What is Intuitive Eating?
After hearing a podcast about intuitive eating, I wanted to learn more. If you’ve been reading for a while, you know that I’ve tried just about everything when it comes to different diets. I’ve done keto, intermittent fasting, and Whole 30, just to name a few. But in learning more about wellness and becoming a certified health coach, I no longer stand by (or want to experiment with) any of those diets. I share the things that I learn as I learn them and I want you to be able to see my progression through my posts. So while I no longer try fad diets (for fun or for weight loss reasons) or suggest them for anyone, what I’ve written about them will remain on my blog. The wonderful thing about intuitive eating is that it is healthy and sustainable.
I’ve been eating intuitively for the last 8 months or so, and this is the way of life I’ve always dreamed of. I don’t see myself ever straying from this. So let’s jump right into it!
I’m sure you’re wondering what intuitive eating is, exactly. Intuitive eating is an approach that was created in 1995 by two registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach to health and wellness that helps you tune into your body signals, break the cycle of chronic dieting and heal your relationship with food. From a nutrition professional perspective, intuitive eating is a framework that helps us keep nutrition interventions behavior-focused instead of restrictive or rule-focused.
We are all born natural intuitive eaters. When we were babies, we cried, ate, and stopped eating until we were hungry again. Kids are able to balance out their food intake from week to week in a way that’s clearly innate, eating when they’re hungry and stopping once they feel full. Some days they may eat a ton of food, and other days they may eat barely anything. As we grow older and rules and restrictions are set around food, we lose our inner intuitive eater and I know that for sure happened to me. I learned to finish everything on my plate. I learned that dessert is a reward that is to be eaten after everything else and it can also be taken away as a form of punishment. We’re taught the “morality of food”, this idea that certain foods are good (because they’re good for us) and others are bad, which makes us feel good about ourselves when we eat certain foods and guilty when we eat others. I was also taught that I should have three square meals a day, and then it eventually became three meals with two snacks in between. I’m not saying that these meal structures are wrong, necessarily. But I was definitely listening to rules more than I was listening to my body.
Intuitive Eating is not a diet. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite. There’s no counting calories or macros and no making certain foods off limits. It’s not about following a meal plan or measuring out your portions (in fact, that is all discouraged!). Instead, it’s about re-learning to eat outside of the diet mentality, putting the focus on your internal cues (aka your intuition) like hunger, fullness and satisfaction, and moving away from external cues like food rules and restrictions.
There are now several studies (over 100) that have shown the benefits of intuitive eating. The studies show that intuitive eating is associated with:
Higher self-esteem
Better body image
More satisfaction with life
Optimism and well-being
Proactive coping skills
Lower body mass indexes
Higher HDL cholesterol levels
Lower Triglyceride levels
Lower rates of emotional eating
Lower rates of disordered eating
These are 10 principles of intuitive eating
1. Reject the Diet Mentality
This principle encourages people to get rid of the diet books and magazine articles that offer you the false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. It also encourages people to let go of the diet culture that promotes weight loss and the lies that make you feel like a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained weight back.
2. Honor Your Hunger
This principle encourages us to allow hunger to exist and to keep our bodies satiated with adequate energy and carbs so as not to trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for rebuilding trust in yourself and in food.
3. Make Peace with Food
This principle encourages us to call a truce with food and give ourselves unconditional permission to eat. Telling yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have a particular food can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing. When you finally “give in” to your forbidden foods, eating will be experienced with such intensity it usually results in overeating and overwhelming guilt (I know that one personally very well). Instead of trying to stop overeating, focus on stopping the restriction that led up to the pendulum swinging the other way towards that overeating.
4. Challenge the Food Police
This might be my favorite principle because I was the food police for myself for such a long time. This principle encourages us to say no to thoughts in our heads that declare that we’re “good” or better for eating minimal calories or “bad” because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The part of you that monitors the unreasonable rules that diet culture has created lives deep in your psyche, so this principle takes some serious mental strength to do.
5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Because many of us have been socialized within the context of diet culture, we frequently overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence—the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes just the right amount of food for you to decide you’ve had “enough.”
6. Feel Your Fullness
This principle encourages us to trust that we will give ourselves the foods that we desire (isn’t it crazy how powerfully intuitive our bodies can be?!). We should listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full. Pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what your current hunger level is.
7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
Food restriction, both physically and mentally, can trigger loss of control, which can feel like emotional eating. We should find kind ways to comfort, nurture, distract, and resolve your issues because food won’t fix any of them.
8. Respect Your Body
Whew. This is another one that society has made difficult to do. In America where a size 10 is considered plus sized in some modeling circles, this principle urges us to accept our genetic blueprints because respecting our bodies makes us feel better about who we are. It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical of your body size or shape.
9. Movement—Feel the Difference
This principle focuses more on movement than on intense exercise, or formal exercise period. The goal is for you to get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie-burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm.
10. Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition
This principle encourages us to make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel good. Remember that you don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or become unhealthy, from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters. Progress, not perfection, is what counts.
Here are some tips to keep in mind when pursuing intuitive eating:
Scrub your social media feed of messages that don’t align. This means food shamers, strictly clean-eating-promoting people, and anyone who may make you feel less than for eating intuitively.
Keep in mind that food is more complex than “good” or “bad”. I was guilty of this binary thinking for a long time because I simply didn’t know any better. There is no such thing as good food or bad food. I’m a firm believer in allowing yourself to have anything in moderation.
Eat towards the middle. This means that when you’re eating, you’re eating when you’re a little hungry and stopping at satisfaction.
That’s it for this post! How can you make eating a more enjoyable experience?