Food Justice & Community Question
You may be asking, what about folks who can’t afford to eat what and when their bodies tell them? How does intuitive eating help them?
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased food insecurity among families with children and in communities of color where hunger rates were already higher pre-pandemic. Donating money or our time to organizations that feed food-insecure people not only fights systemic inequities, it may be our best elixir this holiday season.
According to the research at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, giving to others also benefits the giver in many ways.
Giving decreases stress and increases happiness
It promotes social connection
Giving evokes feelings of gratitude
Giving is contagious! Your one small act may inspire many others to give
Next time you give, be sure to notice how it makes you feel.
Where to Start?
Feeding America, the largest hunger relief organization in the US, received 4/4 stars on Charity Navigator and provides tools to find food banks in your area.
Community Question
Over Thanksgiving I was wondering, can restricting my food intake and exercising more be intuitive if I've been eating a lot?
After eating rich foods and more food than feels comfortable, our fullness signals may cue us to wait longer to eat again and to eat foods that are easier to digest at our next meal. By practicing the principles of intuitive eating, we can learn to distinguish our bodies’ biological cues from diet culture’s messages to restrict or to exercise to a point of suffering.
The voice of compensatory behavior is punishing whereas your intuitive eating voice curiously asks, how can we take care of you right now?
Dieting and diet culture wouldn’t make sense if we simply accepted that people come in all different sizes.
Virgie Tovar
