Intuitive eating is all the rage. Eat when you’re hungry. Don’t eat when you’re not hungry. It makes sense. On paper. In reality, however, intuitive eating is best reserved for the blind, deaf, and anosmic. Because the romanticized notion of “listening to your body” is just that: a romanticized notion. (It means you can’t smell [...]
Intuitive eating is all the rage.
Eat when you're hungry.
Don't eat when you're not hungry.
It makes sense. On paper. In reality, however, intuitive eating is best reserved for the blind, deaf, and anosmic. Because the romanticized notion of “listening to your body” is just that: a romanticized notion.
(It means you can't smell anything. Anosmic. You used deductive reasoning to come to the same conclusion, but you weren't 100% sure. Now you are.)
Boobs and butts.
I'm strolling through the mall. My mind is empty. Buddha would be obligated to give me a bro fist. Dozens of people walk past me. None of them meet my mind. They are shadows. Until…
She turns the bend. She's walking towards me. She should be a shadow, like the rest of them. But she isn't. She's Tiger Uppercutting my brain.
She's wearing yoga pants. My Kryptonite. (How original.) She's wearing a sports bra that's two sizes too tight. I know this because her chin is cuddling her cleavage. There's more about her that catches my eye, but I write fiction like Kanye tweets philosophy.
She walks past me. Gone. Out of my life. Forever. (Physically.) This is good; I'm married. But the trajectory of my brain is forever changed. This is bad; I'm married.
I walk through Macy's.
Boobs and butts.
Enter the parking lot.
Boobs and butts.
Open the car door.
Boobs and butts.
Stop at the red light.
Boobs and butts.
Pull in the driveway.
Boobs and butts.
Begin writing an article about intuitive eating.
Boobs and butts.
External input, internal feelings.
I didn't intend on thinking about boobs and butts for the rest of the day. My obsession internal feelings were triggered by an external stimulus. Know what else is sensitive to external stimuli?
Hunger.
You're sitting in your cubicle. You have an empty mind. (Who does work at work?) But then you hear Fat Joe murdering organic matter with his molars. Sniff. Sniff. Notes of nacho cheese Doritos wisp into your nostrils.
Hmmmm, I'm kinda hungry right now. I could go for a snack. Some chips sound good. Lemme stroll over to the vending machine. See what's available.
And this is the first problem with intuitive eating: how do you know if your hunger (or satiety) is a genuine internal physiological feeling and not some bottle-rocket reflex to an external stimulus? How can you trust hunger and satiety when they're easily influenced by external factors?
I know the rebuttal.
External factors are powerful, which is why you CAN'T trust your internal feelings! Intuitive eating isn't about blindly listening to hunger (or satiety)! You have to learn how to distinguish between [real hunger/satiety] and [fake hunger/satiety]!
Interesting proposition.
Sounds good.
It also sounds like something the vast majority of people have proven unable to do since forever. But I'll concede. I'll assume you can distinguish between what's real and what's fake.
What's next?
Needing food, wanting food.
After smelling Doritos, you smack your consciousness awake and, by some miracle, you come to the “right” conclusion. You aren't hungry. You realize you just had a bottle-rocket reflex to an external input.
Hmmmm, come to think of it, I am kinda hungry right now. I could go for a snack. Some chips sound good. Lemme stroll over to the… WAIT. Am I really hungry? You know what? I don't think I am.
You're becoming “one” with yourself.
Queue the confetti!
Or maybe not.
Does the story really end there? The next sentence crafted by your conscious will probably go a little something like: “I don't need those chips… but I WANT them.”
And how to you handle THAT mess? Do you use willpower? I want them, but I don't need them, therefore I will not eat them.
Ha.
Willpower is less reliable than T-Mobile.
Good luck with that.
Recognizing a lack of need isn't the same as wanting something and resisting temptation. Perhaps I'm naive, but I'm gonna say: most people know they don't NEED what they eat, but they eat it anyways because they can't stop themselves.
Willpower and thinking.
This is an aside, given the introduction of willpower. Going from non-intuitive eating to intuitive eating means you'll have to constantly entertain the idea of being hungry. You'll have to repeatedly ask yourself, “Am I hungry?”
Humans don't do well with uncertainty. You resist the chips at 10:00AM. When 10:15AM rolls around you ask, “Am I hungry now?” When 10:30AM rolls around you ask, “What about now?”
This is a vicious loop that'll only INCREASE your hunger. It's the pink elephant paradox. All you have to do is not think about a pink elephant for 15 seconds. Let me know how that goes. It's like deciding to stop masturbating, yet, at the same time, installing a computer program that forces a porn pop-up every ten minutes.
It's torture.
(Iconic willpower research was performed by a psychologist named Walter Mischel: the Stanford marshmallow experiment. I'll spare you the details. Here's what's important: one of the better ways to “increase willpower” is with distraction. Constantly checking in with yourself to judge your hunger is the opposite.)
Nonconscious intuition, conscious desires.
Knowing the difference between NEED and WANT doesn't insulate a specific outcome, which isn't the end of the world. Because, sometimes, there's a difference between nonconscious intuition and conscious desires.
Intuition doesn't always deserve to be put on a pedestal.
I'm biologically bias to enjoy Yoga-Pants Killer-Cleavage chick, according to current evolutionary theory. This bias is a byproduct of wanting to pass down my genes, but passing down my genes wasn't my conscious intention. I didn't look at Yoga-Pants Killer-Cleavage chick and say, “Exercise your sorcery on my semen and squirt out my spawn.”
This was the LAST thing on my mind. (Did I mention I'm married to someone that isn't this woman?) There was a mismatch between my nonconscious intuition and conscious desires.
Pipsqueaks that eat like birds might HAVE to ignore their satiety if they want to eat enough to build muscle. And maybe, just maybe, the rotund folks that eat tons of food might HAVE to ignore their hunger if they want to lose fat.
There's nothing “intuitive” about losing fat, gaining muscle, and building a remarkable body your former classmates will be inclined to stalk on Facebook. If anything, most everyone ignoring their hunger and satiety levels ARE following their intuition. Because, according to current evolutionary biology theory, humans are biased towards stockpiling energy when it's available.
In previous generations, food rations were finite. If you didn't chow down when food was available, you died.
Stevie Wonder building cribs.
It's easy to fall for a romanticized idea of how things should be, or a nostalgic idea of how things used to be. But I prefer to eat reality. And the reality swimming in my spoon is best understood by rephrasing the strategic aspect of intuitive eating.
First, grab someone with minimal awareness. Someone that's NOT in tune with their internal feelings of hunger and satiety. Second, give this person permission to make a decision based on how they interpret their internal feelings of hunger and satiety.
I'd rather let Stevie Wonder build my newborn's crib.
The majority of people are better off sticking to a plan, which — I know — isn't the sexy answer. Intuitive eating is seductive, just like the idea of “listening to your body” (which I shat on here). The chasm between your conscious-self and nonconscious-self large.
If you REALLY wanted to eat intuitively, I suppose you could redefine your relationship with food. Or you can just sack up and realize that 99% of civilized life is NOT doing what you want to do, deep down. (And simultaneously feeling ashamed when you do.)
May the Gains be with you,
Ant
ps
“But it's possible to eat intuitively! You just have to learn! Look at the Okinawans! They have a word — hara hachi bu — that means: eating until you’re just 80 percent full!”
“Hara hachi bu” looks like three words to me, you dummy. But that's besides the point. Sort of. Maybe not. In some sense, hara hachi bu is the point.
Hara hachi bu isn't intuitive. It's learned. Their culture has a word to describe the proper feeling of satiety. Know what my culture has? An admiration for the person that can shove the most wet hot dog buns down his or her throat on our day of independence.
Eating intuitively (when you're used to eating unintuitively) is like a smoker trying to stop smoking. It's the obvious thing to do, but there's nothing easy about controlling and understanding your urges and impulses.
Perhaps the steep climb would be easier to face, if it were worth it. But, unlike smoking, where quitting has immense benefits, intuitive eating might actually be the exact opposite of what you need.