This means that your default setting is that you’re allowed to eat whatever food you’re considering eating. That doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically eat it; what it does mean is that you’re allowing yourself a choice. You’re giving yourself the freedom and space to choose if you want to eat this particular food at this particular time, without judgment or guilt.

For long-time dieters, this is the scariest part of intuitive eating. “Eat anything I want, whenever I want? Aliza, you don’t know me; I’ll be bingeing on ice cream and donuts all day!” At the beginning, this may happen. That’s because when you finally give yourself permission to enjoy food, you’ll be much “hungrier” at first for satisfaction than for nutrition. But with time, as you increase awareness and become in tune with your body’s hunger and satiation cues, you’ll start making healthy eating choices. Your body naturally craves nutrients – faced with a salad and a piece of cake, if you’re in tune enough with your body’s wants, chances are you’ll choose the salad. Especially if you know that next time you want that cake, you’ll be allowed to eat it. There’s no diet waiting to start tomorrow. (And, guess what? If you listen to your body and it’s saying, “Um, I actually really want the cake right now” – then go ahead and eat it! Enjoy each bite, and stop eating when you no longer enjoy it.) This is actually the most amazing part of being an intuitive eating coach – watching my clients learn to trust themselves around food.

Since the coaching process is highly individualized, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this. Your journey towards becoming an intuitive eater depends on your own personal background, relationship with food, and other emotions and related issues. That said, most clients find that weekly meetings for 3-4 months, with less frequent follow-up meetings afterwards, is the right amount of time to rewire their relationship with food.

This is not another diet method, and it’s not a quick fix way to lose weight overnight. It’s a holistic process whose ultimate goal is stress-free and healthy eating that’s sustainable over the long term. (In other words, if you’re in a panic to lose 20 lbs before your son’s bar mitzvah next month – this is not the right address.) However, while weight loss is not the immediate goal, nor is it guaranteed, when you learn to continually listen to your body's cues, over time you naturally end up at a weight that is healthy for your body.

Here’s a scary statistic: research has shown that going on a diet will actually make you gain weight in the long term. Surprised? I’m guessing not. If you ask people who’ve failed at multiple diets, they’ll tell you that they’re the problem – that they lack willpower, or aren’t committed enough. But if most people on diets are struggling and failing, shouldn’t we assume that there’s something wrong with the dieting construct itself? What we don’t realize is that restriction and deprivation – a basic component of a weight loss diet – produces actual physiological and psychological responses in your body. And these responses to deprivation are what sets up most weight-loss diets for failure. Repeated failures only reinforce a person’s feelings of shame and inadequacy – and so the cycle continues.