Enjoyment is Part of Being Healthy
IE #10: Gentle Nutrition • GLP-1 the natural way • delicious and nutritious
Intuitive Eating Principle #10: Gentle Nutrition
Rigid fear-based nutrition with its rules, food plans, and villainization of specific foods eventually takes a toll on a person’s well-being. It’s no fun and usually counter-productive, which the term “yo-yo dieting” hints at with its down-and-up, down-and-up. However, reality is often worse than that, more like down-and-up higher and higher over time1.
Intuitive Eating offers an alternative: gentle nutrition. When you make the connection between your eating decisions and how you want to feel in your body, eating well becomes something you do for you, rather than a set of rules you follow and will likely rebel against sooner or later. The key to building a positive relationship with food and body is to make this shift from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation.
GLP-1 the natural way
Glucagon-like peptide-1 is all the rage in weight loss drugs but did you know that you can increase your body’s natural ability to secrete this hormone by eating well? Indeed! More stuff-that-grows, more fiber, more cooking at home will all get you there.
By eating meals and snacks that stabilize your blood sugar, feed you gut microbiome, and really satisfy, you can stop that deprivation-induced (or guilt-induced) can’t-stop-thinking-about-food experience. Eating can become more enjoyable and time-bound, something you do and then move on to other things in life.
delicious and nutritious
Cooking is so much more enjoyable when you have ingredients on hand and can just start cooking instead of having to go to the store first. Purple cabbage, carrots, limes, jalapeños, corn tortillas, and tofu last quite a while, so if these Tofu Tacos with Spicy Almond Sauce look good, stock up and then someday, get cooking!
Smooth Sailing, Fix Your Food Relationship in 2025!
So this is week 11 of what I’m calling Smooth Sailing, how to fix your food relationship in 2025. I’ll keep posting every Monday. Please subscribe and share. Thank you so much for being here!
Here’s a recap so far, since the beginning of January:
About Love & Cookies, homepage
Week 1: Food Addict? Or Something Else?
Week 3: Sugar “Addiction” and Primal Eating
Week 4: One is Never Enough…because None are Allowed
Week 6: Allow Yourself to Receive
Week 7: Think About Food Less + Enjoy it More
Week 9: Your Natural Healthy Weight
Week 10: Fit-for-You vs. Body Beautiful
Have a great week!
Jacquet P, Schutz Y, Montani JP, Dulloo A. How dieting might make some fatter: modeling weight cycling toward obesity from a perspective of body composition autoregulation. Int J Obes (Lond). 2020 Jun;44(6):1243-1253. doi: 10.1038/s41366-020-0547-1. Epub 2020 Feb 25. PMID: 32099104; PMCID: PMC7260129.