The Food & Body Therapy Mini-Series
“Intuitive eating is like meditation. You can’t fully understand it or expect to reap the benefits, unless you actually do it.”
If you know me or have worked with me, then you know I talk a lot about intuitive eating in my therapy practice. I’m a proud anti-diet and intuitive eating dietitian and therapist, which just means that I reject all notions of dieting, restricting, managing, or controlling the food you’re eating in any way.
I advocate for using body wisdom over lists of “eat this, don’t eat that,” and I work passionately to help my clients find peace with food through the restoration of their natural and innate ability to sense when they’re hungry, respond with food, and relax into the bodies they were given.
Through this work with clients I have often struggled to find simple, well-organized resources to both introduce the concept of intuitive eating and provide ongoing information and clarification of its meaning and principles. I recommend that all of my clients turn to the original book Intuitive Eating and the accompanying workbooks, but I have also found myself looking for simpler resources to introduce these concepts.
The overall concept and principles of intuitive eating are complex in their nuances, hard to organize, difficult to explain, and all too often misunderstood. I have found that many people give up on the process of becoming an intuitive eater, not because it doesn’t work but because it can be so challenging to wrap our heads around and truly understand in a deep way.
The process of becoming an intuitive eater is nothing more or less than a complete paradigm shift. We are essentially going against everything that society and our greater culture teaches us over the course of our lives.
When we’re introduced to intuitive eating, everything we’re conditioned to think and believe about food, and eating, and bodies, and health is brought to light, challenged, and then gently changed through education and experience until a new normal finally begins to manifest in our lives. This new normal allows us to live free of dieting, deprivation, and food and body obsession. It’s transformational and life-changing and so so worth it.
But, sometimes the misguided beliefs we’re holding onto about food, diets, body weight, and health have come not only from diet books and magazines, but from beloved family members, friends, peers, teachers, and often even healthcare professionals and our doctors.
For this reason, the intuitive eating process can be confusing, conflicting, and sometimes seemingly impossible to grasp. In order for intuitive eating to work, we have to put complete faith in the process with an air of commitment and dedication, and if we don’t have the clear tools and knowledge we need to do this, it can end up becoming another fruitless attempt at changing our relationship with food and our bodies.
When people reach out to me for dieting or weigh loss advice and I tell them that I don’t work with diets, meal plans, or help them lose weight… they’re surprised and confused to say the very least. And I’ve found it seemingly impossible to fully explain the intuitive eating process on a 45 minute consult call.
For this reason I decided to create this intuitive eating mini-series for prospective clients and readers. I’m hoping this mini-series will help with your “awakening” and enable you to sort through your questions and need for ongoing clarification as this process unfolds for you.
Intuitive eating is a concept that even most health professionals need some time to wrap their heads around, so it’s normal to experience waves of confusion, frustration, and sometimes even sadness, anger, or grief. I hope this mini-series serves to help clarify some of that confusion, and offer you a simple way of understanding intuitive eating and all of its nuanced complexities.
My ultimate goal is for anyone struggling with food and body concerns to find much deserved peace through the process of becoming an intuitive eater. Ultimately, this work is about freeing yourself from food and body obsession so that you can get back to really living your life. When we’re no longer obsessing about food and our body’s, we’re free to become the people we’re meant to be.
Good luck on the journey and always reach out for support when you need it.
Stephanie Michelle Scott is a Registered Dietitian and Psychotherapist based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She utilizes unique holistic approaches to help people end cycles of disordered eating and chronic dieting and develop healthier relationships with food, body and self. You can contact her team with questions or to request more information on counseling services by clicking here.