Our bodies are designed to maintain us at a weight that is perfect for us (although perhaps not perfect by fashion model standards) by telling us when we’re hungry, what we’re hungry for, and when we’ve had enough. But while some people just naturally eat this way, many of us have become desensitized to our body’s signals and need to relearn Intuitive Eating (IE).In the past twenty years, IE has been the subject of many of scientific studies. They’ve found that rejecting diets, being supported to love and accept ourselves as we are and learning to trust our own intuition when it comes to food choices lead to substantial gains in emotional well-being and quality of life. IE also greatly reduces risks for compulsive eating, binge eating and other eating disorders, and it’s been linked to lower weight, lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels independent of weight loss, and increased glycemic control in type 2 diabetes. For those who are re-learning IE, Dr. Steven C. Straus, MD, sugge…

Do you eat to live or live to eat? Neither could be called a healthy relationship with food. Eating to live—using food simply as fuel—takes the joy out of one of life’s great pleasures. On the other hand, giving food too much importance, either by living only for our next meal or obsessing lest we eat too much or eat the wrong things, isn’t a joyful or healthy relationship either.In a healthy relationship, we would look forward to our encounters with food. We would respond appropriately to our hunger cues by supplying ourselves with nourishing and tasty food (in the words of nutrition expert Mark Hyman, MD, “foods we love that love us back”), and we would eat until satisfied and no more. We would trust our body cues to maintain a weight that is perfect for us (although it might not conform to the latest fashion). But according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), almost 10% of our population is struggling with one or more of the thre…