http://byunews.byu.edu/release.aspx...5/Nov/intuitive

Eat what you want, when you want, says new study by BYU professor
Pilot study shows intuitive eaters healthier than restrictive dieters


Counting calories isn’t the best way to lose weight, according to a new Brigham Young University study that suggests that an approach toward food called “intuitive eating” is better at producing lower cholesterol levels, body mass index scores and cardiovascular disease risk.

“The basic premise of intuitive eating is, rather than manipulate what we eat in terms of prescribed diets -- how many calories a food has, how many grams of fat, specific food combinations or anything like that -- we should take internal cues, try to recognize what our body wants and then regulate how much we eat based on hunger and satiety,” said lead researcher Steven Hawks, a BYU professor of health science, who adopted an intuitive eating lifestyle several years ago and lost 50 pounds as a result.

In a small-scale study to be published in the Nov. 18 issue of the “American Journal of Health Education,” Hawks and his team of researchers -- Hala Madanat, Jaylyn Hawks and Ashley Harris -- identified a handful of college students who are naturally intuitive eaters and compared them with other students who aren’t. Participants were then tested to determine how healthy they were.

As measured by the Intuitive Eating Scale, developed by Hawks and others to measure the degree to which a per --on is an intuitive eater, researchers found that intuitive eating was significantly correlated with lower body mass index, lower triglyceride levels, higher levels of high density lipoproteins and decreased risk of cardiovascular disease. Approximately one-third of the variance in body mass index was accounted for by intuitive eating scores, while 17 to 19 percent of the variance in blood lipid profiles and cardiovascular risk was accounted for by intuitive eating.

“The findings provide support for intuitive eating as a positive approach to healthy weight management,” said Hawks, who plans to do a large-scale study of intuitive eating across several cultures.

“In less developed countries in Asia, people are primarily intuitive eaters,” said Hawks. “They haven’t been conditioned to artificially structure their relationship with food like we have in the United States. They’ve been conditioned to believe that the purpose of food is to enjoy, to nurture. You eat when you’re hungry, you stop when you’re not hungry any more. They have a much healthier relationship with food, far fewer eating disorders, and interestingly, far less obesity.”

Hawks says that “normal” dieting in the United States doesn’t result in long-term weight loss and contributes to food anxiety and unhealthy eating practices, and can even lead to eating disorders.

“What makes intuitive eating different from a diet is that all diets work against human biology, whereas intuitive eating teaches people to work with their own biology, to work with their bodies, to understand their bodies,” said Hawks. “Rather than a prescriptive diet, it’s really about increasing awareness and understanding of your body. It’s a nurturing approach to nutrition, health and fitness as opposed to a regulated, coercive, restrictive approach. That’s why diets fail, and that’s why intuitive eating has a better chance of being successful in the long term.”

To be an intuitive eater, a person has to adopt two attitudes and two behaviors.

The first attitude is body acceptance.

“It’s an extremely difficult attitude adjustment for many people to make, but they have to come to a conscious decision that personal worth is not a function of body size,” said Hawks. “Rather than having an adversarial relationship with my body, where I have to control it, and force it to submit to my will so that I can make it thin, I’m going to value my body because it allows me to accomplish some higher good with my life.”

The second attitude, that dieting is harmful, is related to the first.

“Dieting does not lead to the results that people think it will lead to, and so I try to help people foster an anti-dieting attitude,” said Hawks. “You have to say to yourself, ‘I will not base my food intake on diet plans, food-based rules, good and bad foods, all of that kind of thing.’ For people who are deep into dietary restraint and dietary rules, again, that’s a very difficult attitude adjustment to make, to give up all those rules.”

Behaviorally, the next step is learning how to not eat for emotional, environmental or social reasons.

“Socially we eat all the time in our culture, we go out to eat ice cream if we break up with our boyfriend, we eat to celebrate, we eat when we’re lonely, we eat when we’re sad, we eat when we’re stressed out,” said Hawks. “Being able to recognize all the emotional, environmental and cultural relationships we have with food and finding better ways to manage our emotions is part of the process.”

The final step is learning how to interpret body signals, cravings and hunger, and responding in a healthy, positive, nurturing way.

Learning the body’s signals can be difficult at first, but Hawks suggests thinking about hunger and satiety on a 10-point scale, where “10” is eating until one is sick and “1” is starving. Intuitive eaters keep themselves at or around a “5.” If they feel they are getting hungry, they eat until they are back at a “5” or “6.” They stop eating when they are satisfied, even if that means leaving food on the plate.

One part of intuitive eating that may be counterintuitive to people conditioned to restrictive dieting is the concept that with intuitive eating there is a place for every food. In other words, there’s no food that’s ever taboo, there’s no food you can’t ever have.

“Part of adopting an anti-dieting attitude is the recognition that you have unconditional permission to eat any kind of food that you want,” said Hawks. “And that’s scary for people who say, ‘If I abandon my diet rules, then I’ll fill a pillowcase full of M&M’s, dive into it and never come up again. That’s what I crave, I know that’s what I crave, that’s all I will always crave.’ But that’s not the reality. The reality is that our bodies crave good nutrition.”

Dieting creates psychological and physiological urges to binge on taboo foods, and, although in the short term people may have binges when they first start eating intuitively, they eventually learn to trust themselves. One technique Hawks suggests is having an abundance of previously taboo foods on hand. Once the foods are no longer forbidden, a person quickly loses interest in them.

“If people are committed to recognizing what their bodies really want, the vast majority of people will say that they very quickly overcame cravings,” said Hawks, opening a drawer at his office desk filled with untouched junk food. “It certainly has worked for me.”

Articles like this make me want to bang my head against a wall. It sounds so common-sense, but for someone eating a high-carb, processed junk diet, eating intuitively is extremely hard. I tried this method several times and was a dismal failure because I never felt satisfied. I never reached a 5 or a 6; I always felt like my hunger was at a 1 or 2, so I ate constantly. Eating until I felt full took massive amounts of food. Eating low-carb allowed me to tune in to what my body needs. Now that I actually feel satisfied after a meal, I don't constantly search for something else to "fill me up." I can go 4 hours between meals or longer without thinking about food. I can keep snacks in the house for my 3-year-old and not be tempted. I actually crave lettuce and cabbage and tuna now instead of junk food.

I think this makes a lot of sense; if only his approach could be tailored to to understand that there are some people who become physically sick eating too many carbohydrates, we are going somewhere good.

I look at my carbohydrate sensitivity like a food allergy. It's not really a weight problem (eating issue/disorder) thing any more than an allergy to peanuts is. It's just a fact that I can't eat many carbs without getting symptoms of metabolic problems.

Still I have to accept I do have eating issues; I and many others on this forum. I don't think it's possible to NOT have them if you've lived with carb sensitivity for an appreciable amount of time, and then likewise dieted for 2 years to lose it. That's got to do things to the way you look at food. This thanksgiving I find myself binging like crazy (TWO days in a row). If I am not watching with my conscious mind, I go into this fear mode where I feel like I have to eat everything because I never know when I'll have it again. Long story behind those feelings (childhood issues, the carb thing, and then later screwing up my mind with dieting). I know I need to get over it. I just don't know how. In the mean time, all I can do is control it from getting out of hand with my conscious mind. I find it very easy to restrict to lose, once I get into that "groove" (psychologically and physically). Thank god I have such a freakish capacity to focus on small goals and trivialities in food and weight; I would surely be 300+ pounds today otherwise.

I think the guy misses the point. Intuitive eaters are just that--intuitive. If a non-intuitive eater has to go through some sort of process to mold himself into that pattern, he is just dieting in a different way.

Now, avoiding emotional eating and the rest of the things on his list is undoubtedly a good thing. But it is far from intuitive for many of us. Over time, it might become intuitive, or at least less a matter of conscious decision making, self-control and self-talk, but there is still that period of time when it takes a huge effort--and food restriction--to get there.

eat what you want when you want!!!!

now, how did I get fat?

will someone remind me?

Well, I'm not sure this is the same thing but I AM trying to be more intuitive and it is a re-learning process for me. I'm giving myself "portions" of food and stopping, whether I want to or not. Doing things like waiting until I'm very hungry to eat and so on.

It actually does seem to be working in that I just can't pig out like I could before.

hmmm... if it is intuitive why do you have to teach it? Sounds contradictory to me. My intuition says load up on pasta... not too helpful.

mike

Hehehe..!

Intuitive eating, I thought that was my invention.

My intuition style of eating is very funny, and shocking to others. People get really mad if you make a joke of dieting and take it as an insult if you say at a party 'Go ahead, eat all you like, out of courtesy I'll start when you are done and eat everything left'. Intuitive eating has changed for me over a couple of years to get my hands on all valuable food I can get. I crave now for the lean meats, vegetables etc. Yesterday there was buffet with nothing of that kind, so I took almost nothing. Feeling extremely good about that.

For anyone wondering it intuitive eating can exist:

The binging like crazy is the natural form of eating. See the Paleo diet for examples of how the hunter-gatherers have eaten. Work at day, eat at night basically. Eat all you want and can.

The Warrior Diet is based on this type of eating. If you start by binging and having fun, you will see there are none of all the problems mentioned in the posts above, at least that's how it went with me. I found myself after 2,5 years eating alot like the Paleo diets, but in moderate way. The hunting ground is the supermarket, when the budget is not enough for the best foods I have to do with lesser quality and like my ancestors I don't give a thought to that limit. You just get the best nutrients you can to 'survive'

Has the guy ever heard of metabolic syndrome? Carb addiction? Processed foods made more tasty than nutritious? We saw a rat study a few days ago about how fully sated rats will *keep eating* if given something particularly tasty. That's what the food industry is all about.

OK, if you allowed people access only to non-refined non-processed foods, and put them on low-carb for a couple of weeks to overcome their addictions, and ensured that they had some idea about what nutrients foods contain, then perhaps this could work. Hey, isn't this why we're all on this forum?

My overeating has little to do with emotional issues. Carbs just set me into a downward spin of wanting more, and more, and more carbs...

I think the word "intuitive" is overused AND misused. If intuitive means follow your base instincts, we'd all be living "every man for himself." Living in a civilization requires control on all counts: controlling violent instincts, sex instincts, survival instincts, and eating instincts. To eat according to our primitive nature IS to gorge whenever food is available. To overcome our primitive nature and function in a civilization we have to control our reactions to food. There's no way around that.

When I am not 'on plan' I feel like I am not only addicted to carbs, but also addicted to overeating, itself! The only way to overcome these addictions, for me, is to follow a plan.

My intuition is best used to guide my life, and my intuition tells me my food plan is what works best to feed my body!

Our society and food habits teach us to ignore our bodies, to gorge on high sensation foods, to eat huge portions till uncomfortable.

Then when we grow hugely fat and develop metabolic diseases... we are told to starve or over exercise our bodies to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week... abnormally ignoring and mistreating them in a new way.

So, yes, we WOULD have to teach intuitive eating, since our lifestyles have pretty much rendered us hopelessly out of synch with our bodies.

I too am an intuitive eater! My intuition tells me that if I look at a carb then I'll put on 2 lbs! As this guy is a professor it is easy to believe him; it's just like having 'Messiah' after his name! The question that springs to mind here is, "Is there a downside to education"? Let's pretend he does not exist and he may go away!

He wants people to act as they have always been acting before "dieting" was invented. This should work for some.

However, some of the overweight people of this decade have metabolic problem which prevents their bodies from regulating their weights. It could be "insulin resistance" or something else.

For those people, the problem must either be corrected (by some means which is unavailable until now) or made ineffective by low carb dieting.