Our Bloggers Recommend: What is Intuitive Eating?

Do I trust my body? Do I listen to my body? I’m asking myself these questions as I’m listening to “We Can Do Hard Things” this week, when hosts Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach speak with intuitive eating expert Evelyn Tribole. As Glennon, who has been diagnosed with and in treatment for first with bulimia and then anorexia since she was a child, and Abby, who spent most of her adult life as a world-class athlete (well, she is still world-class but no longer playing), share their thoughts and experiences, they keep repeating the need for trust in oneself–and how dangerous it is to not trust yourself and your body to make good choices. Glennon, who grew up evangelical, discusses how she was taught not to trust her body, how being given rules set her up to have a poor relationship with her body and not trust it to send her the signals that she was full.

The Exponent II did a series on being fat and female last fall, and as I listened to this podcast I kept thinking about my own relationship with food and my body (neither is good or intuitive) and how being told I needed to follow certain rules to be “good,” even though most of those rules weren’t related to food, could have affected me without knowing about it. By internalizing the need to trust and obey with question external forces, even if it conflicted with what I individually felt, did I learn not to trust myself?