intuitive eating vs. Intuitive Eating

Whenever I start talking about intuitive eating (and that’s not a very rare occasion), I get a few classic responses. 

Sometimes I get the large-eyed, excited response of resonance. These people start talking immediately. I literally don’t have to get out more than a couple sentences before they start preaching to me about how diet culture failed them, how they currently eat, how they’d like to eat, what they’ve read, what they believe. It’s great. I love it. I can listen to their rants all day, engage, challenge, share. There’s a sort of immediate kinship. 

From others, I get the questioning-skeptic response. These are the folks that say, “Okay, you can’t just tell people to eat what they want, you’re clearly promoting unhealthy behavior, aren’t you?” They’re curious because they have their own experiences with dieting or body image, experiences that are occasionally negative, or at the very least, confusing, unclear. They are a bit on the defensive, but they're looking to hear what Intuitive Eating has to offer them, if it’s based on anything real or if it’s just another hippie fad. I love entering these debates. They’re heated, they’re fun. They challenge me and help refine my own ideas and beliefs on the topic.

And then I have the intuitive eaters. They look at me like I’m speaking Greek. They start with a cold, blank stare. Then they shrug their shoulders and take another bite out of whatever it is they’re eating. And then they make the music louder. 

But when I ask them about their eating habits, they are the ones who eat what they want, when they want. They stop when they’re full. They don’t attach morality to their food choices. They don’t agonize over calories, over old pictures, over numbers on the scale. They enjoy their food. They eat a donut and that whole experience remains just that, the eating of a donut. No punishment, no earning. No second thoughts. 

So I find it fascinating that I’m trying to counsel others to eat like them. Their eating habits are  literally the goal of my work. And they do not realize they’re the goal of anything. They never give it a moment’s thought. 

And it occurred to me. 

There are Intuitive Eaters and there are intuitive eaters. 

Intuition is, according to a quick Google search, the ‘ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning’. The antonym for intuitive is ‘cultivated, developed, trained.’ Lowercase intuitive eaters maintain their innate sense of eating intuitively since childhood. They haven’t been perturbed by societal pressures, diet culture, or any sort of external dialogue distorting their internal cues for how and when to eat. 

Because their cues are innate, talking about them sounds foreign. 

I like to compare this to those who had to re-learn the ability to walk. Those who suffered some disease or accident that left them incapacitated for a while. When they’re in physical therapy, they’re hearing “heel strike first”, “balance your weight”. Shoulders Down. Chin Up. These patients have been walking for years without giving it a second thought, and now they suddenly have to figure out what walking actually is. 

Those of us who have never lost our ability to walk would never know these rules. We would never think we have to know them either. Why make a whole business teaching people something that is innate? 

Well, intuitive eaters, there are those of us who have lost that ability. Those whose moms have dragged them to Weight Watchers meetings at the age of eight. Those who tear out pictures of thin models and hang them on the fridge to prevent them from eating when they’re hungry. Those who spend hours agonizing over the last thing they ate, because it wasn’t planned, it wasn’t allowed. 

These people lost their innate cues, or rather, those cues are muted, dulled. 

They’re the ones who need to learn Uppercase Intuitive Eating. 

They need the rules broken down for them, they need to overly-emphasize their focus on their bodies, they need to become unnaturally aware of their eating processes and internal cues to help them re-establish what is natural for you, what was once natural for them. 

The goal of uppercase Intuitive Eating is to learn to become a lowercase intuitive eater. 

So if you’re working through these principles and you’re not finding much support from those around you, maybe they don’t need to hear what you need to hear. If you’re getting the blank stare, it doesn’t mean you’re speaking Greek. Trust your process, it really will only ever be solely yours, and not everyone will understand the nuances of that. And that’s okay. 

Shoulders Down. Chin Up :)