Food, Body, Mind: The Intuitive Eating Health Benefits when All Three Work Together

Many times we find ourselves only thinking that the foods we eat will affect our bodies.

The healthier we eat, the more in shape we’ll be. The more we workout, the better results we’ll see on the outside.

But I want to throw a wrench in this whole thought process about what happens to our body when we start eating healthier.

Because there’s a much bigger piece to all of this, and it’s called intuitive eating.

Intuitive eating health benefits aren’t only for your body, but also for your mind.

And the three: food, body and mind, are all interconnected.

Intuitive Eating Health Benefits: Starting with the Mind

Last week I shared the four mindset shifts you need to make to live a guilt free life.

I want you to think of this entire process: living a healthy lifestyle, as starting with your mind.

What you feed your mind will affect everything else that happens with your body. 

If you feed your mind thoughts like, I’ll never lose the weight. I’ll always be the fat girl. I could never be as skinny as her. I’m just not built for exercise. I don’t have the willpower to stick to my diet.

You’re never going to reach your goals. 

Why? Because your mind believes these things.

Beliefs are just thoughts that have been repeated over and over to the point where we believe them to be true.

Feeding your mind new thoughts, like:

• I am strong, powerful and beautiful.
• I set myself free from all the guilt I carry around the food I chose in the past.
• My health is improving more and more every day, and so is my body.
• Everything I eat heals and nourishes my body, which helps me reach my ideal weight.

Repeat these affirmations to yourself every day, multiple times a day, until they become so ingrained in your mind that they become your new truth. 

If you catch yourself going back to some of those old thoughts, stop yourself and say one of your new affirmations.

Say to yourself, that was my old story. This is my new one.

Intuitive Eating Health Benefits: The Body Begins to Follow

Once your mind has made that 180 shift, your body will start to follow suit.

It will likely resist in the beginning, mainly because your ego is just trying to keep you safe. The ego is the voice in your head that wants to keep you safe. The voice that believes change isn’t good for you.

Your ego knows those old beliefs and will start saying to you, but wait, you believe you can’t lose the weight without a diet. So I’m going to keep you in that place because it’s what we’ve always known.

That’s when those new positive affirmations come in. The ones that change the story for your ego and become your new truth.

But these intuitive eating health benefits require taking action.

You can’t just repeat some of these new affirmations and think everything is going to make an immediate difference in your mind and body.

No, you have to take action by moving your body and eating foods that nourish it.

Intuitive eating is about listening to your body’s cravings, when you’re hungry and when you’re full.

Now, there’s a lot more to this when it comes to intuitive eating but these are the very basics.

Sure, you’re going to have cravings that aren’t always the most nutritious, but the longer you listen to your body, it will start to crave the foods that are nutritious.

Listening to your body isn’t always easy, and can definitely take time, but that’s why you’re making the mind, body, food connection right here.

Intuitive Eating Health Benefits: Connecting All Three

You’ll begin to find that when you connect the mind, body and foods you eat, intuitive eating brings on a whole slew of health benefits.

Things like, less guilt and anxiety around food {mind}. Reaching a healthy body weight for you {body}. Beginning to crave nutritious foods that work well with your body {food}.

The three of them must work together to reach your goals of living a healthy and happy lifestyle.

This is just the beginning though.

If you want to see more intuitive eating health benefits, join Eat for Life Collective

This membership experience not only teaches you how to eat intuitively, but really focuses on the support needed to stop tracking your food and move to intuitive eating. We focus heavily on the mindset shifts behind intuitive eating, because like I said, the mind is where it all starts.