What is Intuitive Health and Does it Work?

What we talk about in this episode

In Episode 1 of the Joyful Health Show, we explain what intuitive health is, and if it actually works.

Listen as we share about the differences between practicing inutitive health versus calorie counting and body size management, and how this practice has freed us up to enjoy God even more in the space of our bodies.

In addition to sharing our own stories and professional experience, we give some super practical tips on how to move forward on the path God’s laid out for your health.

Resources Mentioned

1. Take our free class, "stop dieting and discover the joy in food and fitness"

2. Take our Joyful Health Course

3. Get started with Intuitive health by grace today with Body Blessings: A 30-Day Journal to Praise God with Your Body through Prayer, Intuitive Eating, and Joyful Movement 

Guest Bios

Kasey Shuler is an author, personal trainer, and co-founder of the Joyful Health Collective. Her mission is to help women find lasting health by starting with grace and finding joy in movement. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Athens, Georgia, and outside of joyfulhealth.co, you can connect with her @kaseybshuler on Instagram.

Aubrey Golbek is a dietitian, writer, and mama on a mission to help women ditch diets and find grace in the areas of food, body image, motherhood and beyond. She is the co-founder of the Joyful Health collective and has worked one-on-one with clients as a dietitian in private practice since 2015. Aubrey is the author of Grace, Food, and Everything in Between and together with her husband runs Dwell Well Family, a blog empowering families to parent a team, live simply, and rediscover the lost-art of making things themselves. She lives in Tulsa, OK with her husband and children.You can connect with Aubrey on instagram @aubreygolbek.

What is Intuitive Health, and Does It Work? Episode Transcription

Introduction

Hey, y'all. We are so excited to bring you your very first episode of the Joyful Health show today, we talk about intuitive health, what it is, and does it work? Join us to hear a bit of our own personal experience with this journey.

What does the science say, and how can you start practicing intuitive health by grace today? Hey, friends, welcome to the Joyful Health show. I'm Aubrey, registered dietitian, and I'm Kasey personal trainer. And together we are here to help you discover joyful health by grace.

Hi, welcome to the first episode of the Joyful Health Show today, Kasey and I are excited to answer two of the most common questions we get about joyful health and hopefully lay the foundation for the rest of the show.

So Kasey, let's start with the first one, which is what do we teach our joyful health?

What is Joyful Health?

Great question, Aubrey. Here at Joyful Health, we focus on intuitive health practices empowered by grace, which is really just a fancy way of saying that we practice listening to our body cues and the Holy Spirit's leading for our health decisions, which includes how to eat and move our bodies in regular day-to-day decisions that we are led by. So this isn't just something that we made up ourselves. Everything that we teach is rooted and Scripture backed by research.

And so a big part of what we teach is intuitive eating, which is a weight neutral approach to health. So Aubrey, could you tell us a little bit more about what intuitive eating is for those who are new to that and new to their health at every size weight neutral approach to healthy living from a professional's point of view?

What is Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size?

(Aubrey)

Sure. Yeah, I know that intuitive eating and how the devices are gaining a lot of traction in our culture, but we fully recognize you may be completely new to this stuff. So first, let's start with intuitive eating.

You may have heard of it, and you may have heard, “Oh, it's just eating when hungry, stopping when full. And while that's partially true, that's not the whole truth. So intuitive eating is actually a research backed framework for eating, and there are ten principles, and one of those principles is honor your hunger, and one of them is to stop when you’re full. But there are eight other principles to intuitive eating. And so we really are learning to make peace with all foods. So with intuitive eating, there's unconditional permission to eat all foods. That means no food is good or bad.

No food should make us feel guilty for eating it or make us feel prideful for eating it. We really do make peace with all foods. We also listen to our body's cues. So our hunger, our fullness, our cravings, even those signals that might say, “Oh, this food doesn't feel very good in my body.”

Sometimes that happens to you. And so we honor those. So we're not just eating whatever we want whenever, but we're listening to what our body says feels best and intuitive. Eating is also encompasses eating for physical reasons, primarily over emotional reasons.

Although we encourage enjoying eating, and that's actually another principle of intuitive eating the satisfaction factor. So that's where our joyful health. Part of that name comes from is we believe that food was meant to be enjoyed. It was meant to be satisfying.

That's a big piece of intuitive eating. We find that when people are satisfied by what they eat, they are less likely to overeat. They're less likely to binge and they're more likely to give their bodies what they need.

So that intuitive eating in a tiny nutshell we are going to go with this whole show is going to probably touch on intuitive eating here and there throughout our many episodes. But in a nutshell, that's what it is.

And then health at every size or a weight neutral approach is the concept that our health is more correlated with our behaviors. So what we eat and whether we move our bodies, how much sleep we get, whether we drink water are relational connection.

These are some of those healthy behaviors that are more correlated with health than our body weight. So in our culture, you see a lot of emphasis put on losing weight and achieving a certain BMI. But what we find in research is actually, regardless of what our body size is, it's these behaviors and regular rhythms of health that result in longevity, higher quality of life, less risk of disease. And so we believe in emphasizing these things instead of focusing on shrinking our bodies.

That is a lot in a big nutshell, but I do want to. I did leave one principal out of intuitive eating for a reason. One of that those principles is moving for joy. And Kasey, I know Kasey actually came to the concept of joyful movement, I think, before she even discovered intuitive eating. But she can definitely tell us a little bit more about what we teach with joyful movement.

What is Joyful Movement?

(Kasey)

Joyful Movement is one of the principles of intuitive eating. But like Aubrey said, I didn't find out about it until after I wrote my book Move for Joy. And so to me, that's like a really good confirmation from the Lord that I was moving in the right direction. And that came to me because when I was reading Hebrews twelve, it said that Jesus went to the cross for the joy set before him, and I thought, “Oh wow, I have experienced the joy of movement and the joy of exercise in my own life even though it’s not always easy.”

But I had the hardest time trying to have others to have that same experience. And and I realized that, you know, I was so heavily steeped in the diet culture focusing on body size, stuck in thinking, “well, this movement doesn't change my body then why would I do it?”

And so I knew that there was a much deeper, much bigger, much more grand plan that the Lord had for moving our bodies. And so it's really funny to you to hear about about how joyful movement like that phrase in particular was one of the principles of intuitive eating.

What is joyful movement? Essentially, it's instead of changing the way that your body looks, you are going to feel the way that your body moves. So the really if a simple phrase is just feel the difference.

So whenever you are moving your body, instead of thinking about “How do I look in doing this,” or “How is this going to change how my body looks,” your mindset is going to shift into “How does this make me feel?”

And so by doing that, you're going to choose things that are more enjoyable, more meaningful, things that overflow from your identity and who you are, which as a much deeper, richer, sustainable form of movement that will change throughout your life with you, with the path that the Lord has you on.

And that's beautiful, because we are not so tightly holding onto it. We're not subscribing to this rigid fitness plan because joyful moment now is broken out of those chains. And now it's oh, well, “what is going to be enjoyable for me?”

Like Aubrey was saying, with foods like what sounds good? What's going to be good for my body? And so that's essentially what joyful movement is. It can include planning. So for some people, their life might feel a little bit out of control, all over the place, without a lot of stability. Maybe they're moving or changing jobs or relationships. And so movement can be a way to create a solid foundation, so you create a plan. And that can still be within the freedom of joyful movement.

Personally, I need to get out of my head sometimes because I'm a big thinker, and so movement for me needs to be pre-planned so that I'm taking care of all my body with all of my muscle groups and the whole skeletal system.

But sometimes I like to just play around a little bit and have fun with it and not not have trackers and all of those things that I'm constantly trying to keep up with. Something that that just feels good and feels like I can, you know, be be more free with my day and really work out some stress.

So that's kind of a little bit what joyful movement is. And like Aubrey said, we will be continuing to talk about these principles all through this joyful health show. So we are really excited to share with you more from our guests.

And also, we have a course to if you're like, “Yes, I'm in, I want to know more.” We have a twelve week course that we take students through two times a year, that we will coach you through all of these step by step. Especially if that jump from having a meal plan, having calorie tracking, if that is kind of how you order your day and it's may sound scary to go to something that's like, “do what feels good,” to do what sounds good.

We have both had to make that shift in transition, but we know now that it's something that we can continue with because it it's this the best thing that we found because it can change with our life. So. So Aubrey, yeah. How did you come to you intuitive eating? And why does it “work” for you? And why do you still do it?

Does Intuitive Eating Work?

00:10:46:00

(Aubrey)

Yeah, yeah. So that's another really big question we get, which is just like, OK, this sounds too good to be true.

Does it work? It can't possibly work, right?

We're so wrapped up believing that we have to be counting calories. We have to be like micromanaging our intake in our movement in order to be healthy and that we can't possibly like even under get our brains around how this could be possible or how it could be good for us. And while first, I would say to answer the question, does intuitive health work? We have to define what does work mean for you? What what your health practices, what are they doing? That means they're working for you.

And I know for me personally, I used to think that work, if they were working means I was staying a certain body size. But like we talked about with health at every size, that's not always indicative of a healthy life.

So for me, health working is me having enough energy and focus to give to all the things that are most important in my life, my relationship with God, my children, my husband and my calling. Those are the things that are most important, and I need to eat and move and practice different health rhythms that are going to support that. Dieting, and not even dieting, but just like obsessive clean eating or trying to really manage everything was not that for me. It took up so much mental space and time, and it usually left me actually depleted, which caused a lot of other issues with my hormones and with my mood.

And I think a lot of us have probably had a similar experience. We may just not have had the awareness that dieting was part of the problem. And that was that's why Intuitive Health worked for me because it got rid of those things in my life and freed me up to focus on what really mattered. So for me, it was letting go of dieting and it was letting go of strict food rules, and it was learning to trust my body and give myself rest. And and I really I really didn't weigh myself like from starting intuitive eating until, like the doctor weighed me out of pregnancy appointment.

And that was freeing in itself to not being tied to the scale. But what's kind of interesting about this way of health when it comes to weight is that you can initially gain weight, lose weight, or stay the same.

But long term, what we see is that people find their happy weight or what we call their set point weight, and then they stay there without dieting, without weighing themselves every day, without over exercising. And that's really freeing because you can just find this place where your body wants to be and it wants to be healthy and you don't have to do anything to control that.

And so that was my experience. It definitely worked in that it gave me freedom, it gave me energy and it gave me joy. And it also restored some physical health, things like getting my period back and stabilizing my moods in my fights with my husband.

And so that's that is my experience, and that has been the experience of many of our clients as well. But Kasey, I know you have a little different story than me. So why don't you kind of share what intuitive eating, working or health working for you was?

Personal Trainer’s Story with Intuitive Eating

00:14:20:13 - 00:14:36:24

(Kasey)

Yeah, yeah. So I felt like I had the joyful movement piece down because my mom was and still is a fitness instructor and personal trainer. And so that was just a natural part of our life as a family, and I never second guessed it or questioned it.

But when it came to healthy habits outside of movement, I found that even the way that I thought about movement was unhealthy, and I would just like you said, like I, I never really thought about like having to lose weight.

But I would go on elimination diets to help heal some thyroid issues. And then it would have all these list of good foods and bad foods. And so I started creating a morality around food and when I was eating.

And so I'm a highly sensitive person when I'm in the first place, and I want to do what is right, and that's a very big conviction in my life. And so that the whole like, “Am I eating the right thing? Am I not eating the right thing?” I built up my inner critic, which spilled out into my family life. Like you were saying, fights with your husband, I was judging my family for what they were eating because I was judging myself for what I was eating.

And I felt like I couldn't control my portions because I I thought I was supposed to have these certain portions, according to what I had studied in school and because we were fighting the obesity epidemic. And so even though I wasn't trying to lose weight myself, I was like, my mindset was still wrapped around this idea of not gaining weight and having the right portion sizing. And really, that was making me crazy. So and that's all I was thinking of. And so right, like you said, it took up a lot of mental space. And then there was a moment that changed it all.

I can picture this one moment at the table when I was eating like a box of Milkduds, and I prayed and I was like, “Lord, I just I'm so tired of this.” It was had been years of this mindset, and I was like, I'm so tired of controlling food.

And the answer I heard was, “you don't have to.” And so like Aubrey said, like once you can allow the Lord to you to lead the way when it comes to your body because He's already created our bodies to have these natural cues of what we like and what we don't like, and that leads to health for us. Then we we can be freed up to be self-controlled in the areas that matter more like the words that come out of our mouth, you know, are they grace-filled towards others or not?

Or are we receiving the grace of the Lord ourselves? That was a huge, huge shift for me. And it also it also had to do with my joyful move in practice because I wouldn't have called it then that at the time.

But I had lots of experience with people around me saying like, “Oh, I need to work out tomorrow because I ate a lot over the weekend.” And so I still had that mindset myself. And so I was like, “I cannot keep measuring my life by my calories.”

And so I just was like, whatever I eat, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to connect it to how I move anymore. I'm just going to move the way I want to move. In way that feels good and the way that I need to really de-stress, because that's usually what I need.

And so that helps separate it for me. I had a hard time at first with the fear foods is what Aubrey calls it and what she leads us through in our Joyful Health Course. Because, you know, you're on a pendulum swing for a little bit.

And then like she said, once you settle down, it can take some time. But once you settle, then you feel a lot more clarity and the cravings kind of disappeared, except for when I, you know, when my body needed something, when I needed something that was beneficial and really helpful for my day at the time.

And also, it wasn't attached to guilt. Guilt can lead us away from the Lord and can lead us into a place of shame. And so we really have to be careful when we are placing guilt on our on ourselves when it comes to food and exercise, because this is something that really that the Lord has has deemed sinful or not. If it is, then there is Jesus. But if it's not, if it's just something that we have read in the book of, “Oh, I shouldn't eat this certain thing,” then maybe that's just something that we need to take up with the Lord.

And so I it really changed my my spiritual journey as well. But yeah, so that's I think that's why being able to separate burning calories from eating calories allowed me to, in a sense, become closer with the Lord because I was separating myself from the guilt since I couldn't do it on my own.

So that's why we are huge on starting with grace.

Intuitive Health By Grace, Not Fear

00:20:16:21

(Aubrey)

Yeah, and I think that something you were talking about that I feel like we should mention is, you know, this is really a form of health that is motivated, we believe, by grace and by God's love, and we see most of their health practices and advice out there in the world are motivated by fear. And we, you know, just like fear of something happening to us, possibly happening to us or, you know, just like we're trying to outrun these things that maybe we've seen other people experience.

And that's never that's a big red flag for us as Christians, like if our habits are motivated by fear, something to bring to the Lord. And also what Kasey ended with about just experiencing overwhelming guilt for something that God has not called a sin, but that we've sort of added on to his Word.

Sort of like the Pharisees of Jesus Day, feel like we've added on all of these food and exercise rules and rules for our bodies. And they may be seem like good things, but when they are causing us to feel guilty and ashamed and keeping us away from the face of God.

And if our health habits are not ultimately something that's good for us in our walk with the Lord, then it’s not healthy. So that's a big, big piece. And where we are different than just teaching regular intuitive eating is that we really believe this is a space that the Lord is working in and is trying to set his daughters and sons.

But we speak mostly to women because we just see so many people stalled and stuck in these habits and the shame over their body and over their eating and regret. And it's just like this cycle that the enemy kind of keeps women in and it's preventing them from stepping into things that God's called for them.

And so that's that's a big piece, probably the most important piece of joyful health by grace. And I know you guys may be hearing this, and we're going really fast over some big topics that might be completely new to you.

Like Kasey said, you might be like, “OK, whoa. Am I supposed to just drop all the rules and all the nutrition knowledge and all this stuff that I've spent years learning? And then just again, eat whatever free fall into intuitive eating?”

No, I mean, that could happen. Maybe you've already heard enough or you've already been educated and you're just ready to take that final step right now. But for most people, there's a process and there are sort of guardrails that we set up to begin with to help ourselves and help our bodies learn to trust us again.

Because when we've been ignoring our bodies like cries for food or for movement or for rest or for whatever it is for so long, it stops sending those signals. And we're also just not aware of that. So I think there is definitely a process part of that is going to be listening to this podcast.

And we're going to be interviewing some health professionals and Christian leaders who have a voice in this space and who have an experience and a personal testimony and also knowledge to help answer some of these really common questions, we get about a totally new way of relating to our bodies.

How to Start with Intuitive Health by Grace

00:23:16:08 - 00:23:33:21

And then the next step, we would recommend you guys actually go listen to our free masterclass. It's called “Stop Dieting and Discover the Joy of Food and Fitness.”

And that's going to give a lot of the scientific background to what we're talking about today. And I think for some of you guys who like to nerd out like us, that might convince you even more of the effectiveness of intuitive health.

And then the next thing we're going to do if we really recommend you guys listen to a show or when you learn anything like this that the Lord's teaching you that you try to apply it immediately. I can't remember the verse right now, but Paul Paul said somewhere, you know, if you see anything and or have learned anything or hear anything from me, put it into practice (Phil 4:9). And so that's what we recommend. So some things that you can put into practice today is just starting to become aware, listening for those body cues because we guarantee even if they've been shut down, they're there somewhere.

So Kasey, why don't you just tell everybody a little bit about like what those cues are and what they might feel like?

How to Begin to Build Body Trust with Intuitive Eating and Joyful Movement Cues

00:24:40:17 - 00:25:04:23

(Kasey)

Yeah, sure. So I think, especially for me too, having to learn this and a lot of it too, is rebuild body trust, because we've been trusting in a lot of external programs, and we really we gravitate towards what we think will give us life. We gravitate towards the joy. And so being able to restore that body trust and be able to essentially bring your health back home, and to use the scientific word, a place of homeostasis where you are settled and regulated.

This sensitizes your natural cues. So a few these natural cues like, for example, for hunger, if you have been on a rhythm where you're only allowing yourself to eat at certain time periods or were, you know, during certain places, then you might have been shutting down some of those natural cues. But some of the natural cues for hunger, and they can feel different for everyone, which is why we like to list out a bunch of different ones. But it's, you know, a dip in energy. Some people get that gnawing feeling in their stomach or a grumbling tummy where you can actually hear your stomach growling. For me, sometimes I get headaches, and know I’m hungry even when I’m starting to think about food. You know, mental hunger. That is a really good sign that, oh, maybe your body needs some food now. And those are all OK, those are good.

So to be able to listen to our body's cues and restoring body trust, what are we trusting in? Essentially, we're trusting in the God who made our bodies. And while we know that our bodies will be redeemed, we know that he made us good.

And so, you know, if you get a cut, then your body will naturally heal itself or your broken bone. The doctors, all they have to do is set it into place and your bones will grow back together. It's truly a miracle.

Our bodies are a miracle, and as same goes with eating and moving, our bodies know what to do.

So with movement, some of the natural cues for you maybe if you’ve. had too little movement in your life, you can feel really lethargic. You can feel shortness of breath and your activities of daily living. So if you are a mom and you carry your kids around and I know I hear from all moms, they’re like, “I just feel weak, you know?”

And so it's like, OK, great, let's work on some doing strength training, some resistance exercise. Or if you know, if you have a hyper-focus on your body image, then maybe, you know, doing more movement, being able to get into the space of your body, living in your body rather than looking at your body, that can really help.

Or some signs of too much movement, maybe even doing too much, you can feel just like a generalized sense of fatigue. Your heart rate will be a lot quicker in the morning you'll have increased blood pressure, your limbs will just feel heavy like you can't recover.

So those are just a few of the natural body cues that we have, and those are signs that something is off. Aubrey had mentioned the word calling earlier like, you know how in the space of intuitive eating and exercise and movement gives us more space and energy to fulfill our calling.

And so it's like what you know, our calling is where where we're feeling called to. So I thought of like, “Oh, the beach is calling my name,” or “that food is calling my name.” And so that is actually something that we can lean into.

Like, what are what is that language of our body? What is our body body calling out for? And how can the Lord meet our needs? And like the very simple graces of going for a walk, drinking water, eating food, these things that we overlook, but that we can gladly receive and give thanks for.

And then the joy is completed when we are able to give thanks that God gives us all good gifts.

00:28:34:23 - 00:28:53:23

(Aubrey)

Oh, yeah. It's funny you mention calling, because as soon as I said it, I was like, “I feel like we should elaborate on that a little bit,” and maybe we could have a whole podcast on that. I'll leave it at that. Something I've learned even this year about, like your calling as a Christian is that it can be a bunch of different things, like the Word says that God has prepared good works for us.

Body Blessings Course

So there are many good works that we're called to, but we want to be freed up like Kasey said, to follow the Spirit’s calling any given day at any given time and not be like, “Oh sorry, gotta enter my macros into My Fitness Pal first. Cannot go pray for this person” or whatever that is."

And like I, I say that jokingly, but that was 100% me at one point in life. So. And yes, but like Kasey said, getting to know just listening for those for those cues starting to become aware of them is the first step where you're probably not going to honor them 100% of the time.

And sometimes that even takes a step of faith in feeding yourself ahead of time before you start to feel those cues regularly. And that's definitely something we talk more about in our course. But getting on a regular rhythm of feeding ourself, and once we're on that, our body starts to restore that trust and starts to send those signals a little louder. And a really easy way that you guys can dive into this is to actually sign up for our Body Blessings Course.

And really, this is just a resource we developed because so many people were needing something like this. So if you're used to tracking your calories on MyFitnessPal and you want to go to a more intuitive approach, this is a great way to just track what you're eating.

Not exact portions, but your hunger level, your fullness level, the different needs that arise, the different movements that you're loving or not loving. And then also a way to pour out your emotional, spiritual, physical, all of your needs to the Lord.

And listen for His response. So we've created this course to help you cultivate a prayer practice that specifically addresses your view of and care for your body (thoughts and behaviors work in tandem to form new neural pathways), go through the practice for 8 weeks (2 journals) and see how it transforms your body image and thought life concerning your body.

So that's a really great place to start if you guys want to do something with with journaling. And but I think that hopefully this has been enough for you guys to think about for one day. Hopefully we've at least planted a little bit of a seed or got you curious about some of these things and answered a little bit of your questions about joyful health and intuitive health. There will be much more to come. But with every episode, we want to make sure that either Kasey or I pray or our guest prays over you at the end.

And so Kasey is going to pray over you guys and then we will see you next week. So, Kasey, yeah, thank you.

Prayer for Intuitive Health by Grace

00:31:53:04 - 00:32:13:09 (Kasey)

All right. Let's take a deep breath.

God, I thank you that you are here with us. You have always been there.

You always will be here and in your presence, we can find true rest.

God, I think you that we no longer have to scramble and strive for what works for us health-wise, but that we can listen and lean in to the good gifts you have already given us in our bodies so that we can have eyes to look up and to see you and to follow you and to see your great calling and what you have for us.

Your Word from Ephesians 2:4 says “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared before him that we should walk in them.”

God, I think that is not what we do that makes us holy or good or better or moral or innocent in any way that we just lay all of that before your feet right now because it is by grace through faith.

We are your workmanship. We are created in Christ Jesus for good works. And so I pray that we would receive that in our hearts and our souls. Be thankful for the breath we have and our body because it is all a gift.

We don't deserve you, and we are so thankful that you love us, no matter what, and that you have created us to be a body. And so I pray that you would just energize us to go out and do the good work so you have created before the before the creation of Earth.

So we love you and we pray all of this in your name. Amen.

Amen. All right, guys, until next time, may you rest in his grace and follow the joy.

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