Intuitive eating should not be considered a weight loss method

Health – books, posts on Instagram, turnkey miracle methods… intuitive eating is often cited as a way to return to a healthy and simple way of eating. If it is imitated, it is because it suggests learning to listen to your body and its desires, paying attention to signs of hunger and satiety. And so to end restrictive diets and deprivation.

How can you not be drawn to a method that allows you to eat what you want when you want? To find a healthy and peaceful relationship with your diet?

But everything is apparently not so simple. HuffPost Karen Demenge, a clinical psychologist specializing in eating disorders, takes stock of this concept.

HuffPost. What is intuitive eating?

Karen Demange. This is a trend that came to us from the United States in 1995. These are two American nutritionists, Evelyn Tribole and Alice Rash, who wrote a book Intuitive eating ” In France, the movement was fostered by Jean-Philippe Zermatti, a nutritionist, and Gérard Effeldorfer, a psychiatrist, at the core of GROS, a think tank on obesity and overweight.

They said pretty much the same thing: that if you reconnect with your feelings of hunger and satiety, all is well in the best possible world. For me, it was Mr. Jordan (in A bourgeois gentlemanEditor’s Note) who writes prose without realizing it: People who don’t have eating disorders practice intuitive eating.

Why is she so successful?

We’re not going to lie, many people will turn to intuitive eating to lose weight. It’s a movement that has grown because we’re all tired of diets and restrictions that don’t work. It’s very salesy to say: Here’s a no-holds-barred method where you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want. Obviously, it’s attractive.

In thought, that’s a good thing. You have to reconnect with your body, your feelings of hunger and satiety, responding to your needs and desires. When we listen to our body, it is able to inform us about what we need. We drink water when we feel thirsty.

But then, what are the risks?

Intuitive eating should be considered as a goal to be achieved and not as a method. The goal to achieve is that food is no longer a problem, no longer an obsession, that we can eat whatever we want without feeling guilty. That said, of course, we can’t be against intuitive eating.

Apart from that today we have made it a method. Everyone sells their book or their content on Instagram. The theory is: I will help you become “normal” again. That is difficult. Because the problem is that 99.9% of readers or people who might be interested in it have an eating disorder (TCA).

And these people do not necessarily distinguish between feelings, needs, desires. So you must first go through the rehabilitation, psychological and psychological phase. When we go through certain stages at the sensory level, when we have learned to separate emotion from it, we can, in fact, move towards intuitive eating. But this has been done only once by the patient three-quarters of the way through. Because otherwise, risk stressing eating disorders.

And that of course depends on the nutritional qualities of what we eat. Because intuitively, not everyone would say: Hey, I’m going to eat spinach tonight.

What do you recommend to people interested in it?

What you need to start with is a session with a therapist, psychologist or doctor, do some evaluation before starting. Above all, you need to regain faith in yourself and in food. And do a good audit of the problem. in the word ” An eating disorder “, we already have three supports that we have to work on: the psychological aspect, the behavioral and cognitive aspect and nutrition.

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