Simply, Coach Tiffany, RN teaches us how to change our relationship with food so we can improve our lives. We’ve all been there. We’ve tried countless diets only to end up back where we started. Coach Tiffany teaches a new approach, called Intuitive Eating, so we can stop the diet cycle and begin to really live.
What is intuitive eating?
This was the question burning inside me when I met with Tiffany over tea to chat about her work. Tiffany smiled patiently when I asked the question, and I got the feeling she was used to answering it.
Basically, intuitive eating begins with listening to our bodies – or at least that’s how I understand it. We grow up learning all kinds of rules about how we should eat. As children, our parents tells us to clean our plates or eat all our vegetables. I remember hearing, “eat all your food. There are starving children in China.” (I never really understood how my dinner plate related to children in China.)
Tiffany’s point, I believe, is that from an early age we develop all this learned behavior around food. Then, as we grow older the rules somehow begin to change. For women, it really can be a big change. Now, we’re told to not eat too much so we say thin. Or, we learn we shouldn’t eat this or that because it’s unhealthy, or it will make us fat.
We get confused with all this conflicting information about what to eat. We get confused because instead of paying attention to what our body is telling us about the nourishment we need, we are sort of just blindly following arbitrary rules imposed on us. Rules that are often based on nothing more than conventional wisdom.
Changing how we think about food
To help me understand intuitive eating, Coach Tiffany asked me to think about how babies eat. Babies eat when they’re hungry. They kind of just intuitively know when they need to eat, and what they need to eat. Babies are not worried about shoulds and eating rules. They’re kind of clean slate when it comes to eating.
It was starting to make sense. Maybe I should just eat when I’m hungry. But the moment I got that thought, all the eating rules started playing out in my head. What if I ate too much? What if I ate the wrong thing?
And, I think that’s the thought process Tiffany helps us change. Instead of eating what we need to nourish our bodies, we eat for other reasons. We eat based on habits, learned rules, or emotions. We’ve lost touch with why we even eat at all, which is to feed our bodies what they need for us to live.
Can I really eat when I want?
Oh man, was I ever looking for the freedom to eat what and when I want. But, as I continued to listen to Tiffany and what she teaches, I started to sense that wasn’t necessarily the right way to look at it. Intuitive eating isn’t really the freedom to break rules, but to forget the rules and approach food from another angle. She shared a story with me.
Tiffany told me of a friend who really loves pumpkin. This time of year pumpkin is everywhere. So, her friend gorged on pumpkin. But instead of shaking her head in disappointment like most nutritionists would, Tiffany shared another point of view.
What if we just paid attention to our bodies when we eat? What if we noticed how our bodies and emotions react after we eat? Then, we could learn to listen to our body about what it needs. Once we know what our body needs, we’ll instinctively almost just want to give our body that nourishment.
Ending the diet cycle
Coach Tiffany explains that over the years we’ve learned to ignore the signals our bodies tell us. Instead, we listen to the numbers on a scale, the images bombarding us through advertising, and all the eating rules fed to us daily from the media, experts, friends, and so on.
So we hop on a diet to become some image of ourselves we believe we need to be. We almost believe we have to be on a diet in order to eat right. We gain weight. Lose weight. Get sick and mess up our guts. Develop food sensitivities or eating disorders. We forget to nourish our bodies. Then, we try another diet to feel better.
The benefit of paying attention
So, I questioned Tiffany about allergies or things like Celiac Disease. Don’t we need to follow a specific diet or we’ll get sick? I was of course thinking of myself partly when I asked this question. I have food allergies and sensitivities.
Tiffany smiled I think as I kind of figured it out for myself while I mulled over what she said. As I thought about my own experience with food, I realized that after awhile I no longer wanted to eat the foods that made me sick because I didn’t want to be sick!
In a way, I was intuitively eating by listening to my body and what happened when I ate foods it didn’t want.
Tiffany’s journey with food
I asked Tiffany how she learned about intuitive eating and why she believes in it so much. Tiffany has been a Registered Nurse for about 12 years. In her practice, she realized she wanted to have a more direct impact on the patients she helps. She was starting to burn out, and wanted something more.
After trying a few other things first, Tiffany became an integrative nurse coach and started coaching using her nursing license. Tiffany had also talked to a lot of women who complained they didn’t have time to take care of themselves. So, she focused on self care, and health and wellness. She knew helping other women practice self care was her mission in life.
Tiffany had been on her self care journey, too. She wanted to improve her gut health, mostly at first for weight loss, but also for her health. But, she discovered the diets were very restrictive. It’s like they put her in this little box she didn’t quite fit in.
When she learned about intuitive eating, she tried it for herself. She began to see positive changes as she got healthier and just felt better. She also started accepting her body instead of fighting against it.
Curiosity
Tiffany said we can learn from our experience of eating. If we get curious about how and what we eat affect us, we start to notice how our palate tells us what our body needs. Our body knows what it needs. We just need to learn to listen to it.
As I heard more, I began to really like the sound of this approach. But, I thought what if I needed some help? What if I misinterpreted the messages my body sent me? What if my curiosity led me astray? I realized I would want some kind of guide to help me through this transition with my relationship with food.
That’s where Coach Tiffany, RN comes in.
Tiffany’s work
As an integrative nursing coach, Tiffany has the expertise and experience to guide you to better health through a change in your relationship to food. Not only is she a Registered Nurse, but she also is certified in Intuitive Eating. Plus, she just really wants to help you feel better and believes in what she’s teaching.
Tiffany says the last 2 1/2 years since she started coaching have been very rewarding. She loves watching her clients build trust with their bodies again. Her clients feel empowered as they start to realize they’re not broken. It transforms their lives.
Learn more about Coach Tiffany
Visit her website at: https://www.coachtiffanyrn.com/
Join her Facebook group for women looking for support in healing their relationships with food and their bodies at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/deservingwomxn/
Follow her on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/CoachTiffanyRN/
Lisa Ratzlaff is a web designer who loves telling the amazing stories of interesting people and businesses in Portland, Oregon. Her web design business is Share Your Story Media, where she builds powerful websites for small service-based businesses that help them succeed online.
