Discover the satisfaction factor
Welcome to part six of this ten part series, breaking down each principle of INTUITIVE EATING, a non-diet and weight-neutral approach to health. If you missed the introduction about what Intuitive Eating is and the deeper dive into the first principle, read this post first. You can also read the last principle of IE eating here.
Principle #6: Discover The Satisfaction Factor.
You got it! You are allowed to enjoy, yes truly enjoy, food just for the pleasure derived from eating. This can feel like a foreign thought if you have spent a lifetime dieting, or have rigid rules about what foods are good or bad. If food was simply consumed for fuel then all we would need everyday are super smoothies, or boiled chicken and some veggies. How does that sound? Horrible right?! Because eating is also about deriving pleasure from the physical sensations of the food as well as from the mental/emotional satisfaction of eating it. There is a place for food to be consumed for energy but it is also important to simply just enjoy food. This is something that took me awhile to understand.
Have you ever gone out to eat and ordered the salad when you really wanted the pasta? Have you ever finished off a plate even tho you were not truly enjoying the food, like stale pastries? Have you ever kept eating even tho you were full because it was “cheat meal” time? If you can relate to any of those, you may be missing out on the most important part of intuitive eating - food satisfaction and pleasure.
If you’ve been dieting or following a bunch of food rules for a while, the idea of deriving any pleasure from food can feel scary. You might believe that “good” foods are the blander, less tasty foods, while “bad” foods are the more flavorful delicious ones. Therefore you associate pleasure from eating as “bad” because you could only get pleasure from “bad” foods. You may have thoughts like:
“If I have one delicious pastry, I won’t be able to stop!”
“If I eat foods I enjoy I’ll gain weight
“If I let myself eat this dessert, I’m doing something sinful and will have to make up for it” by working out more or skipping my next meal
If this is you, ask yourself, how often has these restrictions worked? How often have you been craving creamy ice cream but bought the soy ice cream because it has less calories and were left feeling unsatisfied and still craving the creamy ice cream? Or you really want toast and peanut butter but reach for the rice cake instead only to find that you ate the rice cake and then also the toast because you were still craving it.
What often happens if you deny getting pleasure from foods, you might eat until you feel full, but you’ll be left feeling unsatisfied and thinking even more about food. The all thought consuming food day! Or you ate to the point of being uncomfortable because you were trying to satisfy the craving, when in reality if you allowed yourself to eat what you craved you would have stopped when you felt comfortably full and no longer finding yourself consumed with food thoughts.
Diet culture can instill fear about food cravings and guilt about eating “bad” foods, which leads to more disconnect between our mind and body and therefore distrust in our bodies and the way we eat. Moreover, you may feel like you don’t trust yourself around foods that you crave because you haven’t been practicing the other principles of intuitive eating, such as honoring your hunger, giving yourself unconditional permission to eat, and challenging the food police (diet culture thoughts) Learning to find satisfaction in food often includes working on those principles also. If you associate donuts as being “bad” you won’t be able to truly enjoy them because guilt will be attached to eating it.
Wherever you find yourself on the intuitive eating journey you can benefit from practicing the following.
Four steps that Tribole and Resch (2012) outline:
Discover The Pleasure Of The Plate: This step invites you to experiment with all the different sensory experiences you can enjoy, figuring out what you actually like to eat. When you eat or are thinking of eating soon, you can ask yourself these questions: What taste do I feel like (sweet, salty, sour, bitter)? What texture of food do I feel like (crunchy, soft, chunky, chewy)? What smells good to you? What looks good to you (colours, or designs)? What temperature do you feel like (hot, cold, neutral)? Do you feel like something lighter or heartier, or in between? There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. The answers will be individual to you and can change meal to meal and day to day. For example, if it’s cold outside, you may feel like a hearty beef stew instead of a cold raw salad. Moreover, your satisfaction factor can even change during a meal. Maybe you thought you really wanted the popcorn, but then halfway through the bag it gets stale and you’re just not really enjoying eating it anymore. That’s a situation where you can stop and throw it away because you’re not deriving anymore pleasure from eating it, for example. It may seem wasteful to think like this, but if you end up throwing away a bit of food and feel more satisfied about doing that, then eating something that doesn’t taste good and possibly overeat and feel uncomfortably full after, intuitive eating would say this is OK to do. The more you can tune-into what you actually want, most of the time, and tune into your hunger and fullness cues, the better you’ll get at gauging portion sizes and how much you need to eat to feel satisfied and content.
Make Your Eating Experience More Enjoyable: If you’re under stress, you are less likely derive any pleasure from eating it. So creating a relaxing and enjoyable environment when eating can help increase the satisfaction factor. Here are some suggestions on how to do that:
Slow down and take some time to eat, at least 15 minutes if you can.
Sit down at a table instead of standing up, driving, or moving around.
Take a few deep breaths before eating to help you unwind.
Chew your food enough so that it goes down easier.
Notice the taste of the food when it’s in your mouth. And check in with yourself if you’re actually enjoying it or not.
Eat when you’re moderately hungry, not ravenous or already full. You’ll get the most satisfaction then.
Try to eat in a calm, relaxed state.
Keep a variety of foods you actually like in your home or at work. This goes against the idea of “out of sight, out of mind”, but actually by keeping foods you know you like around, you’re creating safety and trust within yourself that you can have these foods whenever you’d like. Buy veggies you like as well as ice cream you like. If you like chicken but prefer thighs to breasts, then get the thighs. If you prefer butter to margarine, get butter. Often, just swapping out “diet” foods for the ones you’d prefer is a first step in getting more satisfaction with eating.
Don’t Settle: Maybe you thought you wanted that muffin at Starbucks and were excited to eat it and then after a few bites realized it was stale and not as good as you had anticipated. So you don’t have to settle for it. Don’t feel you have to finish it if you’re not getting the satisfaction you wanted from it.
Check In: Does It Still Taste Good?: When you’re eating a food you really like, check-in halfway and ask yourself, does this still taste good to me? Do I want more? Or am I satisfied? It’s a well known phenomenon that the more you eat a specific food, the less you’ll enjoy eating it. For example, the first few bites of cake are usually more enjoyable and tastier than the last few bites. This doesn’t mean you have to throw away the cake, it’s just an exercise in becoming more aware of how much and when do you actually enjoy your food, and then giving you the choice to act on that information however you want.
When practicing Discover The Satisfaction Factor, sometimes people believe that they have to savor every bite of food that they eat and always eat in a mindful, un-distracted way. This is not the case. There are no “always” or “never” in Intuitive Eating. It might not always be practical to eat foods you enjoy all the time. Maybe you’re at a work function and have to just eat whatever is served. But even in those cases, you can still practice this principle by choosing the food that looks the most appealing to you, even if it’s not exactly what you wanted in that moment.
We also have to plan, like making a grocery list. It is not always feasible to go out before a meal and buy the ingredients for the dish we are craving. Sometimes we eat leftovers or grab a protein bar on the go. Not everything we eat will bring total satisfaction. That’s life.
The suggestions in this post are tools to:
1) give you permission to start eating foods you actually like, and
2) to help you discover what foods you like and enjoy and how to start incorporating them more into your life.
The more you will learn what these foods are, the easier it will be to plan what you want at the store or to order the meal that will leave you satisfied and not feeling deprived.
Up next- The seventh principle of Intuitive Eating: Cope With your Emotions Without Using Food
