Are you looking to eat more intuitively? Maybe you are already trying to implement some of the principles of intuitive eating, but looking for some guidance on how to make sure you are getting the most out of this framework.
Intuitive eating can help you find food freedom and optimize your health simultaneously.
However, the transition from a world of diets and food rules to fully intuitive eating can be a hard one. There will inevitably be some struggles that you will have to navigate along the way.
But, what if you aren’t exactly sure how to navigate these challenges? What if something comes up and sends you back to your rules and diets? What if you feel like you need more support in this journey?
This is where a nutrition coach comes in.
Nutrition coaches, like myself and my team at OnPoint Nutrition, are educated and trained to help you find food freedom through intuitive eating.
In this article, I’ll outline the main goals for intuitive eating:
- Improve your relationship with food
- Find food freedom
- Work with your body
We’ll also dive into how a nutrition coach can help you achieve your intuitive eating goals by addressing:
- Intuitive eating principles
- Gentle nutrition
- Lifestyle guidance
Intuitive Eating Goals
Improve Your Relationship With Food
If you’re interested in intuitive eating, you likely have a strained relationship with food. Most people come to intuitive eating this way.
The primary goal of intuitive eating is to improve your relationship with food. Food is fuel for our bodies, not something to be feared. It is meant to nourish us, not cause us stress.
Your relationship with food may also extend to your relationship with your body, exercise, and more. Intuitive eating can help you repair all of these relationships.
Together, you and your nutrition coach will work to help you establish a strong, healthy relationship with food that will serve you for the rest of your life.
Find Food Freedom
Food freedom doesn’t just mean eating whatever you want whenever you want it.
Instead, food freedom means putting aside diets, detoxes, and food rules and leaning into what your body both wants and needs.
In an ideal world, you would be able to eat to nourish your body, while also enjoying your favorite foods without feeling guilty. You wouldn’t feel stressed about deciding what, when, and how much to eat.
Food freedom is just what it sounds like, eating food freely and confidently, knowing you are doing what’s best for your body and your mind.
Your nutrition coach will guide you through the principles of intuitive eating, which we will discuss below, to release your rules, fears, and guilt and find freedom.
Work With Your Body
So often we are working against our bodies. We are trying to change their size, shape, cravings, and desires. Instead of listening to them and working with them, we block them out and listen to the external world.
Intuitive eating is designed to help you reconnect with your hunger and fullness cues. These innate biological cues often get buried deep inside because we make eating decisions based on what we think we should eat and how much we’ve deemed acceptable.
Instead of looking outside, intuitive eating teaches us to tune in. The process helps build trust with our bodies for lifelong results.
Your nutrition coach will help you get back in tune with your hunger and fullness cues so you and your body can work as one, as you are meant to.
Join Our Intuitive Eating Facebook Support Group
How A Nutrition Coach Can Help You Eat Intuitively
Intuitive Eating Principles
Intuitive eating is a framework based on ten principles that integrate your instinct, emotion, and rational thought. These principles can be used as steps to find your way back to eating that comes from within.
The ten principles of intuitive eating include:
- Reject the diet mentality
- Honor your hunger
- Make peace with food
- Challenge the food police
- Discover the satisfaction factor
- Feel your fullness
- Cope with your emotions with kindness
- Respect your body
- Movement - feel the difference
- Honor your health - gentle nutrition
Working with your nutrition coach on strategies to implement each of these principles into your daily life will help you both listen to your body and strengthen your relationship with food.
Gentle Nutrition
While gentle nutrition is one of the ten principles, it is something you and your nutrition coach will definitely focus on together.
Your coach will guide you to make choices that will provide your body with the nutrients it needs, while still enjoying what you are eating. Your food choices will be made with both health and taste in mind.
Your dietitian or nutritionist will also help guide you to find balance in what you are eating.
You don’t need to be eating the healthiest food 100% of the time. One meal or snack isn’t going to make or break your health. Instead, you will work on forming healthy, sustainable habits that can keep you healthy over time.
While your nutrition coach won’t tell you what to eat, when to eat, or how much to eat, they will guide you to make choices that are nutritionally dense and support your overall health.
Lifestyle Guidance
Oftentimes your relationship with food, your body, and exercise are all intertwined. Together, you and your nutrition coach will ensure your lifestyle supports all of these relationships, as well as your intuitive eating goals.
Holistic lifestyle factors you may work on together include exercise, sleep, and stress.
Working with your nutrition coach to optimize all of these factors will help you feel your best physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Where To Go From Here
If you are ready to dive into intuitive eating, you are in the right place.
At this point, you know that improving your relationship with food, finding food freedom, and working with your body are the goals of working with a nutrition coach on intuitive eating.
You also know that when you work with a nutrition coach you will learn the principles of intuitive eating, how to practice gentle nutrition, and how to tailor your lifestyle to this new way of eating and living intuitively.
If you’re looking for more information on the basics of intuitive eating, check out our Intuitive Eating 101 webinar where you can learn the ten principles of intuitive eating, and how to integrate them into your everyday life.
If you are ready to dive into nutrition counseling with a nutrition coach, we are here for you.
Our team of dietitians and nutritionists has helped over 3,000 people, just like you, achieve their nutrition and health goals.
If you’re interested in finding out more about OnPoint and the experience we provide to our virtual, one-on-one nutrition counseling clients, learn more about our client experience here.
When you are ready to take the leap, schedule your free consultation.
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