Intuitive Eating with Peta Coote Part I
Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive guide, and I absolutely love helping people to heal from within so that they can create a life that they love, a life that they enjoy. We weren't meant to just tolerate and get through life. We were meant to thrive and enjoy the life we're living.
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Corinne Powell: Hello there. I am so excited for you to be able to listen in to this conversation that I had with Peta. Peta Coote is a non-clinical certified intuitive eating coach and self-kindness guide. She is a self-professed cat lady who always has a cup of tea to hand.
Peta works with adults coaching in self-kindness. Body image, self-worth, and intuitive eating, as well as in schools around the world with children and teenagers.
I enjoyed my time with Peta very much. She is knowledgeable and the heart that she carries exudes right through the airways.
So I hope that today you will enjoy part one of a two-part conversation. And if you resonate or you are touched by anything that is said, please share with a friend.
I'm very interested to know how you got into the work you do.
Peta Coote: So I worked in schools in education, both in teaching English as a second language in Barcelona in Spain, and then later on as an emotional support assistant for children and teenagers. And I was kind of teaching languages as well to adults.
But what I found was that I would end up within these lessons, I'd end up doing a lot of coaching and we'd be kind of talking about their life and the things they were deciding to do.
And I think in terms of that kind of coaching side of things, it came from that. And then when it comes to intuitive eating, I was, I've always had a few different things going on with food.
So I have allergies and intolerances. But I didn't really know that it through my teenage years and kind of through my early adult years. And I also had that just that very typical teen, like late teens, early adult diet culture really ingrained within me.
And so I had like the apps and I tried the different kind of diets. And I want, I thought that when I looked a certain way, I would be successful. I would be able to achieve everything I wanted to do. If I was a certain size. Or if I was a certain weight and I got, I was, I was pretty ill when I was 21 years old.
I had a tumor in my neck and it made me really, really unwell. I was really, really sick and I lost a lot of weight during this time as well because I was vomiting a lot. And it, it made me really aware of how incredibly, incredibly important our bodies are, how amazing they are as well. How they can heal.
But it also kind of set me on that path of understanding what I can eat, what foods feel good, what foods satisfy me. And what foods work for my body.
And then from there, it kind of snowballed into me doing a lot of research around this and later on training within intuitive eating and really understanding it as a concept of what we were born to be able to do eat intuitively.
But as we grow up and as we evolve. Different things, different messaging. Culture. Society kind of plays a huge role in how we think and feel about food in our body. And that intuition can become foggy and it can at times become blocked.
Corinne Powell: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And how is your health now?
Peta Coote: It's very good. So I have a chronic illness called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or EDS for short. So I have flare-ups. But because of all of the kind of personal growth work I've done, it means that I know at a point in my life where I can manage it really well.
So I know if I'm on the brink of a flare-up and I will slow myself right down. And my whole lifestyle is kind of tailored around this and ensuring that I am as well as I can be in whatever season I find myself in.
Corinne Powell: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad for that.
Peta Coote: Thank you.
Corinne Powell: So if you want to jump in and share with us whatever is on your heart around intuitive eating, I am all ears and I'm really looking forward to just hearing what you have to share.
Peta Coote: Oh, fantastic. Thank you. So many people will kind of describe intuitive eating as something that we can relearn because the premise and the theory behind it is that we are born intuitively knowing when we're hungry and we can intuitively tune into being full.
So a baby will cry when they're hungry and they will pull away from milk when they're full. There's no kind of forcing a baby to eat if it doesn't want to eat. And so with toddlers, until the toddler starts to kind of understand the parents' cues of, come on, just a little bit more. If you just eat a bit more, I'll let you do whatever it is.
That's where very well-meaning parents kind of begin that messaging from those well-meaning parents begins to start to disrupt that tuning into that hunger and that fullness.
So if a child kind of goes, I'm hungry, I'm really hungry. Can I have something to eat? And a well-meaning adult around them says, well, it's only an hour until dinner. You can wait. That's a kind of, OK, I can wait.
And they wait. But then they're starting to ignore those hunger cues, just like if a well-meaning adult says to them, oh, if you just eat like a spoonful more or you just eat that little bit of vegetables there, then you can go and play or then you can have this for dessert.
It really starts to very subtly disrupt those signals that are kind of signaling to us. I'm full. I'm comfortably full. I don't need to eat anymore.
And so this theory that we're able to relearn it is it sounds very simple. And I think that can be something that really it makes it quite difficult to learn intuitive eating if you think it's going to be simple, because was the idea, the theory behind it is simple. It isn't easy if your hunger and fullness cues are really disrupted, it isn't easy if you spend a long time submerged in diet culture, ignoring those cues, trying to change your body, yo-yo dieting up and down with your weight.
There's so many food rules and beliefs that we need to unpick. And so I like to think of it as learning to eat intuitively rather than relearning. And we're learning about ourselves as well and to tune in to our intuition. So I think that even for those who are like. “Oh, I really struggle with my intuition still. I'm not quite there with it”.
I think that this can be a brilliant way in because it's something that we have to do. We have to eat multiple times a day. And it is something that many people will struggle with that relationship with food and how they feel about food and, you know, how they think about it, their beliefs, their ideas around foof.
And so with intuitive eating, we, there are 10 principles to intuitive eating, but I, I don't really want to focus on those 10 principles too much because it comes really naturally.
And so if we're kind of focusing on beginning to notice when we're hungry and beginning to notice, do you know what, actually I'm comfortably full, everything very naturally comes from there.
So the principles work through hunger and fullness. It works through kind of letting go of dieting rules and beliefs, and it works through the satisfaction factor and feeling really satisfied with what you're eating.
Noticing your energy levels, noticing what foods sustain your energy levels and which foods actually, just like you eat them and then half an hour later, you're hungry again. And there's nothing wrong with eating those foods.
But it's about knowing, oh, hang on a moment. When I eat that half an hour later, I'm hungry again. And that's just how it feels in my body. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm not greedy. I'm not eating more than I should. This food doesn't sustain my fullness levels. And that's totally okay.
And I think that kind of working within intuition and especially around food and eating, it's a fantastic way to really start to tune into that gut instinct and get to know yourself and get to know your true self really well.
Because. Like I said, it's, it's something that we're doing multiple times a day. So it's that opportunity to tune in.
Mindful eating and intuitive eating are, they're different concepts, but they beautifully kind of overlap and just compliment one another.
So intuitive eating is about tuning into your intuition. It's about honoring your hunger and fullness and not kind of following any hard and fast rules.
Whereas mindful eating is about the practice of eating mindfully and slowing down, really noticing the tastes and the textures and the flavors and noticing how full you are. And if you'd like some more, if you wouldn't.
But I have found that in, in the work that I do, I've worked with many, many clients over the years now. I've been doing, this is my ninth year in September of nourishing soulfully. So I've been doing this for a while now.
And I found that. That it's incredible, the changes that come from learning to eat intuitively within a person's life in terms of their self-worth, their self-confidence.
Really learning to trust themselves, not just with food and eating, but in all areas. And that kind of acceptance of themselves and their body and the body that they have. It's pretty incredible.
Corinne Powell: Yeah. Yeah. I'm just absorbing what you're saying and thinking about how this has played out in my own life too, because I didn't really think about it from that perspective of from childhood, like the cues that a parent might give or how they might direct their child in eating and how that could impact.
But I do know I used to never feel the hunger satiation. Like I just didn't know. I knew I was needed to eat because of other things that my body would cue me in.
But for me, it wasn't until I actually tried intermittent fasting a couple of years ago. So I'm curious, like. Because for me, it like reset something in my body.
And I actually now feel hunger when I need to eat. I don't have a headache or I don't feel weak. Or. Yeah. Nauseous, you know, like those used to be my cues. Like, oh, I need to eat, I know my body needs food.
But for someone who say is just going this route of intuitive. Like learning intuitively how to eat. What does it mean when. Like, I don't I'm just curious, like, would that have worked or did my body need some sort of reset?
What what have you found from the individuals you've worked with?
Peta Coote: Oh, really, really great question. So often those kind of. Headache, the feeling nauseous, the feeling shakiness that comes along when we're extremely hungry. We've ignored the kind of peckish, little bit hungry cues and signals. They haven't arrived for whatever reason.
We've overlooked them. And then our body's kind of gone. “I've got to do something here because I'm really hungry”. So I'm going to kind of stop sending as much stuff to wherever.
And this is kind of what happens. We go into that starvation mode. What happens is when we get to that. That place where we're that hungry, we'll eat anything because we're in the mode survival mode of whatever is available.
And the most kind of sugary, quick fasting foods are the ones that we're going to eat. Quick acting foods are the ones that we're going to reach for in that moment.
But when it comes to intermittent fasting, I wonder whether this has kind of worked as the reset for you in terms of if I work with a person who has dieted for a long time. And after a couple of weeks, we're finding that they're just not able to tune into those hunger cues.
What we do is I ask them every morning to eat their breakfast at the same time for a couple of weeks. And this resets our internal body clock.
And it kind of cues us after a little while at that time, we start to notice these hunger signals coming. And so I wonder whether that's how that works for you. If you were eating at a specific time when you were fasting.
Corinne Powell: Well, I was certainly eating like at a specific more of a specific number of hours after I had stopped. Yes. So, yeah that's that's very interesting to hear because it does make sense. I had created some sort of rhythm routine, something because it felt like a total reset in my body.
There were so many other things. I wasn't doing it at all to lose weight. I heard a doctor in a webinar speak of it in a way that I was unfamiliar with because I had heard of it from the dieting standpoint. Yep. Like do it three days a week.
This doctor was speaking of doing it as like making it a lifestyle and finding out what number of hours worked well for each individual's body. Yeah.
And there was a bit more to it than that. But it was. I heard it at the perfect moment. It was exactly what I needed to hear. And it was transformative for me.
But I do think what you're saying makes so much sense that like that idea of eating at the same time and then the body learns. Right. Like, oh, if I'm if I'm hungry now, I'm going to be fed. And so I think that's something that's something that I really feel the sensation of hunger that it was really like for me, it was a relief.
It's something I'm grateful for every day, like because it's almost frustrating to know you need to eat, but not feel hungry. Like, again, I knew like those cues would be, OK, I need to eat. OK. But it's actually more satisfying to feel hungry and then eat.
Peta Coote: Oh, my goodness. Isn't it just? And there's nothing, there is a real dissatisfaction in that kind of, I'm eating because I know I have to, because I need it to survive.
Corinne Powell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Peta Coote: Which just pleasing it as fuel for the body.
Corinne Powell: Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Corinne Powell: I'm interrupting the episode because there's something I want to tell you about. I'm starting up another round of group coaching. It'll begin September 27th and I will host four meetings. We'll end October 25th.
They will be held on Tuesday evenings at 7h15 Eastern time. Now this is for you if you're looking to create internal or external change. And yes, that sounds broad.
So let me help you understand what we'll be talking about during those meetings. We'll be touching on mindset, why you think the way you do, why you function the way you do. We'll touch on. How you view yourself.
What do you think of your body? Are you taking care of yourself in the way you need to? Are you compassionate enough towards yourself? We will also talk about your inner child.
How did your experiences as a kid and how are those experiences impacting you even to this present day? But we will not just talk.
I will give you actionable steps that you can run with to create change in your life. And I will speak. Speak to your inner self so that you find healing and transformation at a deep level.
And this is not me trying to promise you something that you're not going to get.
This is me speaking from a place of experiencing it myself and observing those that I work with experiencing it as well.
So I hope that you'll reach out and connect with me or go to my website, changeradically.com and sign yourself up. This is going to help you.
I'm going to be a fabulous opportunity and I am looking forward to having each one of you join me on those Tuesday evenings. Now back to the episode.
Peta Coote: So I also wonder in terms of the kind of intermittent fasting and around kind of resetting as well. What we find with intuitive eating is someone may kind of have their dinner and then go to bed.
And the next morning they. Wake up absolutely ravenously starving. So within intuitive eating, we either use a hunger and fullness scale, which ranges from one to ten.
All the words uncomfortably hungry, hungry, neutral, full, uncomfortably full.
And I, have had clients in the past kind of share with me in their food diaries. You know, I'm waking up really uncomfortably hungry. I am absolutely starving. I'm not sure why.
And this is where we kind of go. I'm really curious as to see. Let's have a look at if we add in a snack in the evening. How is that going to make you feel?
And what kind of thing would you like to try? And then seeing how you feel the next day when you wake up in the morning. And so the idea of kind of your body not having food for a certain time, which is what happens with fasting.
It's looking at it really gently and going. Okay. How to what point do I feel satisfied and comfortably full? And then what sustains me through the night?
Because our bodies need fuel to do everything that they've got to do during the night. You know, they do a whole lot of processes.
And so if we're waking up uncomfortably hungry, having a think about what's going on here, whether we wake up a bit earlier to have breakfast earlier or whether we have a snack kind of in the evening, not right before bed, but in the evening at some point.
And seeing if that balances it out. So it's a lot of being really curious and nonjudgmental towards that self and kind of going. I wonder if I try this. Let's see what happens. Let's see how this kind of makes me feel.
And also for those who menstruate, keeping in mind that throughout your cycle, your hunger and fullness is going to change and what sustains you is going to change.
So you're going to have periods of time where you are so ungry and you eat so much more compared to other times. So for me, for example, I know in my cycle on days 26 and 27, I will always reach for like toast or crackers or biscuits quite a few times in the day as snacks.
I'm really hungry. And that's because my body's getting ready to do something. It's getting ready to have that period and it's getting ready to go through something that actually is really not very nice. And it needs that extra energy for.
Before I started kind of tracking this and tuning in and understanding it and recording it so that I could see what was happening in my mind. The narrative that I was telling myself was that, oh, I always eat toast.
Like I always have toast for snacks all the time. This can't be good for me. It's not very nutritionally kind of beneficial. It's all the time. It wasn't all the time at all. It was for two days throughout my cycle that I'd have more of those foods.
And so just in just kind of noticing these things and being aware of them, it means that we can be kinder to ourselves and more gentle and go, “oh, of course, that's why I do that. That's like there's no need to feel bad about that. There's no need to feel guilt or shame about that. That's totally natural. My body needs that fuel for what's coming next.
Corinne Powell: Mm hmm. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Hmm. It's it's got me curious because I'm I'm in the middle of a pregnancy. And I do have to eat to survive. That's definitely the feeling.
But just the other day, my husband and I were talking about, huh? I wonder because obviously, you know, certain foods. Last longer. Sustained me more.
But you just started like thinking about. I wonder what's more going on because some days it's just, it's just, I can't keep like the feeling of sickness at bay. And a lot of that is very attached to how much I've eaten.
But it's just it's so it's a fascinating thing. I'm just thinking I'm pulling from the things you're saying and just feeling like - I need to get a little more curious. I've been curious.
I've been trying different things. But a part of me just chalked it up to. Like, I just have to endure it. You know, it's, it's pregnancy. But another part of me. Does think there's more that I can get curious about. Maybe discover.
Peta Coote: It's really interesting, isn't it? So I know, for example, even if something as simple as. I'm British so I drink a lot of tea. Very stereotypically British. And black tea. And so in the morning. If I have a cup of tea first, before anything else. I'm very lucky to vomit with it.
If not, I will feel really nauseous for a while. A good while. But if I have like a cup of lemon and honey with hot water. And something for breakfast to eat. And then I have tea. I'm absolutely fine. My stomach, obviously for whatever reason needs that. In my. In there first, before I have the black tea.
Now I drink. On average about 15 cups of black tea a day. A lot of tea.
Corinne Powell: Wow. Okay. Yes. You put that into perspective for me.
Peta Coote: After I've had my breakfast. I'm never sick with tea. But if I have it before. I would say there's probably a 90% chance I'll be sick.
I was like, this is really confusing. What's going on. Cause I have other allergies as well. And so. I would. Kind of go through everything I'd eaten the night before. And the day before looking for, could there have been kind of like cross contamination? What's going on?
But actually it was the tea causing it. So it's, it's so good to get curious about these things and questioning and go “That is really interesting. I wonder why I'm feeling like this or I wonder if it could be this and what happens if I experiment with changing things up a little bit. And it's about remembering that we don't have to stick to rules and we are humans. And so our bodies change.
And of course with pregnancy as well. It's about ensuring that you don't do anything too drastic. But. Like you said, getting curious about what's happening and having a little think as to, to maybe why these things happen.
Corinne Powell: It's actually a hopeful thing, you know, a hopeful thought.
We've come to the end. What did you think about what you heard? I hope that there's something you pull from today's episode and start implementing it into your life. Create the change that you want to see, the change that you hear about. You have the opportunity to transform your life, and I'm ready to link arms with you and to help and guide you to the life that you want to live.
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I hope that you have a wonderful week, but no matter what your week is like, in the moments that are quiet, maybe it's when you pillow your head at night, or when you're driving in the car or taking a walk, or maybe it's going to be in the midst of the chaos with your children, or the craziness of work. I hope that you'll remember how significant you are, that there is meaning and value to your life, and that I, for one, am so glad that you're alive.
Catch you again next week.
