, be-all end- all way.

Diets take the concept of nutrition and makes it so unnatural and so unenjoyable. Nutrition becomes this responsibility and with all of the other practices that come with dieting, nutrition becomes punishment!

Now, listen, our bodies have biologically needs. It craves nutrients! Intuitive eating just helps you to pay attention to those signals that your body is sending saying “hey, gimme some of those nutrients.” Intuitive eating helps us listen to all that it is saying, rather than ignoring it like we do when we are dieting.

With intuitive eating, it's not about "eat this, not that,” and “good food, bad food.” Instead you are thinking about what makes your body feel good. Intuitive eating allows you to honor your hunger, tastes, and cravings, but it also helps you to honor the fact that a balanced plate makes our bodies feel fueled, full, and satisfied. With intuitive eating, we notice these feelings, whether we notice that filling up on veggies help our digestion which makes us feel great, or that although that pizza looks delicious, eating too much of it always gives us a stomach ache. That doesn't mean we don't eat it, it just means we take that into account.

So, yes, nutrition is a factor, a big one. However, it is a much more fun form of nutrition…a form that has been warped through years of dieting. With intuitive eating, you can have your cake, and eat it too.

Continue to Intuitive Eating Myth #5.