I am never really satisfied.
Yes, this is both a good and a bad quality. For weeks, I agonized over a domain name for my new site about my journey into intuitive eating and came up with what I thought was apropos for what I was personally trying to achieve with it and, well, my life in general. It was also a play on one of the physical sensations that one needs to be able to feel in order to eat intuitively.
That name was Well-Sated Life.
It was problematic for a number of reasons. For one, I don’t have a well-sated life. Well, I do in the sense that my life is well (mostly) and full (for sure), and now that I am eating intuitively, I am regularly sated. But Well-Sated Life implies a level of mastery with the subject matter that I just have not achieved. In fact, I am nowhere near achieving it. I am new to all of this. I am not an expert in intuitive eating. I am just beginning to be in tune with my body and my emotions, and working with a therapist to really get in touch with myself. More importantly, this is less about the destination and more about the journey.
As such, I had known something was “off” with the name, but I couldn’t fully put my finger on it until talking with my therapist last week.
In January, I will be contributing a chapter to a multi-author book by women entrepreneurs sharing their bumpy roads to success. My therapist wanted to know what the focus of my chapter would be. I told her it would be about my messy transition leaving a well-established, supposedly safe career in marketing for a highly unknown solo career as a freelancer and author. My journey with intuitive eating is a big part of this transition because it’s my intended subject-matter for an upcoming full-length book. I told her I had been chronicling my messy journey with intuitive eating, including the work I’ve been doing to address — and hopefully heal from — the major life traumas that have kept me from both being in touch with myself and my own body and from connecting with others.
After I explained the concept to her, she echoed back to me a more eloquent version of what I had just said, something like:
“It’s the raw and unfiltered version of what you have to go through to become an intuitive eater.”
Hearing her say the words raw and unfiltered triggered something in me — in a good way. What I am doing is presenting the gritty, real version of intuitive eating, not the polished, final outcome. This is more about my personal journey along what I know will be a long and bumpy road versus the end game.
You can easily find nuts and bolts of intuitive eating, including its 10 principles, all over the internet and social media. They are the basis for the original Intuitive Eating book and its accompanying workbook, and the subject of hundreds of articles, social posts and podcast discussions by intuitive eating coaches, nutritionists, personal trainers, dietitians and therapists. You can also find articles with titles like “How to Survive the Holidays as an Intuitive Eater” and “How to Feel Better About Your Body Right Now,” but there are few personal accounts of what it’s like to put these ideas in action.
From my research into intuitive eating, it seems like there aren’t many “regular” people (versus so-called experts) talking about their experiences with intuitive eating. There are few people sharing what clicked for them early on, what took them a long time to overcome, how they felt about themselves at different points during the transition, how they felt about their changing bodies, how they explained what they were doing to well-meaning but otherwise clueless dieting friends and family, and how long it took for them to be “fully attuned” to intuitive eating. I wanted to change that.
Rather than have the name be focused on the outcome, I realized that it needed to reflect the journey — and the reality, my reality. While the experts would have you believe that you follow 10 simple principles and you will be magically healed from a lifetime of fat shaming, self-hating and dieting, becoming an intuitive eater just isn’t that simple. This is a messy, messy process. And perfect isn’t the goal. In fact, striving for perfect is a recipe for failure.
With the words of my therapist ringing in my ears and that newfound clarity about the goal, I realized the name needed to change. I am not sure that what I have now is the final outcome, but it’s at least a start. As I said in the beginning, I am never quite satisfied.