Gentle Nutrition: Am I Ready?

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Last updated on April 3rd, 2024 at 08:55 pm

What is gentle nutrition?  How can you practice honoring your body’s physical and emotional desire for food and “eating healthy” at the same time? 

This can really be tricky for those of us who have been immersed in the jaws of diet culture (aka everyone in western society).

Getting ready to practice gentle nutrition will involve: 

• Strong awareness of hunger and fullness cues 
• Learning to honor and respect your body
• A good understanding of food neutrality (no food is morally or nutritionally superior)

It also will likely involve grieving the thin ideal and digging ourselves out of diet culture before we get started.

Let’s dig into the basics of what gentle nutrition is, what to do before we start practicing nutrition in intuitive eating, and how to successfully implement a healthy nutrition strategy while honoring our body’s desires. 

What Is Gentle Nutrition? 

Gentle nutrition is when you focus on putting food in your body that tastes good and satisfies your physical and emotional needs. 

Gentle nutrition: 

• Has no good foods and bad foods
• Doesn’t follow food rules
• Honors the foods that make the body feel good
• Validates all types of hunger
• Has no off-limits foods
• Does not restrict macronutrients
• Is not focused on portion sizes 
• Doesn’t fixate on food labels 
• Does Not Calorie Count
• Is not focused on weight loss 

In the intuitive eating journey, we are taught to work through 9 stages prior to starting to focus on the nutrition piece of food. 

It is critical that you don’t skip right to the nutrition piece of intuitive eating.  If we do this, we will likely enter into the process with unintentional restrictions and are likely to develop new food rules. 

Stages Of Intuitive Eating

Each stage of intuitive eating offers its own value and wisdom.  Here we will walk through the main takeaways from each stage. 

Answer these questions for each step of the process in intuitive eating. If you find you’re doing most of these, you’re probably in a good place to start gentle nutrition. 

Reject The Diet Mentality 

• Have I unfollowed diet-y social accounts that make me feel bad about my body and food?
• Have I tossed out weight-focused and healthism magazines?
• Do I refuse to participate in diet and weight talk? 
• Have I let go of my fear of weight gain

Honor Your Hunger

• Have I connected that dieting = starving and that food rules = restriction? 
• Do I nourish my body adequately at all times, even if it goes against diet culture rules? 
• Am I eating when I feel physically or emotionally hungry? 
• Have I broken up with a ritualistic meal and snack schedule?

Make Peace With Food

• Have I made a truce to stop fighting the desire for any and all foods? 
• Do I allow myself unconditional permission to eat 
• Do I keep a stocked pantry with all the food types I enjoy? 

Challenge The Food Police

• Do I scream “no” when my inner critic starts using terms like “good, bad, healthy, and unhealthy” foods?
• Do I emotionally dismiss internal and eternal diet talk?
• Can I easily identify my inner critic as messages from diet culture that don’t belong to me?

Discover The Satisfaction Principle 

• Am I getting pleasure from eating? 
• Can I slow down to enjoy my food?
• Do I stop to notice the taste, texture, aroma, and feelings I get with food? 
• Do I go for the foods that I want when I want them? 

Feel Your Fullness

• Do I listen to the signals from my body that say “i’m not hungry anymore?” or “i’m still hungry after eating“
• Do I acknowledge that different levels of fullness exist and explore where my body feels the most comfortable?
• Am I checking in before and after meals to ask myself how my body feels? 

Cope With Your Emotions With Kindness

• Am I treating all feelings as equally valid (sadness, grief, fear, happiness)? 
• Do I accept that food won’t fix the hard feelings that I have, and practice many types of coping skills? 
• Am I accepting any negative thoughts I have about food as “just thoughts” and exploring the origins outside of the food that might have prompted the thought? 

Respect Your Body 

• Do I accept my genetic blueprint? In other words- i’m not striving for weight loss or body changes through what I eat? 
• Am I rejecting diet culture ideas of thin being superior and healthier? 
• Do I honor my body, even if I don’t love every part of it? 
• Do I reject the popular “I hate my body” status quo?
• Do I celebrate non-scale victories?

Feel The Difference In Movement

• Do I dismiss militant exercise (harder and faster = better)?
• Am I moving because I enjoy it and not to change my appearance? 
• Would I be doing the exercise I do if it was guaranteed nothing cosmetic would change on my body? 

7 Ways To Practice Gentle Nutrition 

Get Enough Fuel, And Be Mindful When You Get Too Much

Your body innately knows when it’s time to start and stop eating. By the time you are experiencing extreme hunger, you will also likely go past your fullness threshold.

Instead, try:

• Use an intuitive eating hunger scale to map out your hunger/fullness cues
• Notice if you’ve gone past your fullness threshold and gently observe how it makes your body feel
• Practice letting your body sit at different levels of fullness throughout the day to see which one feels best

Choose Foods To Make The Body Feel Good 

We need to normalize foods that we may have developed an aversion to because we may have forced ourselves to eat them in the name of being “healthy” or dieting.  

Gentle nutrition recognizes that our overall mood and energy levels involve eating enough, how we feel about food, and the variety of foods we eat. This might include eating foods you enjoy, even when you’re not physically hungry.

These Might Include Foods like 

• Whole grains
• Fruits
• Veggies
• Lean meats
• Beans
• Lentils 
• Fatty fish

You may need to reintroduce these “healthy foods” into your life with our newfound intuitive eating perspective. These food types have a ton of vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids our body needs to have energy, reduce inflammation, and have healthy digestion. 

Going for more savory, fried, or sugary foods more frequently may be more common in the beginning of intuitive eating because they were traditionally “off-limits”

However, now it is time to create a new relationship with formerly deemed “healthy” foods that you might have avoided in feeling forced to eat them. This will allow you to truly enjoy ALL foods in intuitive eating. 

Try Eating New Foods 

Truly disliking a food and choosing not to have it in intuitive eating is much different than simply not having experience with certain foods.  You might dismiss a food a “dislike” when really we just haven’t given it a chance.

Our taste buds are changing constantly.  If you aren’t exposing yourself to new foods regularly, you can’t truly know if you would want to intuitively eat them. Just like a little kid, we sometimes need to train our pallet to accept a new food we might later come to LOVE! 

To truly intuitively eat in gentle nutrition remember: 

• It can take as many as 15 tries to like a new food 
• We might dismiss tasty food as being disliked food simply because it was forced on us at a younger age (think veggies, salads etc. that were hallmarked as “good foods’).  Give these foods a second chance!
• Exposing ourselves to new foods may require some food chaining where we combine a familiar food we like with a new one. Especially if you’re a very picky eater.

Check In With Your Emotions, And Tend To Them Gently 

What language comes up in your head when you’re eating a food you were taught your whole life was unhealthy?  Do you find yourself continuing to mentally restrict even though you are physically eating the food?

• Acknowledge negative thoughts and write them down
• Most thoughts from diet culture and food shamers don’t have language, put language to the thoughts
• Putting language to thoughts gives us the power to accept or dismiss them

As these emotions come up, try to simply acknowledge them and reflect on your past experiences that may have prompted the thought.  Just because a thought exists doesn’t mean it’s a fact. 

Keep a Stocked Pantry/Fridge

It’s difficult to intuitively eat when we don’t have a variety of foods accessible. 

Is your house stocked with all the foods you enjoy? 

• Keep a running grocery list
• Have the freezer and spices stocked
• Keep canned fruits/veggies, lentils, and meats
• Keep your favorite treats in the pantry and freezer

Keep A Schedule, But Don’t Get Rigid 

Your body likes a bit of routine when it comes to when you eat.  However, this shouldn’t be rigid! 

• Get in three meals and three snacks minimum. a day
• Start and stop eating at roughly the same time each day
• Don’t go more than about 4 hours between eating

If you’re “holding off until a certain time” it might be best to revisit steps 1-9 of intuitive eating. 

Choose A Variety of Foods 

It’s okay to try putting foods on the plate you might not be immediately motivated to go for.  Things like fruits, veggies, and whole grains might not feel as enticing initially because we may have a negative history with these foods.

Give it a try and if you’re not feeling it, go for something else! 

Your food decisions can be influenced by many factors including: 

• How quick it is to get the food on the plate
• Food Availability in the home
• Food combinations we have available 
• Access to the food (do I have to go get it)

In other words, sometimes it takes a little bit of pre-planning to even give ourselves the opportunity to want the food.

Benefits of Improving Nutrition In Intuitive Eating 

Getting in a variety of foods can help us to: 

• Have more energy
• Keep metabolism running smoothly 
• Helps with blood sugar management for those with diabetes
• Keeps your heart healthy 
• Get in adequate vitamins and minerals 

In gentle nutrition, all foods fit including fruits, veggies, whole grains, and lean meats. 

The principles of intuitive eating were brought to us by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.