What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive Eating was developed by Registered Dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, as an anti-diet approach to wellness. Intuitive Eating is a flexible style of eating where you learn to follow your internal sensations of hunger and satiety to gauge when to eat, what to eat and how much to eat. However, Intuitive Eating is not just a “hunger-fullness” way of eating. Intuitive Eating counseling works to explore: ditching diet mentality, unconditional permission to eat any food, food behaviors and beliefs, body image, self-compassion, coping mechanisms, gentle nutrition and joyful movement.
Have you ever watched a baby eat? They are natural intuitive eaters! When babies are full, they either turn their head away or they refuse to eat any more. As babies we know how much to eat, what we want to eat and when to stop eating without judgment. We are totally in touch with our hunger/fullness sensations. Intuitive Eating allows us to return to that innate ability and begin to trust our bodies again.
The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating are:
Reject Diet Mentality
The first step of Intuitive Eating is awakening to diet culture all around us; and beginning to reject it. Throw out any magazines, diet books, unfollow any social media accounts or unsubscribe to any diet plans that promise a false hope of quick weight loss. Flip the script, and recognizing it is not you who has failed dieting - it is diet culture that has failed you.
Honor Your Hunger
This principle is all about getting curious with your body and really beginning to understand, “what does hunger feel like for me.” Then, after acknowledging it, and understanding what it feels like, working to honor it, by feeding ourselves. If we do not honor our hunger and provide our bodies energy, our bodies will shift into primal drive and actually store food for energy (cue, why dieting actually slows down metabolism). Your hunger is a gift, so learning to honor it at first signal is a sign of rebuilding trust around your body.
Make Peace with Food
Give yourself full permission to eat whatever food you would like. Deprivation leads to strong cravings, and typically bingeing. Think to a time when you allowed yourself to eat a food you usually restrict. You may have ended up overeating because the experience was so intense and then led to overwhelming guilt. By allowing any and all foods, without guilt in your diet, all foods become equal and just “food” rather than holding moral and intense, exciting value.
Challenge the Food Police
The food police holds all the rules around food that you’ve accumulated over your life time; whether from parents, television, a celebrity, or influencer. The food police is housed in your mind and shames you with guilt if you do not abide by its rules. Firing the food police is a critical step to become an Intuitive Eater.
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
You know the feeling when you eat something, and it just doesn’t leave you satisfied? What typically happens? If you’re anything like me, you’ll end up grazing throughout the cabinets, ‘trial-and-erroring’ different snacks and bites until something does it for you. This typically lends itself to overeating past the point of hunger. On the contrary, you know when you eat the meal that you craved throughout the day and you feel 100% satisfied? When you eat food that truly is satisfying, it is associated with higher well-being and consuming smaller portions of food (2).
Feel Your Fullness
Listening and paying attention to when your body is full takes practice. One of the best ways to get to know your fullness is pausing in the middle of meals, and asking yourself what your current fullness level is.
Cope with Your Emotions With Kindness
Loneliness, boredom, stress, anger, and sadness are all emotions that we experience throughout life. Although food in the moment can feel like it helps in the moment, it doesn’t actually solve the problem. Finding ways to cope with these emotions kindly and resolve your issues, can be very helpful. I like to say, this principle is all about broadening your “emotional coping tool box.”
Respect Your Body
As Evelyn Tribole says, you would not expect your size 8 shoe to fit in size 6 shoes - so why do we do the same to our bodies? As you begin to respect and speak kinder to your body, you can feel better about yourself as a whole. All bodies deserve acceptance and respect.
Movement - Feel the Difference
Movement doesn’t have to suck and be punishment. This principle is all about shifting to find joy and pleasure in movement; that way you actually want to do it.
Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition
You don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. Gentle nutrition takes into consideration how you eat as a whole, rather than scrutinizing every morsel you consume.
By working to become an Intuitive Eater you are allowing joy and freedom back into the way you eat and view your body. Other benefits include:
Greater body appreciation
Positive emotional functioning
Greater quality of life and eating satisfaction
Unconditional self-regard and optimism
Psychological hardiness
Greater motivation to exercise, when focus is on enjoyment rather than guilt or appearance (1)
Freedom!
