HOW I DO IT Intuitive Eating

Unlearning diet rules helped me find peace with food.

- STEPHANIE DOLGOFF

There are a zillion reasons humans eat beyond capacity: We're bored, tired, distracted, or starved for kindness, to name just a few. Or maybe we think leaving food is wasteful, or we were once food-insecure and eat too much instinctively. Plus, if you've ever dieted to lose weight, you know that restricting particular foods makes it really hard not to overeat on the rebound.

As for me, I had a serious eating disorder in my teens and early 20s. With therapy and practice, I figured out healthier ways of managing my emotions than bingeing, purging, and obsessively dieting. My weight has been stable and midrange for decades.

Still, until I began eating intuitively a few years ago, food was always a thing I had to be careful with, the way some folks must be vigilant around alcohol. I didn't diet explicitly to lose weight, but in the back of my mind I still judged what I ate as "good" and "bad," which I told myself was about health. On some level, though, it was also secretly about not gaining weight. And stress still made me eat compulsively.

SHAME, SHAME, GO AWAY

After eating what I believed was too much, I'd feel a shower of self-loathing at losing control and a stab of panic about potentially gaining weight-followed by a familiar resolve to do better. While I wasn't as extreme as when I was younger, I'd often step up my exercise and avoidance of foods I thought might trigger a binge, which led to feeling deprived.

I was sick of it! I was in my early 50s, a mom of two kids whom I'd taught to value and love their bodies, and I was stuck in this mindset. I picked up a copy of Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach by dietitians Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole.

WHAT IS INTUITIVE EATING?