Eating intuitively. We’re born doing this, but somewhere along the line, we’re ripped off by external cues, rules, and diets that tell us what, when, and how to eat.
If you’ve ever watched a baby eat, you’ve seen them pick what they want, the amount that feels good, and then stop when they’re full. Simple.
Intuitive Eating is an approach that focuses on the body’s internal signs of hunger and fullness, while teaching followers to reject diet culture and its influence. It was developed in 1995 by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch as a way to counsel clients to heal from restrictive dieting and body shaming. The book Intuitive Eating, published shortly after, provides a framework of 10 key principles to help readers establish a diet-free approach to their lives.
The 10 basic principles of Intuitive Eating are:
Ditch the Diet Mindset: Get rid of anything that promotes dieting – books, social media accounts, etc.
Honor your hunger: when you’re hungry, eat. Don’t try to suppress it or ignore it.
Make peace with food: food is not the enemy. let it be a joyful experience and give yourself unconditional permission to eat.
Challenge the food police: ignore or challenge your inner voice that makes you feel bad about what you’re eating and reject the idea that food has moral value.
Discover the satisfaction factor: eat what you crave and enjoy the feel, taste and smell of food.
Feel your fullness: know your internal signs of hunger and fullness and eat mindfully.
Deal with your emotions using kindness: comfort yourself without using food.
Respect your body: accept your “genetic blueprint” and stop trying to make your body into something it’s not meant to be.
Exercise – feel the difference: stop punishing your body with exercise to lose weight. Move in ways that feel good.
Honor your health – gentle eating: nourish your body both physically and emotionally.
Intuitive eating is not meant to be a weight loss tool. In recent years, she has been closely associated with the Health at Every Size movement, which is based on shedding weight has a health index and promotes equality and unbiased care for everyone, regardless of size.
What Intuitive Nutrition does right
As someone who has counseled countless clients on their nutrition, I wholeheartedly embrace the principles of Intuitive Eating. Rejecting weight as the primary indicator of success, learning healthy habits versus focusing only on the number on the scale, ditching restrictive diets, finding and listening to your internal cues of hunger and fullness, enjoying food and treating your body with respect are all things I believe are necessary parts of good nutrition and overall physical and mental health.
We’ve been duped by the diet and wellness industries into believing that willpower and lack are honorable, that hunger should be ignored or suppressed, and that “healthy” looks like one thing: thinness—even when it’s not consistent with a person’s natural body shape and size. Intuitive eating provokes this thought, and that’s a good thing.
Many people worry that without rules or restrictions, they won’t be able to control themselves around certain foods. IE removes the judgment and categorization of food based on morality, teaching followers that food is neither “good” nor “bad.” Once a food is off limits, we are less likely to overeat it because we see it as just another food, not special or forbidden.
The problems with Intuitive Eating
IE is sold as suitable for everyone, but it is not. It is a biological fact that some people are unable to listen to the cues of hunger and satiety and heal their eating problems because food is complicated. What and how we eat reflects many factors, including deeply held core beliefs about food and our bodies, hormones, emotional well-being, socioeconomic status, our environment, and more. (PMID: 33921286) “Failing” at Intuitive Eating because it wasn’t right for you in the first place can lead to guilt and shame that the program is about to fall apart.
In one recent New York Times interview with Tribole and Resch, Tribole observed that people for whom IE did not work probably did not follow all the principles. This is an irresponsible view that reminds me of the diet industry’s habit of blaming people for failure on a diet that is impossible to follow. To deny that even a small amount of weight loss can promote health shows, in my opinion, a willful ignorance of the existing research.
IE discourages viewing weight loss as beneficial, even for health reasons. The evidence is very clear on the link between being overweight and negative health outcomes, and for many people, losing weight can mean the difference between life and death. (PMID: 28455679), (PMID: 40423979), (PMID: 39487296), (PMID: 33882682)
In fact, many IE advocates cite the statistic that 95% of diets fail and say weight cycling is more dangerous than being obese. Both of these statements are untrue and not supported by current evidence. 95% of diets don’t fail and the doctor who originally made this claim has since debunked it.
While weight cycling can have a negative impact on health, a new study finds no causal link between it and an increased risk of clinical damage. (Reference) The researchers from this study found that when a person regains the lost weight, it does not increase the risk for negative outcomes. they return to the risk level they were at before they lost the weight. It is excess body fat – not weight cycling per se – that predicts disease risk.
Some people just can’t see food as neutral and find that IE causes them to overeat even after months of trying. That doesn’t mean they are “doing it wrong”. It’s just another example of why IE isn’t for everyone.
Is Intuitive Eating Worth Trying?
Living in a society that sees thinness as something worth sacrificing our health for, I think we can all benefit from the kinder, gentler perspective that IE can offer.
However, IE is not meant to be a weight loss tool, so keep that in mind. You can lose weight by using your natural cues, eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full, and learning to see food as nourishment rather than an enemy.
