Okay, confession time.

I don’t love the phrase “intuitive eating.”

Not because I don’t love the concept—it’s essentially the #moderation365 philosophy—but because I’m always looking at things through the lens of its teach-ability.

And “intuitive eating” can feel so inaccessible and vague to someone who is in the middle of an obsessive relationship with food, that the advice ends up feeling more discouraging than helpful.

If someone had told me to “just eat when you’re hungry” when I was deep in my all-or-nothing dieting phrase, I would’ve told them to GET REAL, I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHEN I’M HUNGRY, HA! HALP!

Maybe like me, you’ve eaten according to a clock (“every 2-3 hours”) for such a long time, that you’re not in touch with your body’s natural hunger cues anymore. Or maybe you don’t even register your cravings until you’re already elbows-deep in a bag of chips. Or maybe you know that your 2pm energy slump isn’t ideal, but you don’t really know what to do to change it.

Been there, get that 100%.

To me, traditional “dieting” advice makes us stupider. And I say that in the most empathic way considering I was an extreme dieter for a decade. I loved having start dates, and food lists, and an Excel spreadsheet with all of my meals and times mapped out. Ha!

Dieting feels good because it feels organized. Rules keep us safe. Giving our process over to a coach or “expert” feels like relief. They know what’s best, right??

And intuitive eating seemingly has no rules. Just listen to my body? Thanks, BUT HOW??

From a marketing perspective, intuitive eating has a problem even though the concept is spot on. And part of my mission at JillFit is to help people come to understand, practice and master their eating neuroses so they can be free to do other, more enjoyable things than just stress about food constantly.

So … how do you eat intuitively?

Today I am going to give you one tool to practice, and then tomorrow, I’m gonna give you an opportunity to work with me for the next 4 weeks to master it, when I open enrollment for my Food Obsession Boot Camp "LIVE" course.

But for now, I’ll tell you this: if you want to eat intuitively, you have to master mindfulness.

And the first step to mindfulness is just starting to become aware of your body’s natural biofeedback—hunger, cravings, fullness, satisfaction, energy, etc. If we want to be able to eat according to these things, we have to start feeling them again.

So, your homework:

Set a timer on your phone for every 3 hours, like this for example;