satisfaction Archives - Everyday Chocolate

September 11, 2024September 9, 2024 by Libby

Intuitive Eating — 10 Principles in Action

Today I wanted to do a post revisiting the topic of Intuitive Eating. In case you aren’t familiar, Intuitive Eating is a framework for eating developed by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elysh Resch. There is nothing inherently fancy or “new” about Intuitive Eating — it is essentially relearning how to naturally eat and be in tune with our bodies, dismantling and untangling the (largely unhelpful) outside voices and influences that may have negatively impacted our relationship with food and natural ways of nourishing ourselves.

Intuitive Eating is 10 principles summarizing a process of how to do that — relearn to eat in a natural, intuitive, and life-giving way.

You can read one of my earlier blog posts sharing more about the nuts and bolts of Intuitive Eating here!

In TODAY’s blog post, I’m going through recent examples of how the 10 principles might organically show up in my everyday life and eating. When we are relearning how to eat normally, I find it can often be helpful to see examples of how others go about this.

When I’m eating and going about life, (outside of client sessions) I don’t really *think* about the specific and individual Intuitive Eating principles per se at this point in my food journey. BUT they definitely make regular and continual appearances even if they are mostly integrated on autopilot.

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September 3, 2024August 26, 2024 by Libby

Question to Challenge Your Disordered Eating: What Would Make This Better?

When it comes to experiencing any degree of disordered eating, often we might feel this urge or need to cut anything out of our daily eats that feels “unnecessary” or “extra.” This tendency to “do without whenever possible” can become more and more extreme over time.

Salad on my dressing? No thanks.

Dessert after dinner? Definitely not.

Cream in my coffee? Nope.

While the focus of today’s post is on a question to ask yourself to challenge this facet of your disordered eating, it is important to point out that there are MANY and varied benefits to NOT cutting out every last thing… from needing to eat enough to have a healthy metabolism/body/brain/hormones to feeling less obsessive and chaotic around food, when we pursue SATISFACTION in our eating, both a healthy diet and a healthy relationship with food tend to fall into place.

There are many factors that go into making a food or eating experience satisfying. Some of these include eating enough, eating when we are decently hungry most of the time (versus famished or full), eating enough fat/carb/protein, and allocating enough time to eat and prepare our food.

Additionally, a key component of satisfaction in eating is seeking to eat foods we genuinely enjoy (at least most of the time — not every eating experience will be tasty and delish and this is also perfectly normal), and eating foods in a way that they taste good/best… elevating what we are eating from “fine enough” to truly satisfying.

One question to ask yourself to challenge your disordered eating is, “What would make this better?”

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October 5, 2022January 31, 2024 by Libby

Increasing Satisfaction in Eating

Hello everyone! Today we are talking about SATISFACTION in eating. A lot of what I think about when it comes to having a healthy relationship with food connects back to satisfaction. Satisfaction can be thought of on a physical level (are you adequately nourished and responding to your hunger/fullness cues?) and also a more psychological/emotional level (are you regularly eating foods you enjoy and not feeling deprived?).

So often it seems that satisfaction gets left out when thinking about nutrition and eating. YES food is fuel for our bodies. YES it is important to eat plenty of fruits and veggies. HOWEVER, are you also seeking to pursue enjoyment in your daily eating experience, feeling appropriately satiated throughout the day, and regularly eating foods you find pleasurable?

As I have written about before, the array of health benefits we can get from food have to do with much more than their physical/nutritional benefits. For optimal health, it is important take into account not only the nutritional content of what we are eating, but also our emotional and mental well-being – aka our relationship with food.

When we seek satisfaction, listening to our bodies, and a healthy relationship with food as the foundation for our eating, meeting our nutritional needs tends to fall into place without our constant micromanaging. You may be wondering: how can I grow in experiencing greater satisfaction in eating? (*and thus improve my physical, nutritional, mental, and emotional health??*) Let’s explore this idea with the following ideas!

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