How to eat intuitively after a sleeve and improve your relationship with food.

What does your relationship with food look like? 

Answering this question post-surgery might be challenging, where a lot of energy is being focussed on the filtering and disposing of old habits, making sense of the advice and guidance from health professionals and ultimately unlearning behaviours that weren’t supporting you and your lifestyle goals. Over time, through trial and error you will get a sense of what works and what feels easy for you – this is where intuitive eating fits in. Thinking about the foods you like, shopping habits, when you need to tap in to your support network, time management and how to navigate emotional wellbeing and mental healthiness. 

What is intuitive eating?

Intuitive eating has been positively associated with a decrease in BMI after bariatric surgery and recommended as a complementary approach to weight loss surgery in the post-op phase. So what is it?

Eating intuitively is all about restoring a positive and reciprocal relationship between our body, mind and the fuel that keeps us going. Moving away from diets, rules and restrictive eating. The essence of intuitive eating lies in turning off autopilot, and tuning in to your inner signalling system and the accompanying feelings. Ultimately moving away from labelling foods as good/bad or in between, and thinking about what role food plays within the wider wellbeing picture. Intuitive eating is a way to connect the mind, body and food.

The concept was created in 1995 by two American Dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, and it is guided by the following 10 principles:  

1. Reject the diet mind-set – using success markers such as confidence, energy and focus alongside the numbers on the scales to measure your progress.
2. Honour your hunger – and celebrate the complex biological signals at play. This one may take some time, 
3. Make peace with food – depriving yourself of specific foods can often result in overeating, and the development of unhealthy eating patterns. 
4. Challenge the food police – this links to the above, rather than creating a divide of good and bad when it comes to specific foods, and eating habits. Gaining an understanding of what journey the food has gone on – how has it been farmed or grown, and arrived on your plate.
5. Discover the satisfaction factor – eating should be fun and a source of pleasure, especially in a warm and welcoming environment, these factors all contribute to a feeling of fullness and satiety.
6. Feel your fullness – similar to hunger, our bodies are equipped with intricate signaling pathways to let us know we are full. Sometimes this process is delayed, and as you become more attuned with these feelings of satiety, you can better manage the speed and quantity of what you eat. 
7. Cope with your emotions with kindness – emotional eating is a short-term and unsustainable solution to strong emotions. Thinking about other ways of emotional release through coping mechanisms which will have a longer term effect.
8. Respect your body – and accepting the variety and diversity that comes with our unique set of genes. This is important to remember, when making comparisons with other people’s post-surgery stories.
9. Feel the difference with movement – and shifting the intention of the workout. Are you moving to burn calories, or are you moving for that post-exercise energy burst.
10. Honour your health with gentle nutrition – and a slow and steady approach, giving yourself time to digest new information, and implement new behaviours.

The intuitive eating framework is holistic, covering a lot of bases, and you can see some similarities to the post-surgery advice that has been talked about in this blog about the four pillars to success in the long term and this blog about the top 10 reasons for weight regain. 

Where do I begin?

If some of the ideas are new to you, a good starting point for incorporating intuitive eating values is to make time for stillness in your daily routine. Taking a moment to pause and mindfully check in with how your body is feeling in that very moment. Importantly recognising that any feeling is the right feeling – stressed, anxious, overjoyed, pain, ecstatic, silly, hungry, tired, energetic…. This is a very important step in linking actions to feelings, or the external to the internal.

Once you are comfortable with labelling and taking ownership of these feelings, you can then start to create stillness around food, and ask yourself these questions before, during and after meal times: do I feel hungry? what does hunger feel like? what does my body need? am I full? have I overeaten? What have I learnt if I did overeat? 

You can also use the resources below to help you practice getting in touch with your new stomach and eating more intuitively

Great resources if you want to learn more