Episode 67: The One About: Honoring your health with gentle nutrition
“Intuitive eating doesn’t say you don’t have to ‘eat healthy’. It’s saying you have the opportunity to define what ‘healthy eating’ looks like for you.” - Rachael Hartley, RD
In this week’s episode, Hannah and Ali talk all things Intuitive Eating Principle #10: Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition. Hannah and Ali are joined by nutrition therapist and Registered Dietitian Rachael Hartley. Rachael is a nationally-recognized food and nutrition expert who is passionate about helping others rediscover the joy of eating and foster a healthier relationship with food. Rachael is author of Gentle Nutrition: A Non-Diet Approach to Healthy Eating, which explores the role of nutrition in intuitive eating, so she was the perfect guest to answer all your listener questions about gentle nutrition:
Why isn’t it important to eat healthy if it could contribute to reducing morbidity later on?
As practitioners, how do we help patients both have freedom with food and make choices that they like and are satisfying, while also stabilizing their blood sugars?
Is it possible to be an intuitive eater and manage a chronic illness at the same time?
Do I have to eat fast food or “unhealthy” foods to be an intuitive eater?
Is it possible to eat intuitively and just prefer eating healthy foods?
We live in a world in which diet culture implies that food and fitness are the only two things that will make or break your health and while they may play a role, in reality, it is a very minimal role compared to environmental factors, socio economic status, genetic predisposition and many other things that just aren’t behaviors that can be controlled. The research is clear that increasing pleasure, joy, food freedom, and widening the definition of what we consider health while incorporating the ten guiding principles of Intuitive Eating has been proven to improve physical, mental and emotional health sustainably- sounds pretty great right?! Hannah, Ali and Rachael are here in this final episode of the Intuitive Eating series to help guide the listeners to focus on the power of adding food in for health and wellness vs. excluding foods for fear while remembering that health is so much more than the food we eat or the choices we make.