Intuitive Eating Challenge Day 5: Discover the Satisfaction Factor
This one is described pretty simply: If we are not satisfied, we are not happy. This can be with relationships, career, food, and/or body.
In Japanese culture, it is believed that prioritizing pleasure is part of healthy eating. One of the dietary guidelines is “Make all activities pertaining to food and eating pleasurable ones”. Seeing food as the enemy, which often happens in dieting and diet culture, directly impacts our ability to find pleasure and joy in eating.
Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, the creators of the Intuitive Eating approach, developed the follow steps to regain your pleasure in eating:
Step 1: Ask yourself what you really want to eat - Satisfaction in eating comes from eating what you want to eat, and eating as much as the food as you want or need. However, engaging in dieting reduces our ability to know what we even like to eat!
Step 2: Discover the pleasure of the palate - Oftentimes while dieting, we are so concerned about the past (what we already ate and need to ‘burn off’) and future (what will we eat at the holiday party) that we are not present with the food while eating it. This step is about using your senses to notice things such as taste, texture, aroma, appearance, and temperature. By doing this, we can actually decide if we actually like the food, or if it was just something we didn’t allow ourselves because it was a diet taboo.
Step 3: Make your eating experience more enjoyable - This means taking time to actually savor and enjoy our food! Sitting down at a table while eating; tasting each bite of food you take; and feeling your fullness as you eat.
Step 4: Don’t settle - If you take a bite of a food and you don’t care for it, you don’t have to keep eating it! Remember the motto, “If you don’t love it, don’t eat it, and if you love it, savor it.”
Step 5: Check in if it still tastes good - The first few bites of those desired foods often taste better than later bites. Stay mindful and notice when you have reached ‘taste satisfaction’. Maybe you realize you are done eating the food, or maybe you want to keep eating it; either way, you are staying present with your internal experience and that is great!
I also want to give a gentle reminder that this information is simply an introduction to the skill created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. If you want to learn more, please check out their wonderful book, Intuitive Eating!
Please be gentle with yourself today as you try this principle of Intuitive Eating, and if you are interested in getting my emails filled with reflective questions and ideas for practicing today’s principle, click here and sign up for my newsletter!
