Normal Eating
Is Normal Eating just another diet? Yet another plan to force normal eating?
Were it something like that, it wouldn't be normal, now would it?
Known also by other names such as intuitive eating, diet survival, non-dieting, and the no-diet approach, normal eating has finally penetrated the media and consumer magazines.
And it is everything its name implies. It's the anti-diet. All decisions come from within yourself and your good judgment. It may sound revolutionary, but it's the way normal eaters eat.
The fact is that diets work for very few people. Mainly, you can think of a diet as an effective approach for someone with no emotional food issues, who was once thin, who has a positive body image, who hasn't been overeating for very long, and who views themself as having had a good childhood. This rules out most of us, doesn't it?
Should you diet? Take a test
The problem with diets is in how we approach them if we have any kind of emotional issues, certain characteristics, or faulty beliefs. See if you fit any of the descriptions below. Check all the boxes that describe you.
Did you check fewer than two? You might or might not survive a diet intact. But is it worth the risk of developing an eating disorder, diet addiction, food guilt, obsession, or any other number of insidious side effects?
Did you check five or more? You're pretty much guaranteed to be misled by a diet if you haven't been already.
But don't take our word for it. Decide for yourself if this is the case. Looking at the list you checked, you can probably think of the reasons why diets will fail you.
If you have none of the above characteristics, you probably already know how to eat normally, and you're likely to handle a diet as a quite temporary and bendable thing. This may be true, for example, for a woman who gained a little too much weight during pregnancy, and who now chooses to count calories for a few months to get back in shape.
This woman doesn't restrict her fat intake or alter her food so she can "eat more." She doesn't obsessively weigh herself, and she feels no guilt when she goes over her calorie limit. Eventually she's a little happier with her weight, and from then on, exercises a little more care and caution when she eats.
Or consider the actor, who needed to gain fifty pounds in order to play a certain role. Now he wants to lose the weight again. If he has none of the above difficulties, he could join Jennie Craig for a few months to give his normal eating a boost.
The people described above are rare. The diet programs admit as much when they say "results not typical." You're probably not like those rare people, or you wouldn't be reading this, right?
Most of us, somewhere along our journey, dropped or rejected the idea of listening to our bodies, in favor of external rules. These rules end up indulging and exacerbating the characteristics in ourselves listed above (and some not listed.) For most of us, diets will backfire.
What to do? The answer is to learn how to "tune in" to our body's signals for hunger, fullness, likes, and dislikes, and then figure out how to work our intuition into real-world schedules. It may sound strange, but this is what normal, thin, people do, and they have to work at it, too.
You may like to find at least one book to help you restore this rational way to eat. You can search on
normal eating books
Many people also need support. One author, Linda Moran, offers a free message board called Diet Survivors as a companion to her book, How to Survive Your Diet. Diet Survivors is an active board with over 600 members.
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Last Modified: Sunday, 20-Apr-2008 06:03:31 PDT Betterway Press
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The psychological advice contained within these Web pages
is approved by Dr. Joan Henry
These Web pages provide sensible advice on healthy diets, nutrition, and weight loss. However, no advice given here is intended as a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor when deciding to make significant dietary or lifestyle changes.
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