3 Reasons You're Struggling to Eat Intuitively

While the idea of intuitive eating—tapping in to your body's built in wisdom to make food decisions—may sound simple, in practice it can feel difficult without the right tools in place. If you find yourself struggling to eat intuitively, one of these three reasons may be the reason why.

#1 — You Have Too Much Diet Noise in Your Head

We are inundated with information about food, and it can be difficult to eat intuitively when these thoughts are constantly playing in the background. They may be obvious, like thinking a certain food is "bad" or "fattening," or they may be more subtle, like thinking in the back of your mind that intermittent fasting is the only way to lose weight.

But the truth is, there is no one "perfect" way to eat. There are simply foods that feel good in your body, and foods that don't feel good in your body.

If you're not sure which thoughts might be lurking in your brain around food, trying grabbing a journal and writing out any thoughts you have about how or you "should" be eating. It's amazing how one thing we heard someone say or that we read in a magazine can stick with us. It's important to question these thoughts, so we can begin the process of breaking up with them.

#2 — Your Hormones Are Out of Whack

If you feel hungry "all the time" or "hangry" (angry when hungry) or simply feel out of control around food—your hormones may be to blame. If your key hunger and satiety hormones are out of balance, they might be sending you false signals.

Eating too much sugar can cause glucose spikes and crashes, leaving us feeling ravenous—even after we've just eaten. Lack of sleep and stress can also wreak hormone havoc. 

This is exactly why we created the 10 Day Sugar Detox, to help you gently break the cycle of sugar addiction and re-balance these critical hormones.

#3 — You Have Hunger Fear

When we eat out of fear (and not true hunger) it's so much more difficult to know when we're satisfied. This does not mean you need to always be hungry. It simply means you need to tune in to your body's true hunger signals so you can really learn how to satisfy your hunger.

One of the easiest ways to tune in to true hunger is to rule out emotional hunger, which is often driven by fear or anxiety.