The Well Dressed Kitchen

Intuitive Eating

HOW TO BE AN INTUITIVE EATER WHILE TRAVELING

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Learning to eat intuitively in your day to day life and routine is hard enough… now what do you do when you’re traveling!?

(Part 1 – Leading up to Vacation)

I think MOST importantly and probably the best advice I can give is to continue living your same lifestyle leading up to vacation and travel.

Don’t change anything before travel because this can trigger an “diet” mindset…

👉🏼No restricting food and trying to eat less.
👉🏼Don’t change your eating habits. Continue listening to your body and honoring your choices!
👉🏼No need to exercise more and trying to get in shape and change your body before you leave.
👉🏼You don’t need to weigh yourself and obsess about the number!!!

Lack of desperation to over indulge comes from not changing your habits prior to you leaving.

DON’T DEPRIVE YOURSELF!!! Go out to eat if plans come up. Don’t push yourself to get up for a 4am workout to catch your 10am flight!!

As a health and nutrition coach and as a woman that has overcome diet culture and a horrible relationship with food. As someone that values her nutrition and health. I am telling you to eat the ice cream the night before the trip IF that’s what you WANT!!

I repeat if you try to control your behaviors and change your habits leading up to vacation you’re in a place of lack/scarcity and it will change your mindset, thoughts and overall eating behaviors on vacation!!

(Part 2 – travel day) 🙌🏼

Old thoughts on travel day can be how do I avoid bad airport food, I need to pack a million snacks, already stressed about eating on vacation and fearing weight gain.

Yes, it’s great to be prepared and bring snacks and I still do, but I think it’s more important to start paying attention to your body and what makes you feel your best when traveling. When you know YOU, it’s not about following external rules it becomes what will bring me joy around
food and my experience.

If possible, I eat before I get to the airport but if not there is no stress around airport food anymore. I find what’s available for what I’m wanting in that moment, eat and move on. I need food in my stomach when flying and I feel better when I eat snacks on the plane and stay hydrated. But what my body needs isn’t necessarily what yours needs so pay attention to your body and what makes you feel good.

I practice practical eating meaning even if I am not overly hungry before my flight I eat in response to anticipated hunger. The same way you will pee before you get on the plane it’s okay to eat even if you’re not overly hungry.

A lot of times you won’t have a set eating plan and you don’t know what types of food will be available but allow it to happen and trust in yourself. Don’t worry so much about the food, continue to check in with your body and how you feel. Continue to eat foods you really enjoy and also foods that make you feel good.

Remember that you will have more relaxed energy around food if you’re CONSISTENTLY eating, CONSISTENTLY eating what you want and CONSISTENTLY satisfied…. Before, during and after your trip!

(Part 3 – During Your Trip)

Allow yourself to enjoy and embrace in the vacation… the people you’re with, the time away from work, the abundance of all types of foods, the activities you’re doing, not waking up to an alarm clock!

Each day remind yourself of these things. Set an intention for your day and how you will be present versus stressed about food.

You might be actively eating more, having a margarita at noon, more carbs and less veggies than normal or maybe you’re eating more fruit and fresh foods but when you continue to practice IE it’s not coming from a place of desperation and lack!!

Meaning you can still eat all foods without feeling the need to over indulge because you’re no longer cheating or labeling your food as “bad”. You know you can always eat those foods. Yes, you might overdo it at times because your meal is that good and it’s okay 👍🏼 Vacation is meant to be enjoyed with food.

Also, your thought process doesn’t have to change based on where you are in the traveling process either. Continue to navigate the food that is available, no change in your mindset or your internal world. Just because it’s day 4 in and you have been free around food doesn’t mean now you have to switch to eating clean. Listen to what your body wants and allow yourself to trust in that. If your body is craving more nutrient dense foods go for it. If not, that’s okay too.

If you can include planning like stopping for fresh food because it’s what will make you feel good then go for it, but also know it’s okay if you don’t. You plan most days of your life so you’re allowed to enjoy the freedom. There is really no right or wrong here. When you learn to honor your hunger and satiety you can trust yourself to make food choices that work best for you in that moment without having to stress about your previous meal or next meal.

Have fun! Enjoy the entire experience! Be in the environment and vibe!

(Part 4 – When You Get Home)

I am not suggesting that as a dieter you don’t enjoy yourself on vacation. You still indulge but from my own experience it was a harmful way of restricting and stuffing myself and feeling guilty and then telling myself I will be good again when I get home. But as an IE you get to experience life in a different way without that cloud hanging over your head of starting over again! You eat freely and go with the flow and travel freely!

When you get home there is no making up for anything! Slowly slip back into your normal lifestyle! If you want chocolate the day you get back, cool!! If you have the mindset that you will restrict again when you get home to make up for all the “bad” foods you ate over vacation it will cause you to eat even more on vacation.

When you get home don’t stress about your weight and if your clothes are feeling a little tighter. Your weight can fluctuate up and down and that’s normal!! You probably feel like you need to cut more foods and workout harder. This mindset actually causes more stress and anxious thoughts and actions are food and your body! You don’t need to cut out foods and restrict. You don’t need to exercise even harder. I know it’s a normal thought to think this is the solution, but it’s not!

I assure you it’s a natural, potential fluctuation of life and it’s okay!! Knowing your weight can change and that it’s actually normal will help you keep a neutral mindset! Also, vacation for a lot of people includes more walking and activities, fresh food, etc so heck you might come back feeling even better.

Intuitive Eating is a journey and there is no finish line. There is no failing and right or wrong answers, it’s all learning about your body and what makes you feel your best. Take time to reflect on your vacation. What felt good for you? What didn’t feel so good? What might you try differently next time?

So remember, it’s normal to feel a little anxious when you arrive home but the more you can ease back into normal life and honoring your eating choices the better you will feel!!

If you found this helpful, please comment below what tips you will use!!

For more helpful tips follow me on Instagram HERE!! 

What is Intuitive Eating

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Intuitive eating is an approach to health and food that has nothing to do with diets, meal plans, discipline or willpower. It teaches you how to get in touch with your body cues like hunger, fullness and satisfaction while learning to trust your body around food again. Here’s an overview of intuitive eating including the science behind it and the ten principles of intuitive eating. 

Intuitive eating is an approach that was created by two registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach to health and wellness that helps you tune into your body signals, break the cycle of chronic dieting and heal your relationship with food.  From my perspective it’s a strategy that helps us break the restrictive or rule focused mindset.

We are all born intuitive eaters, eating when we are hungry and stopping when we are full. As we grow older and rules and restrictions are set around food, we begin to lose our inner intuitive eater. We use food as a reward,  we are told certain foods are good for us and others are bad – causing us to feel good about ourselves when we eat “good” foods and guilty when we eat “bad” foods.

Intuitive Eating is not a diet. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. Instead, it’s bout re-learning to eat outside of the diet mentality. There’s no counting calories or macros and no making certain foods off limits. It’s not about following a meal plan or measuring out your portions. It focuses on putting the focus on your internal cues (aka your intuition) like hunger, fullness and satisfaction, and moving away from external cues like food rules and restrictions.

Intuitive eaters give themselves unconditional permission to eat what they want without feeling guilty. They rely on their internal hunger and satiety signals and trust their body to tell them when, what and how much to eat. They know when they want to at eat veggies and also when they feel like having dessert (and don’t feel guilty or have any regrets with either choice).

The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

Intuitive Eating is made up of ten core principles.

1. Reject the Diet Mentality

Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you the false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at diet culture that promotes weight loss and the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet or food plan might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

2. Honor Your Hunger

Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for rebuilding trust in yourself and in food.

3. Make Peace with Food

Call a truce; stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. 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. When you finally “give in” to your forbidden foods, eating will be experienced with such intensity it usually results in Last Supper overeating and overwhelming guilt.

4. Challenge the Food Police

Scream a loud no to thoughts in your head that declare you’re “good” for eating minimal calories or “bad” because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The food police monitor the unreasonable rules that diet culture has created. The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loudspeaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the food police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor

The Japanese have the wisdom to keep pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In our compulsion to comply with diet culture, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence—the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes just the right amount of food for you to decide you’ve had “enough.”

6. Feel Your Fullness

In order to honor your fullness, you need to trust that you will give yourself the foods that you desire.  Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full. Pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what your current hunger level is.

7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

First, recognize that food restriction, both physically and mentally, can, in and of itself, trigger loss of control, which can feel like emotional eating. Find kind ways to comfort, nurture, distract, and resolve your issues. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, and anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won’t fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you. But food won’t solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger may only make you feel worse in the long run. You’ll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion.

8. Respect Your Body

Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size. But mostly, respect your body so you can feel better about who you are. It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical of your body size or shape. All bodies deserve dignity.

9. Movement—Feel the Difference

Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie-burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm.

10. Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition

Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel good. Remember that you don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or become unhealthy, from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters. Progress, not perfection, is what counts.

The Science Behind Intuitive Eating

There are now over 100 research studies that have shown the benefits of intuitive eating. The studies show that intuitive eating is associated with:

      • Higher self-esteem
      • Better body image
      • More satisfaction with life
      • Optimism and well-being
      • Proactive coping skills
      • Lower body mass indexes
      • Higher HDL cholesterol levels
      • Lower Triglyceride levels
      • Lower rates of emotional eating
      • Lower rates of disordered eating

If you want to learn more about Intuitive Eating and start your journey to Food Freedom I am here to help! To set up a FREE consultation email me at Becca@thewelldressedkitchen or private message me on IG @thewelldressedkitchen.

More Resources for you to enjoy!

Blog Post: Find Clarity and Change Your Life – The Power of Intention

Recipe: No-Bake Peanut Butter Energy Bites – I am obsessed with these No-Bake Energy Bites. They are easy to make and the best part is they taste like cookies. I am not kidding, you have to try these!