Using Intuition To Choose Foods
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
Written by Laurel Sherer
To trust our bodies' innate wisdom is to step outside of the chatter of our minds. It is to step outside of the knowledge of nutrition that we have picked up in many places. It is to instead affirm the innate wisdom of our bodies. It is our inner wisdom that is the expert for how to heal our bodies. This wisdom connects us to the rest of nature, as all other animals use their instincts to live.
Our bodies know how to come back into the balance of health. Victoria Boutenko says in 12 Steps To Raw Food (2002), “The only insurance to be healthy is to learn what your body wants and needs. Our bodies want us to be beautiful and healthy. All we need to do is listen to our body’s intuition, and then follow.” (16)
Our bodies are constantly sending us messages, but we often ignore them. We may receive the message that our bodies are tired and decide to drink a cup of coffee instead of resting. It is amazing that our bodies do so well under these conditions. How can we feel, then, when our bodies have optimal conditions for health?
In 12 Steps To Raw Food (2002), Victoria Boutenko gives us a beautiful example of the process her family went through as they trusted their bodies’ wisdom and listened to their intuition. Victoria Boutenko’s son craved mangos and blueberries. He would eat a whole case of mangos and still want more. So, they followed his intuition and later found that the two best foods for curing diabetes, which Victoria’s son had, were blueberries and mangos. His body naturally knew how to help itself.
How do we do this ourselves? We can begin by feeling strongly about why we are trying to listen to our bodies’ innate wisdom. Once we feel grounded in wanting to listen to ourselves, we can begin trying to differentiate between the mind’s desires and the nutritional needs of our bodies. These are very different. The mind often becomes addicted to certain foods because they once made us feel happy. The mind may think of French fries, for example, and unconsciously take the pleasure you felt while eating them some time ago and then translate this as meaning, “If I eat French fries again, I’ll be happy.” This is an addiction and is certainly different than the body sending the message of needing a nutrient. Providing food that satisfies a nutritional need of the body will often leave you feeling amazing. It may not, however. Your body may be needing a nutrient in order to eliminate a certain toxin in your body. In this case, you will most likely feel low for the time of cleansing, but will then feel much better after the cleansing process is complete.
The body communicates its nutritional needs to us in the form of desiring certain foods. Addictions and nutritional needs thus often look and feel very similar. We desire a food and imagine it in our minds. If you want to really find out what nutritional needs your body is trying to communicate with you, you can look at whatever types of food come into your mind. If this is a food that feels healthy to you at the time, give it to your body and see how you feel afterward. We can use our intuition to know whether a food is at an appropriate level of health for ourselves now. If a food does not feel healthy to you now, but you find yourself craving it, you can decode the message your body is sending. Perhaps it is just an addiction, yet it could be that your body is used to getting a certain nutrient from a food and even though that food is not a part of your current diet, your body hasn’t yet converted its message into another food. By asking, “What is it that my body is trying to tell me?” we can find out. An example of this happened to me the other day. I am eating all raw foods right now, but had a sudden craving for a soy burger. This was strange because I hadn’t had one of these for some time. However, I asked what nutrient could be in the soy burger that my body would want. I came up with protein! So, I had some blue green algae, which has very high levels of protein and felt excellent. My craving for a tofu burger immediately went away and hasn’t come back since. After several months of eating a new diet, our bodies will change the messages they send us. My body, for example, will learn to send me a picture of blue green algae instead of a tofu burger when it needs protein.
There is a large spectrum from how easy to how challenging it can be to listen to our inner knowledge. Our intuition certainly can give us insights into what is to our highest good in all areas of our lives, not just nutrition. Our intuition does become easier to “hear” as we cleanse the toxins from our bodies. If our bodies are full of toxins and are highly acidic, it is more challenging to hear what foods our bodies want. The foods we will be attracted to will often be those that vibrate similarly to the toxins in our bodies. This is a cycle that is challenging to overcome because there is a period of time when we hear our addictions and instead act on what we know will make us feel better. This will change, though, with some time because our vibrations will change and we will be attracted to higher vibrations of foods.
Other ways to tune into our inner wisdom more easily include being in nature, being silent, meditating, fasting, being with children, and being with animals.
The benefits of eating based on what our bodies actually need instead of what our minds say is that our bodies are finally able to come into amazing health, surpassing even our highest ideals of what healthy can mean. In doing this, we are changing the way in which our bodies vibrate. This changes our mindsets, emotions, and spiritual connections as well. One final thought from Victoria Boutenko in 12 Steps To Raw Food (2002): “If you will follow your intuition for a while you might discover that your perception of life is shifting. Many of your favorite beliefs will seem to you as false. Many of your former opinions will seem to lose sense. That won’t scare you because in place of your former knowledge the CLARITY will come. Clarity is the biggest gift that we could get.” (125)