Babies: The nascence of intuitive eating
A few months ago, I spent 10 days at my sister’s house in Southern California. She had just had her second baby, and I offered to fly out to help her and her husband with ancillary tasks like laundry, diapers, keeping the two dogs and one cat in check, etc.
During my stay, I took a few turns feeding the newborn, and other times I made sure my 3-year-old niece was fed and had enough to drink. While feeding these two tiny growing bodies, I noticed that both my nephew and my niece expressed their hunger extremely frequently.
Each time the baby cried for more milk or my niece repeated, “I’m hunnnngry,” my mind raced with thoughts that caught me off guard with concern. Thoughts like, “Didn’t they just eat? They’re still hungry? Why aren’t they waiting X number of minutes for their food to digest and the hunger pangs to go away?”
As I relayed these thoughts to my nutritionist and therapist the following week, they reminded me that my nephew and niece are expressing hunger and eating the most intuitively they ever will in their lives.
Concerns that had washed over me so naturally weren’t even in the realm of possible thoughts for these two growing bodies—they were relying only on internal hunger cues rather than the cacophony that is American diet speak.
I spent the next few weeks reflecting on this concept—that a human could eat based solely on an internal cue before the cue gets hijacked by the platitudes of diet culture.
At a few months old and 3 years old, respectively, my nephew and niece were still shielded from the harmful diet dialogue that is passively programmed into our brains as we age. They have yet to be exposed to a “diet” and the concept of what this word means. They aren’t worried about fitting into their clothes, clothes that they’ll outgrow in a matter of months anyway. They’re not thinking about reaching a certain weight for their next big life event, which, for my niece, would probably be the first day of kindergarten.
This led me to a harrowing image: Picturing my niece, getting ready for her first day of kindergarten, yet worried about whether she’s too fat to wear her favorite dress. Horrifying.
What makes human adults so different from 5-year-olds (besides the longer limbs, responsibilities, and communication skills)? What if we talked to ourselves the way we talked to 5-year-olds…or infants…or even newborns who have no grasp on language at all?
Losing trust with age
Before the ax of reality comes down on a child’s life, they’re acting exclusively based on their needs for nourishment, rest, and human touch. Somewhere along the way, we start to lose trust in our innate ability to express these needs. We question hunger (e.g., am I really hungry, or am I just bored/craving comfort?), rest (e.g., rest is for the lazy. I need to keep pushing so I can achieve more/be successful), and human affection (e.g., I’m too needy for wanting to receive love in a certain way).
In children, we’re able to see the purest forms of expression when needs arise. Although they may come out in unpleasant ways—like screaming or crying—the expression is clear and worthy of being heard. So why can’t we, as adults, trust ourselves to honor these same needs?
Can we re-learn intuitive eating?
I got to observe these intuitive eating practices a few more times this year, both with my sister’s kids as well as friends’ kids. The results were shocking: Kids eat when they’re hungry and stop eating when they’re no longer hungry.
A concept so simple gets lost in the frenzy that is an eating-disordered mind—so many other factors are involved when considering whether to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, and when to stop.
During the winter holidays, my sister commented that the newborn had been sleeping well through the night, which was a new (and welcome) evolution from middle-of-the-night feedings of weeks past. I asked her what she thought caused this change.
“I guess he’s eating enough during the day,” she said.
I instantly flashed to the countless times when—as an adult with an eating disorder—I either struggled to get to sleep because of echoing stomach rumbles or woke up in the middle of the night due to rattling hunger pangs that took me dreary-eyed to the kitchen to feed myself. During these foggy-headed moments of hunger, I was always able to recall exactly what I had eaten the day before, and it was clear why I needed those midnight feedings—I hadn’t eaten enough.
I wanted to test the practice of intuitive eating as well as other practices that involved listening to and honoring my body’s needs, such as rest and human connection.
To start, each time I felt hungry, tired, sad, lonely, or any other uncomfortable emotion or physical state, I sat with it.
I sat. And I waited. And I tried not to think too much.
I closed my eyes. I took five deep breaths, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth.
After a few minutes of sitting, brain emptying, body relaxing, I was able to hear my body whisper what it needed, whether that was food, rest, or just to call a friend for a chat. I hope that continuing this practice will teach me how to trust my body again.
Babies and children have the luxury of skipping these steps, but as we age, the messages cross and confound what used to be so easy to decipher. But with patience, persistence, and the ability to be honest with ourselves, we can un-learn the processing of our formative years and become a fully formed adult of our own making.
Pause & Prompt
Pick a basic human need (i.e., food, rest, love/touch) and write a story about a time when you felt this need and honored it.
