Hello! Welcome to How to Love Your Body, today on the podcast we are talking about how to take the big, overwhelming, vague intangible work of intuitive eating and make it more tangible, action based and DOABLE!

 

A major barrier for most people in UnDieting is that it’s a philosophy or idea that people can generally understand and get behind, they may even want to live that way… but what do I actually DO???

 

Since they aren’t sure what to do they get stuck in learning, learning and learning more.

Soon enough they’ve subscribed to every podcast, they’ve read every book on the topic and they follow every IE counsellor on Instagram, but not much has actually changed in the way they eat, think about food, move their bodies or think about their bodies.

 

Of course some times will have big aha moments just from listening to this philosophy, and that is amazing!

 

However, if that isn’t you, and you’re feeling stuck we have a lot of great insights to share with you, because this work CAN be more tangible, there really are steps to take to work towards things like ending binge eating, stopping mental and physical restriction, even body image work and pursuing wellness without the obsession.

 

I believe that a lot of these step by step instructions aren’t talked about very much because the people who already live it and teach it just DO these things, they don’t even consciously realize it.

 

What we have done over the last 6 or 7 years while we have been UnDieters and Intuitive Eaters is observe ourselves, how did we stop restricting? How did binge eating end? What if someone wanted to do this too? What would we say to do each step of the way?

Here is an example:

 

Ending binge eating:

The advice that is often given is allow all foods and stop restricting:

Okay well how do I DO that??

 

It sounds easy, it sounds logical and straightforward. EAT! But as ex dieters we know it’s not that simple, if it were we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place, so we want to help you break it down.

 

Here are a few of the steps we recommend you take on your way to ending binge eating:

 

The first is a mindset shift - it must be understood that eating the food regularly is what ends this cycle, so if you feel worried about eating chips for example, not eating them now leads to:

 

Eating much more later/ binge eating (not that the goal is to eat less but if we push eating the food until we can’t resist anymore we will just eat it when our defenses are down which turns into a binge. This is like suppressing anger until you burst! Expressing emotions more regularly and more gently feels much better and is much healthier, it’s the same with food!) 

Being preoccupied with the food, that feeling of not being able to focus because you know there’s ice cream in the freezer. This is caused by not eating the food regularly. 


 

You may be fearful of eating the food but eating it regularly is how we move away from the diet/ binge cycle and into UnDieting.

 

Okay so how do I do this in steps??

 

Now that you’re coming from a place of understanding that eating all foods regularly is the key to a healthy relationship with food (remember, think of it as suppressing emotions - that never ends well!) it’s time to begin eating the dang food.

 

Step 1: Identify your binge foods. 

Write a list, what are the foods that you binge on?

 

Step 2: Identify binge times. Is it at night after the kids have gone to bed? Alone on the weekends?

 

Step 3: Get these foods into the house (We know this is scary!) It is best to do this on a normal grocery run, not a special trip. We want to normalize these foods so purchasing the potato chips along with the broccoli and yogurt is a good first step!

 

Step 4: Store these “special” foods where you keep other foods. No special chocolate drawers or hiding the chips in a different cupboard, get it all out there in the open beside the cans of soup or the frozen peas (I love my chocolate in the fr