Intentional Eating (Choice) vs. Intuitive Eating (Goblin Mode)
If your brain is messed up by years of processed food, is your food intuition working? No.
HI. This is Tim from Time2Thrive, a newsletter that helps people find simple ways to get healthier, eat with intention, and take care of their bodies.
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This Week’s Topic: Intentional Eating vs. Intuitive Eating
Let’s consider the idea of Intentional Eating.
This isn’t to be confused with Intuitive Eating, a practice whereby your body tells you what it wants, and you eat as much of it as “feels” right.
I wrote a bit previously about how intuitive eating doesn’t work for me because my body’s intuition is broken through years of self-abuse and dieting. You can read that one here:
Intuitive Eating, for me, means going goblin mode.
Goblin Mode: a type of behavior that is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, greedy, and messy.
My body has no idea what’s good for it since I broke its brain with binge eating and dieting.
If I try to follow my intuition while eating, I just end up going Goblin Mode, and that leads down a long dark tunnel where everything sucks. I’ll start gobblin’ every tasty treat that I crave, and I pound massive amounts of empty carbs from every fast food joint in reach, followed by some candy bars, because why not? My body LOVES that stuff! Going full goblin mode embraces the dark side.
Intuition tells me that pizzas taste good and that bread is my friend. Then the old gluten intolerance will kick my butt all over the countryside. But I won’t be able to put down the pizza and bread. I’ll be hooked again. I can stuff a lot in my gob!
But.
Instead.
I can use the mind and spirit to help the body along. This is where Intentional Eating comes in.
Ok, So What is Intentional Eating?
This is not a diet. Diets are about restriction and going without, about suffering.
This is consciously choosing the foods that meet your goals for health, happiness, and growth. Meanwhile, avoid the foods that don’t support your happiness, health, and goals.
It sounds simple, right? But we all know it isn’t simple at all. Like most worthwhile things, learning how to do this will take time, and you might need help.
I learned to do this with the help of a coach or two. And it wasn’t a straight line to the finish, I detoured back into goblin mode a few times. My journey is still not complete and never will be. That is what living intentionally is all about.
Intentional Eating:
80% of the time - Find foods that make you happy AND healthy.
100% of the time - Be grateful for the food, the abundance of options, and the power to choose.
20% of the time - allow yourself to indulge, enjoy what others are eating at gatherings, and have your special rewards. When you choose to.
Think about where food came from, who profits, and their motivations.
Avoid mindlessly stopping to grab random packaged food when you barely even register what you’re doing. The displays of ultra-processed snacks at stores are a trap set out by cruel, unusual corporations in order to take your money and suck your will to live.
The first step is to take an honest look at where you’re at. Is what you put on your plate now making you happy? (Hint: if there is guilt involved, you aren’t happy. If there is fear or shame about your food choices, that isn’t happy.)
For example, if eating animal products makes you unhappy, then eating intentionally means avoiding those.
If sneaking off to eat a bunch of junk food makes you guilty and ashamed, you need to find a way to get out of the sin bin for your own well-being. For example, goblin mode feels good to me while I’m in it. But afterwards, I’m filled with shame and guilt, and I bury the evidence in the bottom of the garbage can.
Next, does your diet keep you healthy? If you are pre-diabetic or diabetic, have rashes, indigestion, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, heartburn, or suffer from many other modern ailments, there is a good chance that your diet is to blame. When I say a good chance, I mean a 99% chance.
Once you’ve been honest with yourself, consider making a few gentle changes.
You know what foods are healthier: veggies, fruit, and minimally processed animal products. These are things you prepare at home from fresh ingredients. They didn’t come out of a box or vacuum-sealed package. They weren’t violated by a huge factory.
We all instinctively understand that mincing everything in a giant machine, adding all sorts of chemicals and modified ingredients engineered by food scientists to hijack the pleasure centers of your brain, and then squeezing the resulting beige glop out of a tube is not how to cook a healthy meal. But that is the best way for a giant corporation to milk you for all of your money, and that’s what you find in most of the center aisles at the supermarket.
For best results, we need to reduce this manufactured Frankenfood to 20% (or less!) of what we eat. Some of us need to cut it down almost to zero.
Note: Fast food should be under 20%, not a daily goblin mode choice!
Add In More of What Feeds Your Soul
Blueberries.
My soul craves blueberries.
My body wants candy bars, but if I give it blueberries, it forgets about candy for a while.
What foods feed your soul? This will be different than what your body is craving.
My body sometimes craves a double quarter pounder, large fries, a large Coke, and a ten-pack of “chicken” nuggets. But this DOES NOT feed my soul.
Ask yourself, what food feeds your soul? Get some of that once in a while. Maybe it’s a fruit or a specific dish. If you tell me Cheetos, Doritos, or Oreos feed your soul, we both know you’re a lying goblin.
Avoid foods that hurt your soul, such as kale, or, as I like to call it, green sadness.
Be Grateful for Your Food
People used to pray before eating.
Before that, the hunter/ gatherers thanked the forest and the animals for their contribution.
Gratitude has many positive effects. Feeling thankful can improve your sleep, decrease depression, help with anxiety, and make you feel good. But it’s also a chance for awareness. Take a moment to be aware of what you’re doing and to act intentionally.
Waiter: Enjoy your food.
Me: You too.
Waiter: Thanks, I will!
(Awkward silence)
We should dive on any chance to be grateful that we can. Dive on them like a cat on a laser dot. Dive like starving soldier on a food-grenade.
There have been so many times throughout human history that people starved to death. Instead of eating, parents saved all of their food for their children. Sailors lost all of their teeth to scurvy. Entire groups of people suffered with nothing to eat. There are still places where food is hard to come by.
And today, everyone reading this has tons of food available.
Smile, be glad, and enjoy.
Think about where the food came from—the farm, location, or industry that brought you this food, the tree or plant that grew it.
Think of the sun as the source of all plant energy and plant energy as the source of all food.
Think of how everything is connected, one giant web of sun-plants-animals-us
Pondering these things will feed your soul NO MATTER WHAT you eat.
Chose Who You Support with Your Dollars
By changing what we bring home from the store and what we pick up at the fast food joints, we are voting. We are making a difference.
Buying organic produce means money going to organic farms.
Buying locally from farmers means successful local farmers.
Buying artisan and craft food means more people can make a living doing what they love, like baking sourdough. The local butcher who sources from sustainable organic farms needs your business to compete with the big store.
Growing a few veggies in the backyard means eating something you watched grow, saving a few bucks, and helping you find that gratitude for the cycle of life.
There’s no need to change anything overnight.
Think about it, though?
Excellent post. My favorite parts were this: "80% of the time - Find foods that make you happy AND healthy." And this: "20% of the time - allow yourself to indulge, enjoy what others are eating at gatherings, and have your special rewards." I don't like doing anything to an extreme. That 20% takes a lot of pressure off. Thanks for that.
This is great.
I have said this for years- if you go to intuitive eat and you’ve only eaten pop tarts and chicken nuggets your whole life, your body will crave “pop tarts” when it needs glucose and “chicken nuggets” when it needs protein. And that’s it.
I think intentional eating can be a gateway for intuitive eating. I’m a 100% intuitive eater and I don’t struggle at all with my weight. But I did struggle with it for about 25 years. When it became intentional that led to intuitive. Adding versus subtract. To crave new foods you have to introduce them. And eat them a lot. For years. YEARS.
An aside-
There’s so much cultural programming that people don’t even hear this stuff.