New Year’s holidays and accompanying plentiful feasts can remind of themselves for a long time with extra pounds and additional folds at the waist. And therefore, many of those who did not limit themselves in food and alcohol consumption are now frantically trying to put their figure in order – as a rule, with the help of fasting. According to German experts, this is a mistake.
Listen to your body
As nutritionist Nadia Röwe of the Federal Nutrition Center (BZfE) in Bonn notes in an interview with the dpa news agency, people are already fed up with low-calorie, low-carbohydrate and other rigid diets. In addition, after such fasting days, or even weeks, it is very easy to gain extra pounds again, because the body will try to make up for lost time and will begin to put off “reserves” in case of a repeat “hunger strike”. And this is one of the reasons why more and more experts in Germany prefer a completely different approach.
We are talking about the so-called “intuitive nutrition”: a person must learn to listen to the signals of his own body. Say, our body itself will tell when and what we should eat – with the help of signals of hunger, appetite, satiety sent to our brain. Nutritionists advise you to take these tips seriously and not overeat, stopping your meal as soon as you feel full.
Moreover, as experts have pointed out for a long time, you need to eat slowly, chewing food thoroughly and concentrating on every piece, taste, texture. A person who eats fast eats much more food than he actually needs, because he has a delay in feeling full. Well, all that is superfluous is reflected both on the figure and on the stomach. Pancreatic enzymes cannot cope with the breakdown of foods, and they enter the stomach insufficiently processed, which is fraught with obesity and dysbiosis.
No drastic measures!
Studies have shown that the method of weight regulation with the help of intuitive nutrition is much more effective than the tactics of restricting food, scrupulous calorie counting, and dividing foods into “harmful” and “useful”. By the way: according to the theory of the adherents of the model of intuitive eating, “harmful” products do not exist at all. In their opinion, you can eat almost everything, but in moderation.
In nutrition, balance is generally needed. After all, if we, for example, for the sake of a figure say “no” to fats and delete them from our diet, then this will have an extremely negative effect on the work of our brain and nervous system. A complete rejection of sweets can also lead to serious consequences. Those who do this often have headaches and dizziness.
Already at the birth of a person, his body is endowed with a special intuition, contributing to the unmistakable choice of food, which is necessary at a given moment. And those who want to eat right must do everything to restore this natural intuition, experts emphasize.
Follow the example of children!
German nutritionist Uwe Knop pays attention to the behavior of children who are not known to be aware of any diet or nutritional system. They just know how to listen well to their body, and he will always tell you what he needs. According to the expert’s opinion, those who want to eat right should become like a child – give up control over their weight and just trust the body.
In your book “Child, eat what … you like!” (“Kind, iss was… dir schmeckt!”), Uwe Knop, for example, explains why children prefer certain foods. Take, for example, the kids’ love of white bread. It turns out that this product is a great source of energy for the growth of a child. And it is digested much better than wholemeal bread. Parents often force their children to eat whatever is on the plate. Uwe Knop is against such an attitude. The expert is convinced: you need to eat exactly as much as the body needs. But, of course, if a person is busy with hard physical labor from morning to evening, then, of course, there should be more food on his plate than someone who works in an office.
Don’t say no to fast food!
The main rule of intuitive eating is that you can eat anytime, anywhere, but only if you experience a physiological feeling of hunger, and do not eat under the influence of factors not related to hunger – such as sadness, anxiety, stress, reward for good work, tradition, boredom.
According to Uwe Knop, a person should be given complete freedom of choice in food from the age of six months. So, he believes that the kids should not be forbidden to eat from the plate of mom or dad and choose from it whatever he likes, be it a piece of potatoes, broccoli or banana. Moreover, a variety of food should be constantly available – including “forbidden” foods like fast food.
For, as practice has shown, when “forbidden” food ceases to be forbidden, a person loses his former interest in it. In any case, in order not to overeat, we must always have a choice. After all, as paradoxical as it sounds, gluttony is provoked not by the abundance of food, but by their absence.
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