Nourish With Intent: Discover The Satisfaction Factor (Intuitive Eating Week 4)

Good morning, Cadre family. Happy Saturday. I'll give people a couple seconds to jump on, see if anyone's joining me this morning. Today we are moving on to principle four of intuitive eating, which is discovering the satisfaction factor. See if anyone wants to pop in. It is Saturday. It is also small Business Saturday, so if you're doing any sort of holiday shopping or prepping, check out your local small businesses. That's on the docket for me today. Get a couple things knocked off the Christmas shopping list.

All right, I'm gonna go ahead and get started. Like I said, today we are moving on to Principle 4 of Intuitive Principle 4 of Intuitive Eating, which is discover the satisfaction factor. And if you are following along at all, some of these principles moved orders when they, the creators of it updated everything. So you might see this some places as Principle 6. The order really doesn't matter when you're working through this. You don't have to go in any particular order. And this one in particular tends to be more challenging.

So this one oftentimes actually gets put into practice a little bit later on. But discovering the satisfaction factor is oftentimes a missing puzzle piece for people when it comes to intuitive eating. But this principle is essentially shifting away from the mentality that food is just fuel and instead allowing yourself to experience all of the other things that food can do right? Food is connection. Food is culture. Food can be used as a coping tool, which there's another principle later on where we'll keep talking about that, but moving away from just this kind of transactional experience with food and allowing it to have a larger presence in your life.

So what is satisfaction? What do I mean by that? That really is eating what you really want in an environment that is inviting, in a headspace that is neutral or positive. And all of those things combined lead you to likely feeling more satisfied and content with your meal. So what gets in the way of satisfaction for a lot of people when we're thinking about how you landed in intuitive eating? It's diet culture. The rules and the narratives put put on you around food really disconnect you from allowing yourself to have what you truly are wanting to eat.

They instill guilt around the foods that maybe you really do enjoy and want to be eating, but feel like you shouldn't. So diet culture, eating when you're not hungry. So if you think about that hunger fullness scale I've talked about in the past goes from one to ten. One is ravenous, ten is super full, generally speaking, aiming for three to seven, most of the Time when you're kind of oscillating between gentle hunger and pleasant fullness. But if you're eating when you're too full, say you're a six or a seven already and keep eating, you're going to derive a lot less satisfaction and pleasure out of that because of how it feels physically.

And that's a piece of it, too. So eating when you're too full, on the flip side, eating when you're ravenous or when you have that primal hunger that I talked about last week, when you're a one or a two, you are starving, you need anything you can get, you are just going to eat to alleviate that feeling. And it really typically speeds up your eating. You're not really being mindful or present in the moment. And so there's more of that disconnection. And by the time you're done, sometimes you're like, what the heck just happened?

What did I even eat? Eating out of emotion is another one. So I mentioned that briefly. Food can be a coping tool. Should probably not be your only coping tool in your toolbox, but it can be a coping tool at the same time for a lot of people. When food is being used as a coping tool, you're not getting satisfaction out of it because you're using that food to disconnect from what you are feeling and what you are experiencing. So disconnection again, popping up as one of those themes. And then the last one is distraction.

When we are distracted, whether it be, you know, you got kids running around, or you're working midday while eating lunch, watching TV while eating dinner, that distraction breaks up that connection once again. In a study they did breaking up groups into people into two groups. One ate undistracted at a table, the other one played video games while eating. They found that the distracted group ate faster, they ate more, couldn't remember what they ate, reported less fullness, and had larger meals later in the day.

So even though they were eating the same thing, your brain, their brains were not perceiving it as such. So cutting away the distraction as much as we can. I know we live in a world where we're all running around doing things all the time, and having a dedicated meal time as often as you can can have really positive benefits on just your connection to your brain, to your body. Deriving that satisfaction and tuning back into how your body is feeling and what it is experiencing as you eat. And that is a big piece of intuitive eating as well.

All about the reconnection. So how do you actually start to implement Discovering the satisfaction factor into your life. The big thing that I would say, number one, is aiming to be not too hungry when you start to think about food. And in those moments when you're feeling gentle, hungry, gentle hunger, starting to think about what do I want to eat? Genuinely asking yourself that question, right? What textures do I want right now? What flavors do I want? Do I want salty, sweet, bitter, savory? Do I want something spicy?

Do I want something acidic and bright? Really asking yourself what you are truly wanting. That could also be appearance. Like maybe you want something that's handheld finger food. For me, one of my go to's that I really love all the time is a quesadilla. And you can really, really customize that. And then the second question I would ask is, how do you want to feel when you are done eating it? So going back to something I mentioned earlier, discovering the satisfaction factor is an emotional kind of pleasure based principle of intuitive eating, but it does include the physical as well.

How do you want to feel? You know, and going back to, as you are practicing these intuitive eating principles and learning about what feels good in your body, maybe what doesn't feel as good? Asking yourself, do I want something that in the past, like, I want to feel energized and you know, ready to like take on my day. Thinking about in the past, what data you have, what foods have made you feel that way versus what foods have maybe in the spirit of Thanksgiving, led you to feel sleepy or maybe just haven't given you that feeling that you're looking for.

So taking into account the physical aspect of it as well, and just reflecting on your favorite or most positive eating experiences, where were you? Who were you with? What types of food were you eating? What did that look like? That plays into how you feel as well. And then allowing for variety and discovery of new things. If you are only ever eating the same four things because of diet, culture, because of whatever, and you never allow yourself to try new things, you get really limited in finding that satisfaction.

So the more you try, the more variety you have, the more discovery you allow yourself to play around with. The more options, the more opportunities you have to find satisfaction, to find that connection, to find those things that give you a pleasant experience around. Eating around food around your body during those times, and then checking in mid meal anytime you are wanting to gather data, determine how foods are making you feel, Figuring out, is this something that I even enjoy? Am I getting satisfaction out of it?

Checking in throughout your meal and that is going to prompt you and allow you to touch base with. Where's my hunger at? Am I enjoying how this tastes? Is there something I could add to it that maybe would make it a little more satisfying? So taking the time to reconnect as often as you can and allowing yourself to enjoy the food and reach for things that truly feel satisfying and good to you in an environment that feels pleasant and safe, that is discovering the satisfaction factor. So that's what I've got for you guys today.

I appreciate each and every one of you being here with the Cadre family, showing up, taking care of yourselves. And I'll see you back here next week for Principle Number Five, where we talk more about fullness. I hope you all have a wonderful Saturday. Stay safe, stay warm. See you next.