You may have tried every diet known to man but are always defeated by hunger and urges, like say a sudden need to wolf down McNuggets. Sticking to no-dairy, no-meat, no-sugar plans is as difficult as it gets. Fad diets typically promise quick and easy weight loss, but they seldom live up to their own hype due to their extreme approach.
Amid all the emotional carnage wrought by these diets, a new method to manage wellness without having to starve yourself and make health goals achievable shines through. It’s called intuitive eating, and it reworks your relationship with food, leaving you well-fed and not craving for more.
Mindful Eating
Is eating important only when you truly feel hungry? Celebrity nutritionist Karishma Chawla says, “Food freedom means moving away from calorie counting and diet for optimal wellbeing, without wanting to suppress feelings about food. That’s mindful, intuitive eating for better health. It means relieving yourself of usual diet norms including body shape, diets, emotional guilt and so on. Food freedom is soul freedom for me – eating foods that align with my soul. Understand that eating healthy isn’t a punishment but a reward for your body – it keeps you healthy, and makes way for growth.”
Now, instead of leaping for that pack of pumpkin seeds, pause and ponder. Understand your body’s signals. “Intuitive eating is about disciplining your body to ensure it sends out signals for your better health. You eat without guilt but mindfully, completely aware of the portion size and the composition of food you are putting inside your mouth, for a healthy body and lifestyle.
Food freedom means dropping fad-following, and taking full control of your food habits,” explains nutritionist Deepalekha Bhattacharjee. “This means when you eat, what you eat and how much you eat, rests in your own hands. Rather than blindly listening to your mind that can delude or pamper you by tempting you to eat whenever it feels you wander off-track (read: poor sleep, stress, extreme emotions, binge eating, hectic travel schedules, peer pressure).”
She vouches for the time-setting mechanism for meals to train the mind and body to stick to a schedule that you set for yourself, as “feeling hungry” can be only 10 per cent reliable. “After few months you will start feeling hungry at the timings set by you. That is food freedom in the true sense when you are in full control of what to eat, when to eat and how much to eat,” says Bhattacharjee.
Shilpi Madan for The Sunday Standard