If you’ve been around the diet block at least once, you’ll have probably come to the conclusion that each person’s nutritional needs for weight loss differ quite a bit. However, there are many, many universal eating habits and wisdom that you can employ to lose weight (and, yes, even keep it off).
The trouble with conventional and unconventional diet advice alike is sifting through the argument and opinions to find the gold nugs of truth.
Laura-Lee Bowers – Nutritionist and Researcher
Ideal Body Nature: Nutrition is a course I put together that builds a foundation of constructive diet & weight loss strategies and shows you how to implement them with wellness trends scientifically proven to make you feel good and be effective long-term. IBN: Nutrition shows you how to eat according to your personal Ideal Body Nature. So you can finally, truly, eat what you want and lose weight.
How Ideal Body Nature: Nutrition differs from Intuitive Eating
It’s true, Ideal Body Nature: Nutrition helps you to listen to your body, attunes you with your satiety cues, and the course aligns with all the food you truly want to eat. The difference is: IBN: Nutrition aligns your health and body goals with the principles of eating intuitively.
Can I just use Intuitive Eating for Weight Loss?
Firstly, I’d like to point out that Intuitive Eating was never meant to be a weight loss technique. In fact, the creators of intuitive eating would be rolling in their graves hearing the their technique was being used by the weight loss industry except that they are very much alive, well and healthy. Intuitive eating has taken on a life of its own, and the weight loss industry has appropriated it, regardless of the creators’ arguments to the contrary.
In defence of the misinterpretation, the first edition of the Intuitive Eating book was subtitled: “a revolutionary approach that works“. It’s a diet book. Feel free to interpret a diet “that works” as you will. In the description on the sales page it also claims IE “encourages natural weight loss”.
The book has back peddled pretty ferociously, but is still pretty transparent, as it’s now subtitled “an anti-diet approach“. I think the underlying message being capitalized on is still clear: the “approach” is “to lose weight” (however much it is opaquely argued that IE is not, and never was, intended for weight loss). What else could they build an avant garde “approach” to — setting “diets” aside — besides losing weight?
I think there are a few reasons Intuitive Eating champions have back peddled on using IE for weight loss:
- Intuitive Eating is an effective therapy for eating disorders. People suffering with ED cannot, and should not, have any focus on losing weight and run the risk of turning IE into yet another unhealthy and restrictive diet. Incorporating weight loss in anyway would not be healthy for those individuals.
- Intuitive eating doesn’t actually work for weight loss.
- Intuitive eating champions are still very internally conflicted about the battle between toxic diet culture and genuinely wanting to lose weight, so they unconsciously straddle both worlds (without realizing there is a healthier approach that bridges the gap and ends the war).
What does the science say about Intuitive Eating and Weight Loss?
The research suggests there’s more evidence for weight loss associated with mindful eating than intuitive eating alone. Mindful eating is absolutely proven to aid weight loss in a healthy and sustainable way.
As mindful eating is used by essentially all intuitive eating guidelines, it’s pretty difficult to analyze the efficacy of IE on its own merits (if IE could even be separated from mindful eating at all). However, a review of research showed that Intuitive Eating:
- helps participants develop a healthier relationship with food resulting in improvements in blood pressure, lipids, and cardiorespiratory fitness — even in the absence of weight loss.
- has positive psychological benefits including decreased depression and anxiety, increased self-esteem, and improved body image. (Psychology Today)
If you are struggling primarily with a poor relationship to food, and a really poor body image that is enough to cause depression and anxiety — an intuitive/mindful eating approach is the one for you.
If you want to eat in a better way to fuel your body, be in control of your nutrition, understand your energy needs, lose weight and be healthier — intuitive/mindful eating are powerful tools in an arsenal that, when used with the science of energy and nutrition, can set you, your body and your meal time free. You need Ideal Body Nature: Nutrition.
Do I have to Count Calories to Lose Weight?
Short answer: Yes. This is, as much as I hate to admit it, the only way to lose fat. I love eating more than most people I know, I’m simply comfortable eating 4000 calories a day (!), the idea of cutting calories was horrific to me and I bucked it until I went on a prescription that made me gain weight.
When staring down the barrel of a physical (BODiSET) problem with weight gain, I needed a straight forward physical (BODiSET) approach to losing the fat. This is, and always has been, calorie counting.
The good news is, if cutting calories is necessary for you to lose weight, it doesn’t have to feel restrictive and you can still eat what you love (with a little guidance from your Ideal Body Nature).
Long answer: No. You can decrease calorie consumption and increase calorie expenditure a myriad of ways. You don’t necessarily need a calculator at all. I teach MINDSET, HEARTSET and SOULSET approaches to weight loss that help people HEAL, GROW and STRENGTHEN all of the Personal Powers necessary to live in your Ideal Body.
This is one reason why some people actually lose weight via intuitive eating, and it’s certainly why many have positive mental, emotional and spiritual benefits from it. It can, indirectly, with the right teacher and a willing student, heal, grow and even strengthen some of the Personal Powers I teach.
I teach all of these principles, including intuitive eating, directly to my students at UpRoots Wellness. They learn which principles work for them by trying every one that works according to my research.
One of the most direct ways to lose weight, and definitely a must for people who want a straightforward, physical, path to weight loss, is to count calories — Ideal Body Nature: Nutrition style! (Healthline)
(Please keep reading to prevent damage and weight gain from calorie cutting. My methods are precise and wellness-based. Not all calorie-cutting is.)
Won’t Cutting Calories Slow my Metabolism?
Good question, friend! This is a concern. Research has found that certain kinds of calorie cutting have detrimental effects. Including:
- increased appetite
- decreased satiety
- slower (“more efficient”) metabolism
National Institute of Health researcher Kevin Hall pioneered the findings that calorie restrictions can seriously hinder a person’s weight loss success by following contestants on the Biggest Loser for years after the show. Almost all regained almost all, if not more, of the weight they initially lost.
Since then, scientists have dug deeper into this phenomena and have found a few distinctions between people who suffer this terrible outcome of calorie restriction and those who are obviously able to manage their weight effectively by counting calories.
3 Ways your Metabolism can Slow due to Weight Loss & Dieting
1. If you go on a crash diet (like the Biggest Loser participants) you could end up sending your metabolism into hibernation/starvation mode.
If your body thinks there is not enough food around and you are starving, it’s going to try to help by getting very efficient at its energy requirements (ie. your resting metabolic rate drops due to high efficiency). This could even harm your metabolism long-term! (PubMed)
2. If you don’t have enough calories/fat-stores/strength training, your body may use muscle mass for energy which in turn lowers your metabolism.
We all know that muscle mass burns a lot of energy and supports a strong metabolic rate. This is one way that lifting weights has become a trend in fat loss.
3. When your body gets smaller, your metabolism naturally slows down to support your smaller frame.
Contrary to popular belief, larger people have faster metabolisms than leaner people. It takes more energy to run a bigger body and more effort to exercise or even move around.
In order to cut calories – healthily – and drop pounds you must:
- Not cut too many! Most people need at least 1500 calories per day for their daily requirements and that goes up based on activity level. Studies show that dipping below 1400 calories can have a negative impact on metabolism long-term.
- Do resistance training. One of the major ways metabolism drops with calorie restriction is by your body eating your muscles for fuel. Ew. Working your muscles helps retain and grow them. Win!
- Eat protein. This gives your muscles the macronutrient they need and keeps you full and satisfied longer. It also speeds up your metabolism more than carbs or fats to give you an edge macaroni can’t buy.
- Get adequate rest. Not even Zzz’s slows your metabolic rate and makes you more hungry. Plus, no one likes a grouch.
- Skip sugar. Sugar is shown to increase hunger, and slow down metabolism longterm. Go for high quality carbs instead, like fruit, and get some nutrients with your cals. (Healthline)
The Science of Health, Weight Loss & Longevity: Conclusion
There is a war going on between mental/emotional/spiritual health and physical wellness. The science of losing weight seems so confusing and topsy turvy because it seems that we have to choose sides in the mental-emotional wellness vs. physical health saga.
This is simply not true.
Health, wellness, weight loss and longevity can be, and already are, aligned with what makes you happy (even if that’s a donut or 13). Your best body really is simpler and less antagonistic than either side of this war will allow.
Laura-Lee, IBN: Nutrition
Eating fewer calories is actually the greatest indicator of longevity and vibrance in later life! It’s coined by scientists as “the fountain of youth”. The trouble is, we can’t seem to figure out a way to do it healthily. (Harvard Health) That’s what I teach.
Ideal Body Nature: Nutrition is the missing link to eating for joy, to loving food for weight loss, to nutrition for health and vitality for life. It teaches you the seemingly impossible: how to eat what you love and actually lose weight.
Ideal Body Nature: Nutrition is part of the Ideal Body Composition: Comprehensive which teaches all of the Personal Powers needed to live aligned with your Ideal Body Nature.
If you want to learn how to eat intuitively, for weight loss, according to your Ideal Body Nature, you can enrol in the course right here.
