Questions About Intuitive Eating 

People often have endless questions about Intuitive Eating. Many are understandably skeptical about anti-diet approach, Intuitive Eating. It seems so “out there” to those stuck in diet culture. They don’t see a way out. After all how can most people be wrong, even the medical profession?!

Here are some of the most common questions about Intuitive Eating I hear. If you have any more please get in touch!

Intuitive EatingTM is a revolutionary anti-diet approach to eating. It is about making peace with food, freeing yourself from chronic dieting forever and rediscovering the pleasures of eating.

There are more than 125 studies showing benefits – growing recognition that Intuitive EatingTM is an adaptive eating style, which influences positive psychological and physical well-being.

General benefits of intuitive eating include:

  • Great body appreciation and satisfaction
  • Positive emotional functioning
  • Greater life satisfaction
  • Unconditional self regard and optimism
  • Psychological hardiness
  • Greater motivation to exercise, where the focus is on enjoyment rather than guilt

Intuitive EatingTM was inversely related to

  • Disordered eating
  • Dieting
  • Poor interceptive awareness (ability to follow internal cues to control eating)
  • Internalisation of the thin ideal
  • Intuitive Eaters have lower body mass indexes

The main purpose of Intuitive EatingTM is to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, mind and body. It is a weight-neutral model, meaning that the focus is not on body size, but rather and healing your relationship with food.

At Try Freedom, we help you to progress to autonomous intuitive eating so there is no effort involved in maintaining a normal eating pattern. 

The aim is of Intuitive Eating is to normalise your relationship with food. This means taking the focus from any external factors, such as weight loss or other "sources of motivation" and bringing the focus completely inside of your sensing body.

We teach you how to focus internally (on your thinking and your hunger mainly) which will lead you to naturally having a normal appetite. Many people experience weight loss as a side-effect. But weight control cannot be a focus as this blocks the changes necessary to become an Intuitive Eater. 

The success criteria we use are the skills of Intuitive Eating. This is when your body's instinct is fully in charge of your eating and you have to do nothing consciously except deciding what you want to eat for your next meal or snack. Success is when you genuinely don't want to eat more than your body needs!

The time taken to heal the damage done to your thinking and sensing depends on how severe the damage is. For example, for those who have only been briefly in the grip of diet culture then the intervention can be short, say a few weeks.  

However, for those who may be suffering PTSD from a trauma the journey can be more long and winding.

So for some it's just a tweak and for others it's a life-long journey towards healing.  

The great thing is once you have the basics (and have the tools to be able to sit in your discomfort of PTSD if appropriate) you can practice these skills by yourself.

One of the main lessons we teach you is that having a troubled relationship with food isn't your fault. We will demonstrate to you how it is impossible that your can be anything to do with you personally. Just knowing this can bring about some immediate emotional benefits.

Sessions normally start out weekly and gradually can reduce in frequency as clients become more autonomous.

Being an Intuitive Eater has a multitude of physical and psychological benefits. See our Intuitive Eating science page. 

We have a free initial consultation bookable via our book now page.

Standard individual sessions are £45.00 for an hour session. We also have courses of 10 weeks for £400.00 a saving of approximately 10%.

Concessions - to make Intuitive Eating counselling more available to those who are less financially privileged, we offer a "sliding scale" price based on what you can afford to pay weekly. Please get on touch if you'd like to discuss this as an option for you.

Fitness Professionals Rate - The fitness industry is still stuck in the diet mentality and as a result many professionals themselves are struggling with disordered eating. We offer a flat rate of £10 per session for anyone in the fitness industry (subject to availability). Please get on touch if you'd like to discuss this as an option for you.

We take bank transfers or PayPal payments.

Yes, we have a weekly group session. It's a pay-what-you-can-afford session. And if you can't afford to pay you won't pay). Please get in touch for eligibility and availability.

Get in touch by email to info@tryfreedom.co.uk or phone on 0208 568 5336. Or book a consultation.

In fact, the exact opposite happens. The process of appetite normalisation results in you only focussing on eating for pleasure. 

The theory is the more satisfaction (pleasure) you gain from eating, the less you want to eat.  Of course, this takes a while and we have to work through your current preferred way of eating which is for large amounts and usually foods are  mostly like for high fat and high sugar.

As you develop Intuitive Eating skills, your sense of taste will develop properly for the first time in your life. This leads to you genuinely preferring to eat a normal amount of normal food (ie not high fat high sugar foods).  

There are now over 150 studies on Intuitive Eating showing benefit.

There is also a plethora of evidence of the wider topics of Interoceptive Awareness, Food Restriction/Dieting/Binge Eating/Inefficacy Harm from Weight Loss / Reactance Theory. Click below to see the science:

Yes, we currently hold a weekly session on Zoom. It's on a Monday evening (UK time) 1900 - 2000. It's on a "pay-what-you-can-afford" basis (which includes paying nothing). Please contact Alison for details about how to reserve your place.

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