Around here, we hate to talk about diets. Feed the Soul is of the school that diets shouldn’t be restrictive and temporary. They should be about moderation and should be sustainable for a lifetime. Otherwise, they’re pointless. That’s why Intuitive Eating is one of the healthy living strategies we encourage clients to try.

What is Intuitive Eating?

Basically, intuitive eating is the practice of paying close attention to your body’s hunger signals and giving it what it needs. According to the Intuitive Eating website:

Intuitive eating is an approach that teaches you how to create a healthy relationship with your food, mind, and body–where you ultimately become the expert of your own body. You learn how  to distinguish between physical and emotional feelings, and gain a sense of body wisdom. It’s also a process of making peace with food—so that you no longer have constant “food worry” thoughts. It’s knowing that your health and your worth as a person does not change because you ate a so-called “bad” or “fattening” food.

For more information, you can check out the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating or read Intuitive Eating, by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA.

What are the benefits?

Intuitive eating allows you to break the cycle of yo-yo dieting, silence the food judges (in your head and in your life), and teach you new ways to approach food and eating. Practiced regularly, it can improve your relationship with food, allow you to ditch your food scales and calorie counters, and still help you to lose weight.

Unlike diets, intuitive eating focuses on connecting with your body and its signals. It takes time to learn to trust what your body is telling you, but eventually, with practice, you can learn to eat when you’re physically hungry and stop when you’re satisfied. Intuitive eating can help you separate emotional eating from eating for physical nourishment.

How can you eat more intuitively?

Learning to eat intuitively will take time and conscious effort, but it will be worth it. To practice eating intuitively, try some of these basic strategies:

• Before eating anything, check in with your body and ask yourself if you are really hungry.
• Use a hunger scale (try this one from MIT) to gauge how hungry you really are before and after you eat.
• Eat mindfully. Put your food on a plate and sit at a table. Look at your food and pay attention to its colors, texture and smell. Chew slowly and really taste each bite.

If you really want to try eating intuitively or learn more about the process, pick up the Intuitive Eating book. Remember, it will take time to overcome your current eating mindset and habits, but learning to eat intuitively will mean saying good-bye to diets. Forever.

"Eat well. Live well. Be well."

It’s time to answer another question in our Ask Your RD series. Thanks to our Twitter friend @KitchenParade, we’ve got another great question. @KitchenParade’s question references the Glycemic Index, so before we get to the answer, let’s start with some background information for those who aren’t familiar with the Glycemic Index (GI).

What is the Glycemic Index?

The Glycemic Index rates foods based on how they affect a person’s blood sugar levels. Foods are rated as High (70 or above), Medium (56 to 69) or Low (55 or below) on the index. The lower a food’s GI rating, the less fluctuation in blood sugar and insulin levels it causes.

What are the benefits of eating according to the Glycemic Index?

Some studies have shown that eating a diet that includes mostly low-GI foods and limits high GI foods as well as foods high in saturated fat can decrease the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and possibly even heart disease. The basic tenets of GI-based diets (eat more whole grains, high-fiber fruits and vegetables and limit sweet treats, refined grains and high-fat foods) are good healthy living guidelines, whether your aware of the GI value of your foods or not.

And now for the question:

Do steel-cut oats have a lower glycemic impact than old-fashioned rolled oats?

It turns out that the GI rating for steel-cut oats and old-fashioned rolled oats is very similar. Both types of oats fall into the Low to Low-Medium range (about 45-59) on the Glycemic Index, depending on the brand and how they’re prepared. So no matter which type of oats you choose to eat, they’ll probably have a very similar affect on your blood sugar and insulin levels.

"Eat well. Live well. Be well."

You keep hearing about high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). One day you read a report that says it’s linked to weight gain and obesity, and the next there’s one that says it’s no worse than regular sugar. The truth is, no matter what the research says, HFCS should be treated like what it is.

What is HFCS then?

As it’s name suggests, HFCS a sweetener made from corn. Because it is much cheaper to produce than cane sugar, it is extremely common and is used in almost all of the processed foods available today. In fact, HFCS is so common that it’s in foods that you might not even suspect, like salad dressings, breads, processed meats and fast food.

But what’s the big deal?

Sugar is sugar, whether it’s table sugar you put in your coffee or the HFCS in the cereal you eat for breakfast. But because HFCS is often “hiding” in foods you might not suspect, you may be eating more sugar than you think. Whether it’s HFCS or another form of sugar, limiting your sugar intake should be your goal if you want to live a healthy life. And added sugar, no matter where it comes from, can mean added calories–which can mean added pounds in the long run.

So what should you do?

To decrease you HFCS and overall sugar consumption, try to center your diet around natural, whole foods and limit the processed and packaged foods you eat. If you do choose processed or packaged foods, look for products that have fewer total grams of sugar. Read nutrition labels. Check the ingredients for HFCS and note how early it appears in the list. The higher on the list it appears, the more of it is in the product.

Knowing what foods have HFCS in them is important in helping you figure out where your sugar intake is coming from, an positive step toward maintaining or losing weight. And watching HFCS intake is especially important for people who are at risk for or already diagnosed with diabetes, because just like any other sugar, HFCS can seriously impact blood sugar levels.

While HFCS isn’t an evil ingredient, you shoud do your best to be aware of what foods contain it and limit how much of those foods you eat. Just like everything else, moderation is key.

"Eat well. Live well. Be well."