Tina's Arena

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Welcome back to another episode of Tina Arena. I hope you enjoyed last week's episode, and if you didn't listen to it, I encourage you to do so. I talked about how I feel like I'm in a funk right now and the six steps that I'm taking to get out of the funk.

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One of the steps was to eat mindfully as much as possible, and I think that's really important. And I feel like I am in a different time of my life now versus when I first encountered emotional eating and binge eating and disordered eating. Back in my twenties, I am a complete different person now, so now I have all of these different tools to deal with this.

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I walk through the six ways that I'm dealing with my funk and my excess eating right now in the last episode, so I encourage you to listen to that one. Go back and check it out if you haven't already. In this episode, I want to talk about intuitive eating and what that means to me and how I'm using all of the knowledge that I've gained over the past decade or more in order to come out of this healthier and better.

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There are ten rules when it comes to intuitive eating that was published by... I'm going to mess up their names. Tribole? Tribole. Tribole? and Resch in 2012. And they are called the Ten Principles of Intuitive Eating. And I'm just going to go through them with you quickly. If you've never read them before. And then I'm going to talk about what intuitive eating is for me.

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And it's going to be basically my own version of these rules. So the ten principles of intuitive eating. Number one, reject the diet mentality. This involves becoming aware of diet, culture and learning to dismiss and or challenge associated thought processes. Diet mentality is huge. What is diet mentality? The fact that you need to be skinny. The fact that you have to look like a model.

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The fact that you are only supposed to eat less than 2000 calories a day. Diet mentality is celebrating stick thin bodies. Okay, I'm passionate about this. Number two, honor your hunger. This involves learning to listen and respect biological hunger cues incredibly incredibly important. Number three, make peace with food. This involves giving oneself unconditional permission to eat all foods without fear or guilt.

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Number four, challenge the food police. This involves learning to dismiss dieting rules and develop a more neutral food or neutral approach to food. That means no good foods and no bad foods in your mind. Number five, feel your fullness. This involves listening to one's body signals, communicating fullness, and finding comfortable satiety.

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Number six Discover the satisfaction factor.

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This involves finding pleasure in food, being guided by one's personal tastes and learning how to eat mindfully. Number seven Cope with your emotions without using food. Self-explanatory. Number eight Respect your body. This stage encourages one to accept one's body and treat it with respect and kindness. Number nine, exercise and feel the difference. Feel how good you feel when you exercise.

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And number ten, honor your health. This stage involves making choices that honor your health in a balanced and consistent way that makes one feel good. So those are the ten principles of intuitive eating, and that's just a super basic rundown

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You can purchase the book intuitive eating by Tribole and Resch.

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However you say their names. And this is an entire book explaining these ten rules. But I'm going to give you the quick lowdown on the rules that are important to me. Basically, they're all important, but I'm going to say it in my own way. Okay. This is Tina’s Arena. This is my show. So reject the diet mentality. This is so important.

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I can't even describe, like reject all of these ideas that people are imposing on you. What do you want to do? What do you want to look like? How do you want to feel? Do that.

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I have tried so many different diets in the past, so many different styles of eating. I went Carnivore. I never tried vegan because I knew I would not succeed at vegan like 100% in my soul.

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Knew that vegan would not work for me because I tried to go dairy free and it was just awful. I love dairy... and all of these rules that people make up for you. Like, why do I need to listen to them? I feel fine, you know. maybe I could be better mentally. Maybe I'm a little bit unstable.

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I don't know. But I am. My body is functioning fine. So if I want to eat dairy and it's working for me, then I'm going to eat dairy. Remember to honor your hunger. I don't really want to read through these ten rules exactly as they are, but number two and number five, feel your fullness. Number six, discover or satisfaction factor.

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They all mean the same thing to me. Respect your body. Listen to your body and honor your body. It's so it's so important to understand your body and how your body reacts and how your body feels. I spent the better part of my life, probably until the time that I started to heal my dis eating disorder. I spent the better part of my life ignoring my body, unaware of any body signals, and just completely oblivious to how my body actually felt.

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I never paid attention to any hunger signals. I was always eating because I always had food on my mind or I was always starving because I was trying to eat as little as possible. And then when I did eat, it kind of happened that I would binge because my brain was mentally starved and I felt like my body was starved.

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So I would overeat and then I would eat past fullness and ignore all of my body's fullness signals too. So I taught my body to ignore my starvation signals and ignore my false signals and basically ignore all of the signals that were coming out of my stomach. So when I started healing, I didn't know what it felt like to be full.

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I only knew what it felt like to have an overextended stomach that was so full and so stretched out that it like hurt to stand up straight. That was my fullness. And if I wasn't there, then I wasn't happy and I had to keep eating until I got to the overextended part.

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when I started healing again, I had to relearn how to listen to body signals.

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it's such a quiet signal when your body tells you that you're for it is a tiny little whisper. It's so easy for me to ignore. I think that probably varies among other people. I think when other when other people feel full then, you know, those people that are full and they're like, I absolutely could not take another bite like.

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GROSS And they're turned off by food. I don't really ever get there. I can always almost always fit another bite in.

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so basically, I am so used to overriding my hunger signals that I really had to slow down and I really, really had to start learning how to pay attention in order to feel when my body was actually full.

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And it is the tiniest whisper. And it is it usually occurs after eating like this small amount of food where like I would eat like a bowl of something and it would be handfuls size and I would start feeling fall and mentally because I'm so used to overeating and I was so used to eating so much food, such a huge volume of food, I would eat this tiny little ball and my body would start telling me that I'm full and I'm like, There's no way.

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There's absolutely no way that we're So right now after this tiny handful of food for a fall. So I would keep eating, but I'd eat less and I would just keep paying attention like, actually, maybe we are full.

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And so I stop eating. And I don't know if this is helpful banter for anyone, but basically it if you're like me and you taught yourself how to ignore all of your body signals, you need to go back.

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You need to take a couple steps back and you need to relearn those that are important. You need those.

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you need to go back and you need to relearn those body signals and how you do that is to do everything mindfully and slowly and be present and listen. Because if I wasn't mindful when I was eating after that little handful of food, then I wouldn't have been able to hear my body start to whisper that I was full if I was eating while distracted on my phone on Instagram or TikTok, my brain would be stimulated and I would be paying attention to my brain instead of my stomach.

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So it's really, really, really, really, really important when you're embarking on this journey of intuitive eating to be fully present and to be so in tune with your body. And if you're not, then to start learning. And I promise you, I'm still on this journey of learning and discovering my body because it is a journey, because I spent so long ignoring myself and my needs and my intuition.

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Now I have to take a step back and really learn all of that and I feel like that is a lot of what intuitive eating is for me. And I guess the ten principles of intuitive eating kind of kind of break it down into easy, accessible steps so that it's easier to understand. But that is basically the whole of it is just pay attention to your body and get so in tune with yourself that you understand what your body is asking for.

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Because if you feel thirsty, then your body is asking for water. If you have a craving for like salty chips, then maybe your body's dehydrated and you need more salt in your body. So you're going to eat some salt and vinegar chips. Pay attention to what your body needs and wants because it will start telling you a lot more than maybe you are used to listening for.

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Another important concept of intuitive eating that I talk about a lot is challenging. The food police is removing any stigma from any food. Not telling yourself that anything is good or bad. Food is not inherently good or inherently bad. Food is food. And it just irks me when people say food is toxic. When people say sugar is toxic.

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If sugar was toxic, you'd be dead by now. Do you know how much sugar we ate when we were kids? Like, come on, it's not toxic. You can eat sugar. I've been eating a lot of sugar lately. Actually, I thought dates had four or five grams of sugar each, each date, like individual date, dry date. And so I've just been eating them as a snack here.

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And there... often actually. And so I've just been eating dates as a snack as my post dinner, little sweet snack, but I've been eating like maybe four or five at a time because they're tiny little, tiny little things. And today, just before this episode, actually, I googled it. How many grams of sugar is in a single date? And it's actually 16 grams of sugar.

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That's a lot. And I was eating five of them, sometimes like ten and a day. That's a lot of sugar. Guess what? I'm not dead and I am fine. Actually, I'm not thriving because I just said in the previous episode that I'm in a funk, but I can tell you that it's probably not related to my date intake.

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So yes, please stop demonizing food. It's not toxic. If it was truly toxic, it wouldn't be allowed. You know, it would be banned. And obviously, there are some foods with gray zones where it might be questionable or maybe we don't know that it's toxic yet. I can give you that. But they're calling milk toxic, calling sugar toxic. It's just unnecessary.

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It's demonizing food and it's making people feel like they don't know what to eat. And people are starting to feel overwhelmed and then they feel like they can't eat anything anymore. We're calling like white bread toxic. We're calling toothpaste toxic. We're calling canola oil toxic. I used to be on the canola oil is toxic chain, but I have since left that bandwagon.

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I don't believe canola oil is toxic anymore. I think let's let's go there. I think people calling canola oil toxic is demonizing food that is assessable to the masses. So we want to make the masses feel shitty about themselves. That's what I think. So that when you are able to avoid canola oil and vegetable oil, that's because you make more money and that's because you can afford to.

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If you can't afford higher quality food, guess what you're eating? Sugar, milk, canola oil, vegetable oil. So I feel like demonizing foods like this is just a way to separate the classes. I said it. All right. Next principle of intuitive eating, one that is also super, super important. Coping. Coping without using food. And this is something that I am currently working on.

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If you listened to my episode last week, right, you should stop saying that. So what am I doing to cope with my emotions without using food? The only thing to really do is to face your emotions head on. It is terrifying. It is uncomfortable, and I don't want to do it. But the more that you fight it and the more that you just cope and the more that you ignore, the more that it lingers and the more that it stews and the more that it brews and gets bigger.

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It's just a fact of life. The more that you ignore something, the bigger a problem it will continue to be until you address it. So let's not just let's not cope. Coping as a temporary measure, okay? Coping is something you do when you're not ready to deal with the emotion, but make sure that you deal with the emotion sooner or later, sooner rather than later.

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So healthy ways that I am coping? I’m journaling. I'm exercising and going for walks. I'm talking with friends and I'm reading books. I guess those are my healthier coping strategies. And in order for me to heal and grow from these shitty feelings and emotions and stuckness feeling, I am journaling and facing these fears head on so that I can hopefully move past them.

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But as anyone on a growth journey knows that once you move past one challenge, you find another one right there. And it's just a continuous cycle that never ends. And it's lovely,

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just lovely. My last principle of intuitive eating, exercise, lifestyle and health. They all go hand in hand with intuitive eating. When you honour your eating or you honour your health, and you can also honour your health by exercising and honoring your body.

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I don't think anybody lives for a long time without exercising.

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exercising moves your blood, gets your circulatory system going, gets your lymphatic system going. And so you're not stagnant. Everything's moving and you start to digest and you start to, you know, just metabolize and process things in the way that you're supposed to.

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The body is living. It's supposed to be moving. The more that you stay stagnant, the more that you will feel stuck and the more that you will stay stuck. As I said in my previous episode, I exercise and I continued exercising throughout the past couple of months during this low period that I'm in and exercise has been the one thing that has kept me afloat and going.

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It's the one thing that gives me life right now.

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if we kind of carry over the principles of intuitive eating to intuitive exercise, that's a new concept. What does your body crave? What brings you joy? What brings you satisfaction in food and exercise? If the food that you eat, does that give you like the mental satisfaction, then you're not going to stop craving food because you need to satisfy.

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You need to be satisfied. And the same thing goes with exercise. If your exercise is not mentally stimulating, then you might not like it and you might not continue to do it. And the most important and the most important part of exercise is the consistency and the frequency at which you exercise. So if you're doing something that you don't like, it might work for you temporarily.

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Maybe you'll learn to love it. Hopefully you'll learn to love it. But if you never do, and if you fall off the boat, then that's not going to work out well. So it is important to find exercise that you love. And I love to suggest dancing because dancing is a high energy activity and it's lovely. You're bonding with people, you're getting a great cardiovascular exercise and you're listening to high energy music that lifts your mood.

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Dancing is the ultimate.

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Second, actually may be even better than dancing. And I don't know. I love them both. I love them both. Is walking. Walking does not really improve your cardiovascular strength unless you have not walked in a long time. But walking is such low impact that you can walk for a long time without taxing your body. So if you find dancing or running or weightlifting to intensive and not something that you can sustain every day, then you don't have to do this every day.

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You can go for a walk every day.

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I feel like people think that walking is too easy, so it's not working. But walking is the best. Walking is the best. Okay,

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So that was my interpretation of what intuitive eating means. Reject diet culture, honor your body, your hunger and your fullness.

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Challenge the food police. No food, morality. Food is not good nor bad. Healthy coping strategies and facing your emotions dead on, respecting your body and exercise.

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I hope that was helpful for you.

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And I hope that this was easy to digest and I hope that you use these principles for the holiday coming up. But these are life time skills. You know, the holidays are approaching every single year. They're going to happen again next year. So throughout the rest of the year, like start start incorporating intuitive eating. Now listen to your body, honor your body and your fullness signals this holiday season.

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If you feel for try to get yourself to stop eating and then after the holidays are done, practice these skills over and over and over and over for the rest of the year. And next year you'll be there. You'll be prepared. And if you need help with this, then I am your person. I know this stuff like the back of my hand and I can help you.

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So my website is Tina's arena dot com and you can send me a message on there. There's a form that you can fill out to become one of my clients. I am accepting clients for the new year, so get your information in and I hope to hear from you soon. See you next week.