Yesterday, I summarized the main principles of how to eat intuitively in the Intuitive Eating book by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. This book teaches you how to get back to your body's natural way of regulating it's own weight through making peace with food, ditching the dieting mentality, and honoring your hunger signals among other things.
I want to let you know this book is immensely helpful and I would recommend it to anyone who is struggling with the rigidity of dieting. Overall, I would give the book 2 thumbs up!! I really like the message and I wish I had stumbled onto something like this sooner in my life and maybe I would have wasted less time being unhappy with myself. But then again, maybe I wouldn't have been ready for it and I will discuss that below.
While I do love the book and I think it hits the nail on the head, I wanted to point out some of the things that bothered me about the book:
- Not For Everyone: I don't think this book, or intuitive eating itself, is right for everyone. The book is definitely geared to people who have struggled with disordered eating or chronic dieters. Someone like my dad, who doesn't diet, just eats exactly what he wants. He eats huge portions and he likes being totally and completely stuffed. He is also overweight. I think he is eating pretty intuitively as the authors encourage through the whole book (up until the nutrition chapter), and yet he is not his natural healthy weight.
- Loves Labels: The authors want to put labels on what type of eater you are and "who" the voices in your head are and "who" they should be. I realize this is just a tactic to help readers, but I could have done without most of it. The type of eater chapter was just unnecessary - I have been every type of eater in there and some people I know simply don't fit into any of their categories (like my dad). The food police chapter could have focused more on being kind and forgiving to yourself and standing up for yourself rather than trying to get rid of old voices and cultivate new ones. It was a little hokey.
- Encourages Journaling Hunger and Fullness: The authors encourage you to track what you eat and rank your hungriness and fullness. As this book is aimed at people with disordered eating, it seems like too much to me. I think just really paying attention to it is enough. Besides, how do you know if your hunger is a 5 or a 7?
- Sends Conflicting Message About Trusting Yourself: I don't like how the authors go through the whole book stating that your body takes care of itself and it knows what it needs in terms of nutrition and portions, and then at the end, after stating several times that they are not trying to pull the rug out from under you, they leave you with some nutritional guidelines that are a bit rigid and also obviously biased towards the dieting trends at the time the book was written (low-carb and low-fat). Throughout the book they tell you to eat what you want, and then here they tell you to eat 90% healthful foods and only 10% fun foods. It's a conflicting message. I think the whole reason they added this chapter was to try and make this book for everyone, which it isn't. Chronic dieters know what is healthy for them, even if in the past they have taken these guidelines to extremes. Perhaps they could have left this chapter out and directed those who aren't familiar with nutrition to other books - maybe Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food? ;)
- Doesn't Address Drinking: Alcohol is not addressed at all throughout the book with this exception: they tell you that your waiter will refill your wine glass if you order a bottle and it may be hard to keep track of how many glasses you've had. I realize that this is a book about eating, but I know I'm not alone in trying to factor drinking into the puzzle. When I was in college, drinking was one of the key things that I factored in. And now, I still love having a glass of wine or two with my dinner. -- My two cents: You should know how it's going to make you feel, just like with the food you eat. If you drink too much you will feel bad the next day so it's important to watch how much you drink. I personally think that eating after drinking (as long as you have been honoring your hunger throughout the day) is not needed. Skip that pizza for a time when you can remember eating all 8 slices. I will admit that sometimes the food can calm your stomach, so this is a difficult situation.
Overall: This book does a great job of tearing down dieting walls that many of us have built for ourselves and I would recommend it strongly. However, I thought this book didn't hit hard enough on the whole reason behind even attempting intuitive eating: happiness. Someone who is always dieting and being unkind to themselves is not happy, I know, I've been there. [Or maybe the book just didn't say it in the words that really hit home with me. I would have liked to see a whole chapter about it.]
My Path to Intuitive Eating:
I sat down with myself and I realized that I have to make my own happiness and this means working on areas of my life that make me unhappy. For me, weight and diet were areas I really needed to spend effort on. I realized that to be happy, I had to be nice to myself and to take care of myself. I know that when I eat good healthy foods when I am hungry and until I am full, I feel better. My body feels better when I exercise. It's as simple as that.
I would have liked Step 1 in the book to encourage finding your reason. At times when I am feeling depressed and I want to binge or starve myself, I remind myself that I will feel better, and I will probably feel better sooner if I feed myself properly. I want to be happy in my life and taking care of myself is key.
I choose the food I eat with the past, present, and future in mind. I remember how the food has made me feel in the past, I think about the current eating experience and my hunger levels, and finally, I want to eat food that is going to make me feel good later! I think if you keep that in mind, usually you will make healthier choices because they make you feel better and they keep you full longer, but sometimes you eat treats (but not too many cause then your stomach will hurt). I like this better than focusing on making your plate look like a "peace sign" or eating whatever you want until you realize you don't like it anymore as suggested in the book.
Have you read the Intuitive Eating book?
If not, I would suggest looking it over the next time you are at a book store or purchasing it. It is definitely an interesting and very helpful read.
If you have, do you agree or disagree with the things that bothered me about the book?
4 comments:
Very interesting take on the book. I must admit that for me, at least at this point in my path, it is more about the general principles themselves. It has been a few years since I read it but for me in that time of my life, I didn't really take any of those negatives from it. I would also really encourage you to check out their CD's which were released more recently and is much more general and there is no nutrition information at all.
For the sake of my own comfort level, I don't want to address everything you said (at least not in the comments section) because this book is near and dear to me and started a process for me that literally saved my life so my opinions run pretty deep. Without this book, and the things it led me to in my life, I would probably be 400lbs just like the rest of my family. We each are at different histories and what may help you or be triggering for you isn't what will help or be triggering for me.
For me, I accidentally stumbled onto this book when I was in the thick of my disordered eating and completely entrenched in the diet mentality and it opened my eyes to a world with food that I was not aware existed. I did not know that it was not normal to hide cake frosting in my room at the age of eight. I think that when the student is ready, the teacher appears and that is exactly what happened for me.
So, bottom line is, I completely respect your opinion and am happy that you appreciated the book for what you could take from it. You are at a completely different place in your path than I was when I read the book. Maybe if I read the book today, I would feel very differently about it but for me, it completely turned my life around.
Sorry to be so long-winded. Obviously, this is a topic I am completely passionate about.
Elle, I just have to tell you that you are so incredibly smart and insightful. Your critical analysis offers a really great perspective.
I agree with you that IE is not for everyone, and I also didn't like the "eating labels" because I, like you, have been every one of those types of eaters! I also agree with you about the conflicting messages about nutrition; I think a lot of that stems from the time period (as you said), and that the authors would probably revise that today if they were to come out with an updated edition. I think we also have to remember that they are, in fact, dietitians, so they probably subscribe to a lot of science-based nutritional information that we are trying to let go of.
I'll also add that when I first began my journey toward IE, I did keep a food journal and rated my hunger and fullness using a satiety scale. (I was working with a nutritionist at the time, and she was guiding this process.) I do find that using the scale is very helpful, and that writing it down just FORCED me to think about it at times when it otherwise would have just slipped my mind. In terms of figuring out what the actual numbers correspond to, I recommend the Hunger-Satiety scale found on this website; it's really helpful!
http://www.mckinley.illinois.edu/Interactive/olwmclass/5_how_to_eat.htm
Christie - I agree with you, this book will definitely be different to people depending where they are on their path of healing. I think it is a fantastic general guide and as a whole I definitely recommend it!
Katie - Thank you so much! I would love to read a revised version! For me food journaling is a trigger and that is why I take issue with the recommendation plus it feels a little "diet-y" to me. Thank you so much for the link to the scale, very helpful - was this in the book and I just missed it?
I completely agree about all the things you pointed out about Intuitive Eating. The hunger scale is kind of like the "pain scale" doctors ask you about when you are in the hospital. Sometimes it's difficult to determine where you are on the scale because you're in the present and you can't really compare how you felt yesterday when you were only slightly less in pain or slightly less hungry. It's all relative to the moment. I also thought the different types of eaters were a bit complicated. Maybe the tactic is that while you're trying to figure out who the heck is talking to you, you'll forget about being hungry(?). It just kind of over-complicated things. Overall - a great book, but there are a few small areas that need improvement.
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