Intuitive Eating
As most of you know, I did my first bodybuilding show this year and I am currently still in the reverse dieting phase and post-show blues. I told my coach that I loved every phase and aspect leading up to the show, being on stage, and I honestly enjoyed the process of it all. (Well let’s be real, there were days I asked myself several times why I was doing this). Overall the experience was awesome. The post-show dieting, motivation and self- confidence is the tough part. The part you don’t hear a lot about or people talk about. I knew leading into the prep, my main concern was post-competition weight-gain, personal body image and definitely my hormone health. Which leads me to the discussion of intuitive eating.
Being intuitive is having an unconscious feeling that propels us to do things without really knowing why. It is a great skill that we should all acknowledge and always listen to our “gut.” I have always been one to be way too hard on myself, being unsure what I should eat, how much I should be eating, how much cardio I should be doing – I over analyze everything specifically when it comes to myself.
After having a couple weeks of feeling down, I took a moment to really tune in on myself. What I was feeling, craving, wanting, short term and long term goals and what steps I was going to take to get there. My current goals are to find a healthy balance of life, gym, nutrition and leisure. And from past experiences of hormone therapy, weight gain, anxiety and hopelessness; one of the most important things I have learned is to implement mindfulness. You can’t be intuitive if you’re never being mindful of what you’re doing. It is also proven that strong emotions, specifically negative ones distract our intuition (Bolte, A. 2003).
So, how can we eat intuitively? Ask yourself before indulging what you’re eating and why you’re eating it. Will it benefit you, do you actually need it? How will it affect you emotionally, physically and most importantly- hormonally. I will say once I started listening to my body more, eating based on what I felt intuitively I noticed a huge change in not only my mood and energy, but my hormones too. TMI guys, but as soon as I implemented this into part of my every day ‘thinking’ I got my cycle back, I began to sleep better and I have been noticing a slight change in my self-perception and appetite. I crave healthier foods rather than obsessing over what I probably shouldn’t eat.
Another huge aspect to this is stress. We are already stressed in our lives with work, family, money, school, careers, etc. Why add more stress on ourselves? Think about feeding your body what it needs to function and what it needs to be at its healthiest state possible. Dr. Willey always states, “If God didn’t grow it, don’t eat it.”
So, whether you just competed, struggle with yo-yo dieting or overly obsess about food and exercise, listen to your gut! Being chronically stressed physically, emotionally and mentally will jack your hormones up even more and only set you back. Intuitive eating relies on a better mind-body connection. Thus helps our cravings happiness and satiety.
