How Can You Tell if Intuitive Eating is Working?

peace

Switching from strict dieting to Intuitive Eating is a bewildering experience. How can you know if what you are doing is right? Are you on the right track? Is Intuitive Eating working?

How do You Measure Progress?

It is easy to tell if a diet and exercise program is working ~ you step on the scale. Scale goes down = diet is working, scale goes up = you haven’t been strict enough or consistent enough and vow to do better tomorrow. (It is funny how we credit the diet with our success and ourselves with our failure, but that is another post entirely).

In the world of Intuitive Eating, it sometimes takes a while for the scale to catch up. So how do you know if everything is going to plan or if you are headed down the wrong road.

You Forget About Food Most of the Time

The only time you think about what you are going to eat is when you are hungry just before a meal. Sometimes having to eat is an unwelcome interruption to what you are engrossed in. Seeing food when you aren’t hungry doesn’t trigger a craving, you either don’t see it, or briefly dismiss it as something you can have later if you want it.

You Are More Social

You are eating at dinner parties, at restaurants, at school fetes and at BBQs. You have what you want and skip what you don’t. You no longer fear Thanksgiving or Christmas or your birthday because you will have to exercise extreme will power. You just celebrate the occasion as a chance to see your friends and family.

You Sleep Like a Baby

You hardly ever wake up in the middle of the night because you are hungry or unsettled. You don’t need an afternoon nap. The only reason you go to bed early is for a bit of ‘conversation’ with your partner.

You are HOT!

Not only are you sexy and gorgeous but your body temperature seems to be running hot. Your metabolism is firing all day long, and you need less blankets at night. The winter doesn’t seem so cold and the summer is a scorcher – just the way you like it.

You Don’t Want to Stop

Although it is not much fun to face up to the emotional baggage you have carried for so long and to fully acknowledge your past destructive behaviours, you can’t ever remember feeling this good and having so much enjoyment. Sometimes you don’t even feel as if this is hard work at all, and you don’t want to stop.

Even though you sometimes think you want to scurry back to the safety of dieting, when it comes to the crunch, the thought of constant hunger, bingeing, never going out, sleepless nights, always being cold, and the relentless struggle no longer seems a viable option.

It’s Qualitative, not Quantitative

No-one can measure your progress with a number (quantity), only you can measure your progress by how much you feel better, calmer, more loving, and more complete (quality). Of course there are things that could be improved (and there always will be) but it is time to take stock of the huge steps forward you have taken by deciding not to measure your worth by how much you weigh.