What surfing and intuitive eating have in common

“Just feel the waves”

WTF?!

I remember going to Hawaii for the first time. Like all good tourists, I wanted to take a proper surf lesson. I mean, you can’t go to Hawaii and not surf right?! So I got a great instructor and blocked off 4 hours to figure out this pastime that evokes such impassioned followers!

After obsessively trying to master catching the wave and actually standing long enough to ride it in, my instructor announced “you think too much!”

“Stop thinking and try feeling the waves,” he says.

“Yeah, and how exactly am I supposed to do that?!” I think to myself.

For anyone who is in their brain as much as I am, you know how impossible this feels! I had no experience actually sinking into my body for anything. Feeling and listening for the sensations my body was offering was completely foreign to me.

Overthinking though, I was a champ at that!

It’s much the same for folks when we talk about intuitive eating.

If you’ve never listened to your body for hunger/fullness cues, you actually don’t really know how.

Sure, intellectually you get it, but you have no idea how to execute that.

Here’s a good way to start: make an eating plan, AHEAD of time.

This is not a weighing-measuring-calorie counting-write it down afterwards-beat yourself up-plan.

The night before or the morning of, write down what you are going to eat for the day. And ONLY eat that.

This is not a time to “be perfect!” This is a time to be completely realistic! If you regularly grab a tub of ice cream or sleeve of Oreos to nosh on at night, you don’t write a plan that does not include these foods.

Instead, you write a plan that has a tiny bit of improvement. Instead of 12 Oreos, you might start with 8-10.

This also means you don’t eat off-plan. So all those sneaky things that derail you: someone brings in donuts to work, you grab a handful of free candy when you see it, you decide last minute to have margaritas with the girls….you don’t do any of that unless it’s planned for!

Yep, you might have a little mental drama about this at first. But if you stick to it, what you will GAIN will be confidence and self-esteem. You will know that you keep your word to yourself. You will know you have what it takes to change your relationship with food and your body.

And you will know that you can ALWAYS eat/drink ANYTHING you want, you just have to plan for it.

Over time, you will start to notice when you’re actually hungry and when you just want to eat.

Try it out! And when you start realizing how well this works, tell me all about it!