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You are here: Home / Health & Wellness / Diet Culture and Mental Health: How Intuitive Eating can improve your Mental Health

Diet Culture and Mental Health: How Intuitive Eating can improve your Mental Health

September 20, 2021 by Northstar Guest Author

Contributed by: Lisah Sutton-Williams, LCSW LMFT, CYT-200, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor

Have you ever found yourself concerned with the newest diet (wellness/ lifestyle) craze, wanting to lose X-lbs or found yourself constantly obsessing about the food you eat and what your body looks like? You are not alone. Most of society have fallen victims to diet culture and the messages they send, which can lead to distorted views of ourselves, disordered eating, and poor mental health.

Diet culture is everywhere. It is a belief system that values thinness, food restriction, weight loss, and excessive exercise, and tries to promote these behaviors under the guise of ‘health’. It constantly tells us something is wrong with us. But is any of this healthy for us? Imagine being a child and being told by numerous adults that the way you look is wrong and what you do is never good enough. Can you see the possible negative impacts this could have on you, your self esteem, and your overall mental health? This is what diet culture does and continues to do to so many of us.

Most things normalized by diet culture, are in fact, very disordered. This includes eliminating entire food groups (not due to allergies or intolerance), only eating at certain times, no matter your hunger cues, having ‘cheat meals’, which are basically planned binges, and the list goes on. Diagnosed eating disorders impact over 30 million Americans, not to mention those that have disordered eating patterns that do not meet diagnostic criteria. These eating disorders have the highest mental health mortality rate, whose behaviors continue to be perpetuated by diet culture. This can also lead to internalized shame around food and food anxieties.  Again, how is this ‘healthy’ for us?

The good news is, you don’t have to remain a participant in diet culture! There is another way! Intuitive Eating is way to help break you from the hold of diet culture and the ideas that you are not enough. Intuitive Eating is an anti-diet, self compassion framework with 10 core principles that help improve your relationship with food. Here are the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating as described by the creators Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

  1. Reject the Diet Mentality
  2. Honor Your Hunger
  3. Make Peace with Food
  4. Challenge the Food Police
  5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
  6. Feel Your Fullness
  7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
  8. Respect Your Body
  9. Movement- Feel the Difference
  10. Honor Your Health – Gentle Nutrition

Despite recent increased popularity, Intuitive Eating has been around for over 25 years. Intuitive Eating can help increase your internal cues to listen to your body and give it what it needs, instead of relying on diet culture to tell you what you should eat, how much you should eat, when to eat, and how to move. Intuitive Eating has over 125 studies, many of which show psychological benefits. Recently studies have shown a link between intuitive eating and improved mental health outcomes, reduction in binging and restricting behaviors, decreases in anxiety and depression symptoms, and improved body satisfaction/ appreciation.

Here are some tips to help you ditch diet culture and improve your mental health.

5 Tips to start your Intuitive Eating/ Food Freedom Journey

  1. Read Intuitive Eating, 4th edition – This book walks you through this history of diet culture and some of the research that shows that diets don’t work. It also addresses the 10 principles of intuitive eating to help you find food freedom from diet culture and promote more compassion toward yourself. Intuitive Eating Books
  2. Listen to an Intuitive Eating podcast – There are so many Intuitive Eating podcast options. But be careful, this language has been co-opted by diet culture and promotes things that are not actually intuitive eating. One of my favorites is the Ten Percent Happier Podcast with guest Evelyn Tribole, one of the founders of Intuitive Eating. Food Psych with Christy Harrison is another great podcast to check out, where she interviews guests about diet culture, its impacts on them, and how their lives have changes since finding food freedom.
  3. Join a Support Group – Since diet culture is everywhere, it can be really hard to do this journey alone. Being bombarded with these messages when you are on a path to recovery can also impact your mental health and have you questioning your decisions. In a group environment you are able to talk about the challenges, see that you are not alone, and get the support you need.
  4. Talk to a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor – Certified Intuitive Eating counselors can come from a range of backgrounds and have gone through specific training with the creators of Intuitive Eating to help grow their knowledge and skills. If you are looking to further address the ways diet culture has impacted your overall life and mental health, you may want to seek out a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor that is also a licensed mental health processional. They will have the background and knowledge to support you through this process and identify how it may impact your overall mental health, as well as address the many nuances of this practice. Find a Certified Counselor
  5. Diversify Your Social Media Feed – We are what we are constantly exposed to. If your feed is full of diet culture images, before and after photos, only certain types of bodies, races, and genders…change it up. The more we see different images of others, the more accepting we may become of them and ourselves. If there are constant images in your feed that make you feel bad about yourself for existing in your body, those may not be the things that are helping improve your mental health.

Remember, this is just a starting point. Freeing yourself from diet culture and improving your overall mental health is a process and not a straight path. The nuances are plentiful, but with support, you can make your way through it. Be compassionate with yourself on this journey.  You deserve to heal your relationship with food.

If you are interested in letting go of diet culture, finding food freedom, and improving your mental health, contact me for intensive individual work through my website Intentional Connections Counseling

OR join my Intuitive Eating group that provides education, healing and community support. This 9-week course starts October 11, 2021 Visit Intuitive Eating of the Bluegrass For more information

Follow Lisah on Instagram- @intentional_connections

Lisah Sutton-Williams is a LCSW, LMFT, and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, who has been a clinician for over 14 years. Lisah is the founder of Intentional Connections Counseling, LLC in Crestwood, KY, where she specializes in anxiety, life transitions, trauma, and disordered eating. Lisah is also a Certified EMDR therapist. Lisah strives to help clients create a more balanced relationship with food, mind, and body and walks with them on their journey toward healing.

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Filed Under: Health & Wellness, mental health, Nutrition, Uncategorized Tagged With: health & wellness, intuitive eating

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