Stop Dieting And Set Yourself Free: Embrace Intuitive Eating in Midlife
It’s the beginning of another week and so many people start a diet.
Perhaps you’re one of them. Monday promises a new start, or perhaps it’s the carb-fueled guilt we carry from the weekend.
Monday is the day we usually decide that we have to finally get it together. Start eating clean and totally transform our lives.
But as the week goes on, someone shows up in front of you with a dessert, candy, or a bag of chips. You’ve had a stressful morning and you reach for the food without even thinking about it and can’t seem to stop at just one or two servings. You feel you deserve it!
I get it. I’ve been there. We feel guilty saying no and then we’re so ravenous, we keep eating until we feel unwell.
Let’s end this unhealthy relationship with food.
If you’re finally ready to set yourself free from dieting, you’ve arrived at the right place. Let’s look at why diets don’t work, how to eat intuitively as you learn to trust your body again, and the steps to take to get there.
Why Dieting Doesn’t Work
It’s Exhausting!
Let’s first address the elephant in the room: dieting is a lot of work! It takes up all of your time without any real lasting benefits. The ‘Monday Diet’ mindset starts with deprivation setting you up for failure.
Don’t forget, you need to count points, calories, or macros and it gets exhausting having to keep going like this week after week!
The diet industry makes over $60 billion a year and 45 million Americans go on a diet each year. Statistics show that 95% of all diets fail.
Let’s just say it: If they worked, there wouldn’t be so many diets — and you wouldn’t have to keep going back on one!
Usually, the first place you start with a diet is having to shop for all the food you’ll need to eat. You can’t help but think about all the food you can’t eat. That feeling never goes away. It’s the focus of your diet. Suddenly, you’re craving rice cakes on a low-carbohydrate diet. But, you don’t even like rice cakes!
You begin obsessing over donuts, rolls, bagels, and croissants—foods you don’t usually give much thought to. You want the things you can’t have. That’s the way the brain works.
It Stops Working!
You’ve probably realized that what worked for you in your teens, 20s, and 30s no longer works as you age. With all of the changes that your midlife body is experiencing — estrogen drops, metabolism slowing down, weight distributed differently, hot flashes, and insomnia — it’s no surprise that depriving your body is not a good plan.
For many of you, the solution always seems to go back to depriving and dieting. I know this was the case for me. I tried SO MANY diets and I truly did lose the weight but then gained it back and then some.
When I finally stopped dieting, got rid of my scale, developed some compassion for myself, and embraced eating intuitively, I was able to get to my natural weight. I understood that as I aged, my body was changing. I didn’t give up taking care of myself.
I gave myself rest when I needed it.
I took up lifting weights 2 to 3 times a week to build strength for my thinning bones.
I continued walking, running, or hiking because I truly love the outdoors and it helps improve my cardiovascular health and mental well-being.
I finally listened to the hunger and fullness cues my body was trying to give me. Signals I had ignored for so many years because I didn’t trust myself.
I learned what foods satisfied and nourished me and gave me lasting energy.
When you limit your food intake, it puts your body in survival mode slowing your metabolism down. Along with changing hormones, feeling hungry (or hangry!) leaves you feeling crankier and more obsessed about food than ever before.
Essentially, your body is fighting back. You’re not weak; you’re just human. That’s why you suddenly can’t stop eating the entire bag of chocolate or the carton of ice cream. Your body is trying to keep you alive!
Perpetual cycles of dieting cause you to overeat or binge eat creating the dreaded shame and guilt.
Enter Intuitive Eating: The Anti-Diet
Are you ready for some good news?
You can get healthy by listening to and trusting your body. Yes, it can be that simple. The practice of intuitive eating is all about reconnecting with your body’s natural signals.
Eating intuitively first asks you to leave the diet mentality behind. Stop chasing each new diet that shows up and get back to nourishing your body and mind while enjoying the foods you truly crave.
Of course, midlife can be a difficult time for many women with changing hormones to believe that they will naturally know how to nourish their bodies.
It’s an inside job that allows you to make space for managing the other symptoms showing up due to changing hormones. Read more at my blog post: ‘How to Start Eating Intuitively.’
Your hormones are changing in midlife and so are your needs. Instead of chasing the latest diet, it’s time to tune in to your body and what it truly craves. The authors of the groundbreaking book, Intuitive Eating by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole — truly understood how helping us make peace with food would lead us to rediscover the pleasures of eating and free us from chronic dieting.
Intuitive Eating Guidelines
Intuitive eating is a self-care eating framework. There are no rules. Sounds like freedom to me!
It’s not (although some people think this) about eating anything whenever you want. Along with embracing gentle nutrition, we need to perceive physical sensations that arise within our body, known as interoceptive awareness. A simple example is recognizing when you need to use the bathroom because your bladder is full. You don’t give this much thought — you just do it several times a day.
Being in touch with the physical sensations in our body allows us to get our needs met. Start by slowing down and asking yourself how you feel after you eat certain foods.
Guidelines to follow as you embrace intuitive eating:
- Reject the diet mentality: Recognize and accept the damage that dieting causes to our bodies and our minds. Release the belief that you need to be on a diet to be healthy!
- Honor your hunger: Midlife can be a time of feeling many different emotions — stress, boredom, or simply thirst. It can be easy to confuse your hunger with other emotions. Stop trying to push down your hunger cues. Learn more at ‘How to Trust You Can Honor Your Hunger.’
- Make peace with food: Permit yourself to eat all foods without restriction. Try out foods you’ve been restricting for years. Many women find that they don’t truly even like some of their ‘favorite’ foods any longer.
- Challenge the food police: The food police monitor the unreasonable rules that diet culture has created — labeling foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’
- Feel your fullness: To honor your fullness, you need to trust that you will give yourself the foods that you desire. Observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full.
- Discover the satisfaction factor: Food should be enjoyable. You will be truly content when you are naturally eating the foods you crave and enjoy.
- Honor your feelings without using food: This can be hard if you’ve always dealt with your emotions by eating. Food won’t fix emotional hunger. As you struggle with stress, loneliness, or overwhelm, look for non-food ways to care for yourself.
- Respect your body: Focus on all that your body has helped you achieve. Honor your body at every size.
- Movement – feel the difference: Getting out in nature or moving just where you are is a gift. Don’t look to change your body and exercise in excess. Be gentle as you find movement you enjoy!
- Honor your health with gentle nutrition: Seek progress, not perfection as you make choices around food that nourish your body and soul.
Start Here as You Stop Dieting
Confused about where to start?
Start here: As you break free from the diet mentality, check-in and make sure you’re not following ‘food rules’ or dieting without realizing it.
Introduce one food into your day that you’ve been afraid to eat because of ‘losing control’ around it. Truly enjoy it by sitting down and savoring each bite.
Listen to your hunger and fullness cues. Pay attention to how certain foods make you feel (energized, neutral, or sluggish?), and remember to eat every 3 to 4 hours if you’ve been someone not in touch with your hunger cues.
Give yourself unconditional permission to enjoy all foods! Please reach out to see how I can help you on this journey.
Next Steps
It’s time to step away from the quick fixes!
Don’t you feel like you’ve spent years trying to be a certain size that diet culture created for you? It’s time to break free and trust your body, enjoy food again, and live your best life while nourishing your body in the way it deserves.
It takes time and space to accomplish eating intuitively. Remember, if you tell yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing. This was often the case for me.
Be more confident as you reconnect with your body and rebuild trust in your ability to make choices that support your overall well-being rather than relying on external diets or trends.
Please reach out and let me know if intuitive eating is something you practice or something you’d like to learn more about. As a post-menopausal woman, nurse, and certified life and health coach helping women through changing hormones and their relationship with food, I’d love to hear from you and support you in any way I can. You’re not alone!
Kathleen is a registered nurse who became a certified life and health coach and intuitive eating counselor after going through a difficult perimenopause – full menopause at 44. With the help of her own coach, she finally understood that making simple lifestyle shifts improved her health and helped her feel her best! She’s now on a mission to empower midlife women to understand hormone changes, manage symptoms naturally, and make peace with food for a balanced, healthier life.
