The second principle of Intuitive Eating is Honoring Your Hunger. Which means responding when your body tells you that you are hungry by feeding yourself adequate energy and nutrients. But what if you don’t know when you’re hungry? Not being able to sense when your body is hungry is more common than you may think. Our ability to be in tune with our bodies physical sensations is disrupted by distractions, thoughts, rules, beliefs, and lack of self-care. I discussed letting go of food rules, and diet culture thoughts and beliefs in these previous blog posts; The foundation of Intuitive Eating & Rejecting the Diet Mentality. Today I want to discuss the importance of self-care in your Intuitive Eating journey and life in general!
When you are stressed your fight or flight system is activated. God designed this system to help us survive in the face of danger; like being chased by a bear danger. This system reroutes your blood flow away from your digestive system out to your extremities to enable you to fight or run from the danger your facing. This results in the absence of hunger cues. In today’s world, we might not be coming face to face with a large animal that is capable of devouring us but we are faced with many stressors that produce the same response. These stressors are more constant and can leave us in a state of chronic stress with the chronic inability to sense our hunger. Preventing and managing this stress through self-care is key to getting back in tune with your hunger cues.
Self-care is anything one might do for the sake of their own health, it is a daily process of attending to your basic physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, and environmental needs. This will look a bit differently for everyone but generally, this includes things such as:
- Getting enough sleep to feel rested when you wake
- Getting regular medical check-ups, and following through with care
- Taking time off when sick and for vacation
- Regularly engaging in physical activity
- Honoring your health with gentle nutrition
- Spending time in the Word, in prayer, in relationship with the Lord
- Creating habits of seeking God, of surrendering your dreams and anxieties to Him, and accepting His healing, forgiving, restoring, and transforming Grace.
- Making time for self-reflection, journaling, and, therapy when needed
- Making time for hobbies, fun, relaxation, and laughter
- Spending time with people who support you, staying in contact with important people in your life, knowing you have someone to listen when you need to talk
- Maintaining a manageable work or school schedule, taking breaks, saying no to extra projects if your schedule is full
- Setting limits with friends, family, and volunteer projects
- Speaking up when others attempt to cross your boundaries
- Striving for balance among work, family, school, play, relationships, and rest.
We often break the promises of self-care we make to ourselves because we make these promises in our own names, relying on our own strength, on our own terms, and for our own personal benefit. What do you think would happen if we approached self-care by asking the Holy Spirit to show us what we personally can do to take better care of ourselves in order to be most able to care for others? Then we can make our promises of self-care in Jesus name, relying on His strength, on His terms, for His glory. The result of these promises of self-care will be a cup full of joy and love that is ready to be humbly and intentionally poured out for others.
It can feel very Christian to take better care of ourselves or to improve ourselves and it’s true that we are to be good stewards of our bodies and seek growth. But you have to be honest with yourself about your intentions for self-care, self-improvement, and self-growth. Yes, we want to practice self-care in order to achieve better attunement with our bodies so we can regain our ability to eat intuitively but that is not the end goal. The end goal is to get our lives back from diet culture, put food and body image in its rightful place and get refocused on our true purpose which is loving God and loving people through the gifts talents and abilities He has blessed us with.
What do you actively do to manage stress and make sure your basic needs are met?
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