Finding Peace with Food: An Intuitive Eating Approach

Intuitive Eating

Are you frustrated with the never-ending cycle of dieting, weight loss, and weight gain?  Research shows that dieting is unsustainable: if you lose weight on a diet, you have a high probability of gaining it back, and sometimes more, within 5 years. Furthermore, weight cycling can put you at an even greater risk for health problems than staying at a consistent weight, even if you are overweight.

While it is difficult to get off the dieting bandwagon, especially in a culture obsessed with thinness and diets, it is possible! This 10-week, online, module-based program uses the fundamental teachings of Intuitive Eating developed by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. This evidence-based approach is backed by over 100 research studies and guides participants in relearning instincts buried by years of dieting; the goal is to regain trust and the connection to your body by increasing body attunement and removing barriers to attunement. Our Intuitive Eating program has been developed to give you tools to improve your overall health through an approach that is not weight-focused, but health focused.

10 Online Modules

  1. Ditch the Diet Mentality: Overview of the dieter’s dilemma, dieting statistics, how dieting leads to weight gain, impacts of dieting on physical and psychological health. Along with an interview with certified Intuitive Eating counselor.
  2. Honor Your Hunger: Hunger cues can feel different from one person to the next. In this module we are going to explore how to identify and begin tuning into your hunger cues.
  3. Food and Mood: Emotional eating is triggered by feelings and we may not realize we are using food to deal with emotions. This week’s module includes an evaluative component to determine what food rules and restricts you may be imposing that can lead to over eating.
  4. Challenge the Food Police: This week we will be discussing food rules; how they negatively impact your relationship with food and with your body, where they come from, and how to disregard them.
  5. Make Peace with Food: This week’s module focuses on the cornerstone of the Intuitive Eating philosophy, give yourself unconditional permission to eat.
  6. The Satisfaction Factor: The dieting roller coaster can end up removing the joy from experiencing your food. Food is not only meant to sustain life but to be a pleasurable experience. The goal of this module is to help you to practice eating what you truly want and to begin finding pleasure and satisfaction in eating again without the feelings of judgment and guilt.
  7. Fitness for Every Body: Exercise is a known benefit for a wide array of health factors. The key is exercising because it feels good, not to burn calories or punish yourself for eating a food you enjoy.
  8. Respect Your Body: In this module we will learn about treating your body with dignity, reverence, and admiration and meeting your bodies basic needs in order to build gratitude for the body you have.
  9. Mind Over Media: Our appearance-focused society places a different value not only on people who are in larger bodies, but also people who are considered “too short”, “too tall”, “too flat-chested”, “not muscular enough”, “too big-nosed” – anything that does not match “the ideal.” But it is worth the effort to gain appreciation for our own body and the bodies of others. It is much easier to take good care of something that or someone who is valued, accepted and respected. All people deserve respect no matter their physical characteristics. When we learn to tune out the media targeted at making us feel "not enough" we improve our self-acceptance of ourselves and others.
  10. Gentle Nutrition: Our goal is to practice gentle nutrition and have a healthy relationship with food.

Spring 2025

Spring 2025: Modules 6-10

Kickoff Location: Magers Health and Wellness Conference Room - Room 100

When: Monday, February 3rd - March 7th (Dinner Provided)

Time: 5:15 - 6:15pm

Book - Intuitive Eating, 4th edition - a revolutionary anti-diet approach (Provided)

Presenters - Samantha Selsor and Renae Harrison (Dietetic Graduate Students), Jaime Gnau MS, RDN, LD, CHES

Program Structure 

This is an online, module-based program in which participants engage in discussions, complete workbook activities, watch videos, and read articles on principles of Intuitive Eating developed by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.

  • Modules 1-5 will be covered in the Fall semester and Modules 6-10 will be covered in the Spring semester.
  • This program will start with a kickoff luncheon in person with the option to attend via Zoom, if needed. 
  • The program expectation is that you will complete one online module per week.   Voluntary meetings will be available and participation will give you one ticket per lunch towards Gift Card drawing.  After completion of each module, you will receive one ticket into a drawing for multiple $25 Gift Cards.

Registration

RSVP through BearLink

Instructors

Jaime Gnau MS, RDN, LD, CHES