Intuitive eating, or eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are full, is popular. But does it work, or is it yet another diet hype?
It sounds so simple: you eat when you’re hungry, and when you’re full, you don’t eat anything. However struggle many people with their weight. The number of overweight people is increasing. Over the past forty years, the number of overweight people has tripled, Statistics Netherlands has calculated. And this rising trend continues. It’s no wonder that many people try all kinds of diets to get that number on the scale down, so they can feel healthy and wear their favorite outfits again.
Dietitian Femke van Liere (44) from dietitian practice Fit For Foodies regularly sees them in her practice: people who are significantly overweight and have become despondent because of the many diets they have followed. The kilos came back just as quickly, because the strict diet rules cannot be maintained for a lifetime. In fact, diets often only lead to more weight gain.
Diet is a temporary measure
“Following a diet is often a temporary measure that does not change your relationship with eating behavior,” she explains. “While that is necessary in the long term.” Van Liere has been working as a dietician for 22 years. For years the focus was on strict diets, counting calories and regular weighing. She saw that this did not work, because clients still fell back into their old habits.
“That is why I have started to develop more and more in eating patterns and behavior. People are too fixated on their weight and eating rules about what they should not eat. For example, I recently saw a woman who denied herself everything and was depressed after she stepped on the scale.”
Intuitive eating
It is Van Liere’s belief that most diets only work in the short term. That’s why she is an advocate of intuitive eating. This does not mean that you can eat whatever you like, such as fries, ice cream and chocolate, and just throw all dietary rules overboard, but rather that you follow your feelings and your mind. “Intuitive eating actually means that you dare to let go of all the diets and beliefs that you have learned over the course of your life. You then think less in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ products, but you strive for a healthy basis. You use both your mind and your feelings.”
She explains how this works in practice. “If you have an urge to eat, try to feel whether it is physical hunger, or whether it comes from a certain feeling, such as boredom or restlessness. You choose at that moment whether or not you want to eat something.” She gives an example from her practice. “I recently had a client who wanted to eat an ice cream on a terrace with her father who has dementia. That created such a beautiful connection. But according to her old beliefs, she was not allowed ice cream. But in this case it added something to the situation.”
