@MorethanOrganic

For a moment, let go of everything you´ve been told about food.  Sit down somewhere comfortable, alone and away from distractions.  Relax and become aware of your breathing, letting thoughts arise without getting involved with them.  How are you today?  Can you feel what´s happening in your body?  Gently bring your awareness to focus on your feet - how are they feeling?  Move your awareness slowly up through your legs and entire body, right to the top of your head.  Are you feeling connected to yourself: are you listening to yourself?

From the moment we´re born, we´re told what, when and how to eat  by parents, society, government and business.  Unless we´re particularly strong, we are conditioned into a pattern of eating, that overtime can contribute to our disconnection from ourselves.  Add to this the compounding problem of poor food quality that makes it difficult to know what foods are nutritious and wholsome, and we have the conditions for misunderstanding ourselves and food.  We think we´re hungry when we´re not, so we grab something.  The quality of that something isn´t up to much, yet you still get the calories - but little living vitality.

People, can we just slow down for one minute?  Can we come back to ourselves? Can we connect with ourselves and our food again?  When we begin to do this, over time we can begin to re-discover our intuitive awareness of what foods will help us maintain a sense of equilibrium - a sense of balanced health.

Intuitive eating is about trusting yourself and also understanding and trusting real food.  Real food is created with co-operation for nature - truly ordinary, quality food.  This is ordinary in the sense that it has not been tampered with, or artificially changed. Real food respects the living vitality of soil and the freedom and happiness of farm animals.  Forget what you´ve read about diets, food supplements, good and bad foods, healthy and non-healthy foods.  Most of this is someone else´s idea of whats right.  One reason prescribed food ideas arn´t good ideas is that they treat people like machines, they´re homogenized and you´re not - you are unique.   Real food can´t be disputed as someone´s idea as it´s crafted as nature intended, its our starting point - we´re coming back to the Earth.

As people we are part of nature even if we are increasingly forgetting it.  Nature as a process is constantly striving to restore balance, and as people we are also constantly at work restoring our personal sense of equilibrium.  If we´re hot, we take off our jacket, if we´re hungry we eat, if we´re tired we sleep - we are constantly at work maintaining balance in our lives.  Intuitive eating is like waking up to how we can really start to use food as part of our continual equilibrium.  When we become really good at this we can start to see the medicinal value of real foods - we are more connected with ourselves and with our food.  Then, by slowly re-discovering how real food contributes to our sense of equilibrium, we begin to appreciate food again.  From appreciation (& great taste and a sense of vitality) comes enjoyment.

Personally, in the winter, I enjoy making bread.  Using wholemeal or something like rye flour, I´ll make the bread so it´s still a bit guey in the middle, then eat it hot with masses of butter, with some goats cheese.  For me, this is an example of good winter food, I don´t like cold things in the winter!  You have to find what´s good for you, and this will depend on many conditions including what you do for a living and how sedentary you are.   With intuitive eating, if we feel like, it we include it.  We try things out and try to forget about conditioned ideas of right and wrong.  

One word of caution though.  Having a sense of equilibrium applies to your entire life and also how you see yourself within your life.  So we don´t need to get overly caught up in intuitive eating - it´s something that just happens, we don´t need to take it too seriously!