Unit 4B:
Normal Eating
    Healthy, balanced eating is generally accepted as an important component of a healthy lifestyle. However, the externally-focused, restrictive methods used by diet programs rarely succeed in helping people to permanently change their eating habits. Perhaps ironically, there is strong evidence that human beings are capable of regulating caloric intake according to internal hunger, satiety and appetite signals, 1,2 and that chronic food restriction such as dieting interferes with this process and actually increases the likelihood of overeating.2,3

    The New Paradigm, Health At Every Size approach refutes the concept of "good" and "bad" foods and discourages the use of externally-focused eating strategies such as calorie and fat-gram counting. Instead, all foods are legalized and the focus is placed on reducing anxiety about eating, calories, fat, etc. and relearning to regulate food intake in response to hunger, appetite and satiety cues.4,5

    Unlike hunger, which is mostly physiological, appetite is primarily a psychological phenomenon that “tells you your body needs variety and your soul needs pleasure” and “moves you to seek out food you enjoy and encourages you to eat a variety of food."6  Satiety involves a complex interaction of physical and psychological factors that is only poorly understood. Together, hunger, appetite and satiety help connect us to our innate wisdom about what we need from food - not just fuel and nutrients for growth and development, but pleasure, connection and fulfillment as well.

In new paradigm approaches, people are taught to listen to and trust their bodily signals as to what, when and how much to eat. As a result of being more aware of internal signals, individuals may or may not decrease their weight. However, normalizing eating is likely to improve people's overall health by reducing the anxiety, guilt, preoccupation with food, bingeing, and weight cycling commonly associated with restricted eating (dieting). Though more scientific confirmation of this hypothesis is needed, initial research is strongly suggestive of this conclusion.7-12

    Many Americans are restraining their food intake in an attempt to conform to society's unrealistic expectations for thinness. As a result, they have lost awareness of their own physical, emotional, and spiritual cues related to hunger, appetite and satiety. When it comes to food the needs of the body, mind and spirit have become distrusted enemies that need to be quelled at all costs. Under the new paradigm, the goal for health care providers is to help people to maintain their internal ability to appropriately regulate food intake and/or to restore this ability when it has been destroyed by chronic dietary restraint (dieting).


Suggestions For Health Professionals Who Want To Help
People To Restore Normal Eating:

  • Increase your professional knowledge base. In addition to this web site, the references below will be helpful: particularly numbers 13-15.
  • Help people understand normal eating
    • Help them reestablish their ability to recognize internal cues for hunger/satiety through self-awareness.
    • Legalize all foods so they can enjoy eating without the intrusion of guilt, fear, or other negative emotions.
    • Ensure that they know that healthy eating is only one part of a larger understanding of health that encompasses the whole of the human experience including body, mind, and spirit.
  • Avoid condemning weight gain (directly or indirectly) and/or praising weight loss.
    • Do not weigh clients unless it is clearly clinically indicated i.e. to assist with determination of hydration status or for calculation of an accurate drug dosage.
    • Focus on other health parameters including feelings of well-being, energy level, blood pressure, serum lipids, insulin resistance, and serum glucose.
  • Discuss the dangers of dieting and provide concrete reasons NOT to diet while offering the alternative of healthy, unrestrained, normal eating.
  • Help parents model and teach healthy, unrestrained eating to their children beginning at birth and help them to restore healthy, unrestrained eating to children of any age as soon as possible.
  • Help clients avoid perpetuation of American society's fear of fat by encouraging:
    • Avoidance of media (like popular magazines) that portray excessive thinness as the desired norm.
    • Increased awareness of personal feelings/perceptions related to body size acceptance.
    • Avoidance of personal promotion of fat discrimination.
References

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© Fall 2001