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A review by jessby
Just Eat It: How intuitive eating can help you get your shit together around food by Laura Thomas
5.0
This book essentially calls out dieting as a load of BS. Dieting does not work - if it did we'd all be lean, ripped, instaworthy, whatever. Dieting does far more harm than good, eroding our self-worth and perpetuating the cycle of hunger, misery and then shame when we "slip up". When the diet fails, as they inevitably do, we blame ourselves for not being strong enough to adhere to a ridiculous set of external rules that were written by people that are often either unqualified or have no idea of our energy needs.
So what's the alternative to dieting? Eating intuitively. Trusting that your body can make it's own decisions about what and how much to eat. I imagine that's not easy to do if you have struggled with food and your relationship with your body for as long as you can remember. But Thomas argues that once you get rid of the food rules and restriction mentality, you will naturally gravitate towards foods that will promote your health and and make you feel good, as opposed to the extremes of starving or overfull. She talks a lot of about honouring your hunger and eating for a feeling of comfortable fullness. We eat not just for physical hunger, but for emotional reasons too (happy, sad and everything in between) and that is OK as long as you are mindful of this (we're only human afterall) and it's not your only coping mechanism. If you aren't constantly counting calories, macros, carbs etc you will have a lot more time and energy to direct towards more important issues!
I feel fortunate to have a good relationship with my body. I enjoy a wide variety of food, usually without over-analysing it and I exercise in ways that I enjoy. However I have not always felt like this and diet culture is certainly all around me. I 100% believe that society over-emphasizes physical appearance and neglects that health is far more than a number on the scales.
So what's the alternative to dieting? Eating intuitively. Trusting that your body can make it's own decisions about what and how much to eat. I imagine that's not easy to do if you have struggled with food and your relationship with your body for as long as you can remember. But Thomas argues that once you get rid of the food rules and restriction mentality, you will naturally gravitate towards foods that will promote your health and and make you feel good, as opposed to the extremes of starving or overfull. She talks a lot of about honouring your hunger and eating for a feeling of comfortable fullness. We eat not just for physical hunger, but for emotional reasons too (happy, sad and everything in between) and that is OK as long as you are mindful of this (we're only human afterall) and it's not your only coping mechanism. If you aren't constantly counting calories, macros, carbs etc you will have a lot more time and energy to direct towards more important issues!
I feel fortunate to have a good relationship with my body. I enjoy a wide variety of food, usually without over-analysing it and I exercise in ways that I enjoy. However I have not always felt like this and diet culture is certainly all around me. I 100% believe that society over-emphasizes physical appearance and neglects that health is far more than a number on the scales.