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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah County Health Department is trying to fight obesity by teaching people to eat intuitively by retraining their brains.
The main premise behind intuitive eating — eat when you're hungry; stop when you're full — sounds kind of obvious and simple, but healthy lifestyles coordinator Kari Matheson at the health department said for many people, it's not.
"People eat when they're stressed, they eat when they're sad, they eat when they're depressed, they eat when they're happy," Matheson said.
She said in the class that starts Thursday, they're retraining the brain.
"It's really retraining our brains to think, ‘I'm OK where I'm at, and I'm not hungry; I don't have to do that diet,'" she said.
The six-week class was at first going to be just for health department employees, but they decided they may as well open it up to everyone. The class size is limited and people looking for more information can find it at the department's website.
Matheson said the method is not a diet: people who learn how to eat by listening to their body instead of by reacting to emotions often lose weight because they eat less.
