Eat in Peace dietitians in Camberwell, Melbourne utilise Intuitive Eating, or a Non-Diet Approach to assist you in improving your relationship with food and your body.
Non-Diet Approach / Intuitive Eating
The Non-Diet Approach is a gentle approach, encompassing a range of skills, concepts and attitudes to promote health and wellbeing that don’t require weight loss or changing your body.
During consultations, we will explore your beliefs, feelings, and concerns about your weight. We work with clients to explore and gently move away from the importance that weight plays in their lives, and help them move more towards body acceptance.
Unlike typical diets, the goals of this approach are to:
- Increase trust in the body’s ability to look after itself
- Increase trust in food to nourish our bodies
- Increase trust in our body’s appetite signals (hunger, fullness, satisfaction)
- Decrease guilt around food and encourage a neutral view of all foods (no foods are good or bad)
- Encourage body acceptance and move away from the pursuit of weight loss
- Minimise dieting thinking and meticulous behaviours associated with dieting for example, planning of future meals or counting kilojoules or calorie intake
- Maintain comfortable body signals – minimal uncomfortable hunger or fullness
- Flexibility, compassion, loving self care
The Non-Diet Approach is a gentle approach that allows you to build skills and confidence in your own innate ability to select appropriate foods for your body in appropriate amounts. We work together on skills to support body acceptance.
Words to describe the differences between the Non-Diet Approach and Dieting
| Diet paradigm | Non Diet Paradigm |
|
Inflexible Quantitative Prescriptive Rigid Perfection-seeking Good or bad foods Rules Deprivation Time-based Fear-driven Guilt-inducing Shaming Body hatred Hunger Struggle Rationalising Temptation Thought-consuming Punishing |
Flexible Accepting Welcomes all foods Intuitive Qualitative Supporting Enjoyable Life balance Appreciating Comfort Confidence Variety Freedom Natural Calm Pleasurable Kindness Nurturing Grateful Nourishing Forgiving Satisfaction Trust-building |
For an extensive list of research studies relating to intuitive eating, the non diet approach and Health at Every Size (R), visit the website for “Intuitive Eating” here.
Health at Every Size®
Health and wellbeing is so much more than food, exercise and weight. Health at Every Size is based on the simple premise that the best way to improve health is to honor your body whatever the size may be. It is a social justice movement that supports people in all bodies to live their life free from stigma and discrimination.
It supports people in all bodies adopting habits which support their health and well-being (physical health, emotional health, psychological health, spiritual health) rather than weight control.
Health at Every Size ® encourages:
– Accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.
– Eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite.
– Finding the joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.
For more information about Health at Every Size®, please click here.
Mindful eating
Mindful Eating is a practice which can assist people to enjoy a satisfying, healthy and enjoyable relationship with food. It is a practice that can help people break free from ‘food rules’ and begin to enjoy healthy, flexible and relaxed eating practices.
Mindful eating is not a diet. Mindful eating is about the way we eat, not what we eat.
Nicole has written a blog post about mindful eating for beginners here.
Click here for more information on Mindful Eating.
