How Intuitive Eating Works (the Science!) and How to Do It with Victoria Evans

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Episode 35. Today I have the pleasure of talking with Victoria Evans.

Victoria Evans began her career in the corporate world with a prominent Fortune 500 company in the beauty industry in Montreal. During this time, her challenges related to eating disorders, mental health, extreme dieting, and overexercising became a catalyst for creating a solution to an issue millions of women deal with today. As a successful Intuitive Eating Coach, she is disrupting the wellness industry through her fundamentally science-based approach. Victoria helps countless women heal their relationship with food by optimizing their mindset for happier and healthier lifestyles.

You can find Victoria and connect with her here!

IG: @victoriaevansofficial

LinkedIn: VJEVANS

This Episode was SOOOOO good. Here are the Highlights:

If you are like me, you love to understand the science of WHY something works. But also, I’m a practical person. By the time I found Intuitive Eating, I had tried every diet under the sun, and frankly, most of them were quite “healthy” by societal standards. I did Weight Watchers many times, MyFitnessPal, Jenny Craig, and tons of self-directed attempts, usually recording calories or making myself a meal plan.

My first Weight Watchers attempt worked fairly well, meaning I lost some weight and kept it off for maybe a year or so.

What Victoria does so well in this interview and her work is really breaking down the science of why intuitive eating is so effective. She ties it to a theory by Stephen Porges called Polyvagal Theory that helps us understand our body’s threat response and what starts it.

This interview helps explain things like:

Why binge eating never was and never will be a willpower problem
How your brain is trying to self-protect, because your primitive brain, the part that makes sure you stay alive, truly hasn’t evolved for the availability of food that we have today
How understanding your body and it’s physiology can be the difference that truly makes the difference for you in reclaiming your relationship to food and getting your life back

The True Meaning of Intuition

This episode really made me think about and consider the term intuition and how SO many of us get out of touch with our true intuition and how much of a disservice this is doing for us and the world.

Intuition is not a single way of knowing—it’s our ability to hold space for uncertainty, and our willingness to trust the many ways we’ve developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith, and reason.
– Brene Brown

As you listen to this episode, keep an open mind and really consider how your body and physiology work, how you might inadvertently be activating your threat response, and what you might be able to do instead.

Are You New Here?

Welcome! I’m so glad to have you. You might be wondering what this blog and podcast are all about.

We relate everything in this podcast back to motivation, but not the hustle and grind kind. Truly sustainable motivation that keeps you feeling energetic and engaged in your life for the long haul. We talk about why “I’m just not motivated” is a myth and why the TYPE of motivation you have is so important to fully understand. If you are ready to learn about motivation and respecting your body in an effective way so that you can live a life you truly love, you are in the right place.

Check out the Foundational Episodes of the Motivation Made Easy Podcast here!

Introduction: What is this podcast all about?
Episode 1: Want to Get & Stay Motivated? A Crash Course on Motivation, Weight Loss, and Health
Episode 2: How Dieting Steals Our Motivation
Episode 3: How To Get Motivated To Improve Your Health (Motivation 101)
Episode 4: How to Transform Health Fears Into Forward Progress

“I’m terrified I’m wasting my life.”

I wrote this in a journal in the middle of the diet-binge cycle. And frankly, I kind of was.

I’m here to tell you it’s never too late to gain control of your eating, respect your body, and live a life that’s TRULY consistent with your values. But you need to take the first step.

One of the first steps in developing truly autonomous and body-respecting motivation is clarifying what actually matters to you. Not your mom, not your sister, not your best friend, YOU.

The more you reflect on this, the more you can connect your values to your behaviors in a sustainable and empowering way.

Grab the free guide at DrHondorp.com/goals and get started today. I promise you; it’s never too late to stop dieting and start truly living. You will not regret it.

Intuitive Eating? “That’s the Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Heard.”

I loved that Victoria said this because it’s SO common.

There’s no way you could reach your health goals without following a diet… right? This couldn’t be further from the truth!

We have been told the only way to be healthy is to restrict and become enemies with our bodies. To second guess any signals it sends us and to believe that we have to constantly fight against it to reach our goals.

I personally didn’t have this reaction, but my journey towards Health at Every Size was more gradual than most.

Most people I work with, when I first introduce the concepts of intuitive eating, they have a very similar reaction.

I LOVE science and research, but most of my research background is within weight-centric research.

When we dig deeper into what intuitive eating truly is, it is evident that this is the way we were always meant to eat. Our ancestors just listened to their bodies and didn’t think twice about if they should be following a ketogenic or a high-carb diet.

Intuitive Eating: Is It A Fairy-Tale or Science-Backed?

We often underestimate how smart our bodies are. Its main job is to keep everything running smoothly and keep you alive.

Our brains aren’t up-to-date with the culture we live in. It cannot tell the difference between dieting or being in a famine. Both of these send the same stress signal to our brain.

If we aren’t giving our bodies the proper nutrients to keep them satisfied, the primitive part of our brain kicks in to respond to the restriction. It is ingrained in us to binge if we have been in a cycle of famine and feast.

In Victoria’s journey towards overcoming her eating disorder, she did a TON of research on the WHY behind intuitive eating. This was really useful to her to reduce the shame. It isn’t a willpower problem.

How Does the Polyvagal Theory Explain Our Eating Habits?

Think back to when you have been scrolling on Instagram or flipping through a magazine in a waiting room. You stumble across a photo of a model or fitness influencer, and instantly you start comparing yourself to her.

How does she look like that? Why don’t I look like that? Negative thoughts start to swirl through your head, and you might get discouraged or feel down.

It is our nature to want to fit in or feel connected to a certain group. In our ancestor’s time, it was a biological disadvantage to stand out from the group.

When we feel disconnected from a group, our brain recognizes that it isn’t safe for us to truly be ourselves, and we are placed in a defensive state.

There are two defensive parts of our nervous system include the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. The sympathetic system is responsible for our fight-or-flight response, and our parasympathetic system controls our rest and digest response.

However, the Polyvagal theory proposes that there is a third part of our nervous system called the social engagement system. The social engagement system is not defensive and requires a feeling of safety.

If we are in a situation where we don’t feel safe, physically or mentally, eating food can be a common way to create a feeling of safety or comfort. Eating food can be used to calm us down or make us feel better in an unsafe environment.

The polyvagal theory explains the term “emotional eating” and can provide insight into our eating habits.

HOW to Build Trust with Your Body? Start this simple practice today

Along Victoria’s journey towards food freedom and intuitive eating, she found that the hardest part was building trust with her body.

She explains that trust is built in the small moments over time, not in big breakthroughs. This is so encouraging because it means we can do something small every day to build trust with our bodies!

Victoria shares with us her trust and wins exercise. She tells her clients to open up a notes file on their phone and label it trust and wins.

She then suggests recording all the small wins in your daily life. Each win may not seem like much at the time, but over time it will build, and you will be able to reference how far you have come with your body.

Paying attention to the small victories can condition our brains to understand the importance of self-trust and cause us to remember how reliable our bodies truly are.

What to Say to Yourself Instead of Body Shame and Diet Mentality

Instead of looking at yourself and saying, “I need to lose weight to feel good about myself,” you could remind yourself that your desire for weight loss comes from a primitive desire to feel connected, loved, and a sense of belonging and that changing your body is unlikely to really meet any of those goals or needs.

Instead of resolving to “do better tomorrow,” you could ask, “How can I take care of my body right now?”

Your body is always communicating with you, so when you feel shameful, it is important to get curious and dig deeper to find the WHY.

If you felt that you ate too much at dinner, our initial reaction could be shame and guilt. However, what if you were just listening to your body and responding to what was needed at that moment.

Responding to a shame-driven action with shame isn’t productive. Trusting our bodies and creating room for compassion can help to counteract shame and diet mentality.

How To Start Moving Towards Trust with Your Body Today

Your body is never trying to be mean to you, it’s never trying to sabotage you in any way. It’s rather just it’s way of trying to communicate with you.
Victoria Evans

Your binge eating is NOT a willpower problem, it’s literally your body and brain’s evolutionary response to keep you alive.
Understanding our bodies physiological can be incredibly empowering. Victoria did a deep dive into research, evolutionary reasons why her brain and body was responding how she did.
Restriction does not just mean eating 1000 calories per day or less. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between extreme restriction and “healthy restriction” (this isn’t a thing, but I use to think I was doing moderate calorie deficit)
There are many ways you can activate your body’s fight or flight response and cause issues for yourself. These include restriction of food, or even just the thought of “you are starting a new diet tomorrow” or “you look so ugly, you need to lose weight.” Finally, just the act of seeing a lot of bodies where you aren’t respresented, even if you aren’t consciously aware of it, can active a biological threat response. Curation of your social media is one option to help with this.
Your body is never trying to be mean to you or sabotage you. It’s just trying to communicate with you.
Trust is built over time. Try Victoria’s Trust and Wins suggestion by putting up a note on your phone and recording all the trust and wins for your day related to your eating and listening to your body.
Get curious and compassionate. It’s hard but worth it! If you ate 30 cookies, ask yourself, “Did I eat enough today?”

Support Independent Bookstores Near You!

Did you know that that if nothing slows their momentum, Amazon will have almost 80% of the book market by the end of 2025?

Look, I love the convenience of Amazon, but I’ve got a super cool way that you can support local bookstores and my blog and podcast simply by buying books like you already do! You can choose any bookstore on the list in the US and Canada (they plan to expand to other counties in the future), OR you can just let the donation get split between all stores. As of this recording, they have raised 15 million dollars for local bookstores. In my bookshop, you will see my absolute favorite books related to health and wellness, courage and vulnerability, and even my favorite fiction and kids books!

My recent favorite related to improving the quality of our lives was Digital Minimalism. Our family actually has decided to do an optional screen-free August to re-evaluate the role of screen time in our lives.

So if you believe in supporting local businesses, please consider buying your books through Bookshop from now on!

The Psychology of Wellness Bookshop Link.

Disclaimer: This blog and podcast are for informational and educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual professional advice or treatment, including medical or mental health advice. It does not constitute a provider-patient relationship.

Disclosure: Using the Bookshop.org links in this post means that I would get an affiliate fee if you purchase from the online bookshop (this supports my business and local bookstores, too!).