By Megan Rauscher
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who accept their bodies,
flaws and all, are more likely to eat healthily or intuitively,
new research shows. This suggests that women’s typical reasons
for dieting — dissatisfaction with their bodies — may
backfire.
“There is a lot of negative body talk among women; women
think that they can best lose weight and feel better if they
are first dissatisfied with their bodies,” Dr. Tracy Tylka told
Reuters Health. “Rather, this research shows that adopting a
positive body image is more likely to be associated with
intuitive eating.”
Intuitive eaters don’t diet — they recognize and respond
to internal hunger and fullness cues to regulate what and how
much they eat, Tylka explained. Intuitive eating has three
components: “unconditional permission to eat when hungry and
whatever food is desired; eating for physical rather than
emotional reasons; and reliance on internal hunger/fullness
cues.”
Tylka, an assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State
University’s Marion campus has conducted several studies on the
concept of intuitive eating. In one study published in April
involving 199 college-aged women, Tylka found that women who
followed intuitive eating principles had a slightly lower body
weight than women who did not.
“Intuitive eating was negatively associated with body mass,
such that people who ate intuitively weighed less than people
who dieted,” she said.
In her latest studies presented this month at the American
Psychological Association meeting, Tylka and her colleagues
examined who was most likely to follow intuitive eating
principles.
They found, among nearly 600 college women, that those with
higher levels of appreciation and acceptance for their body
were more likely to be intuitive eaters.
Intuitive eaters spend less time thinking about how their
body appears to others and more time considering how their body
feels and functions, Tylka observed. They “perceive the body as
an agent of action rather than an object of
attraction…focusing on how the body functions rather than its
appearance,” Tylka told Reuters Health.
Intuitive eating, Tylka’s found, is “positively associated
with psychological well-being, such as self-esteem, positive
emotions, adaptive coping, self-acceptance, optimism, and
resilience in the face of stress.”
Intuitive eaters also reported receiving more positive
messages from parents and others regarding their bodies.
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