Intuitive Eating: What Even is it, and Where Do I Begin?
Intuitive eating has become a household phrase in the last several years, but generally speaking, people tend to misconstrue what intuitive eating actually means, and how to get started. Intuitive eating has gotten a reputation for being an “excuse” for people to eat whatever they want and throw nutrition out the window, and this couldn’t be further from the truth. Others assume Intuitive eating simply means, “eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full,” and while this is certainly a component of the modality, it’s a gross oversimplification.
There is a strong empirical base to support intuitive eating as an adaptive alternative to dieting. A meta-analysis of 97 studies found that intuitive eating was inversely associated with eating pathology indices, body image disturbances, and psychopathology (Linardon et al., 2021). Furthermore, intuitive eating is associated with positive psychological constructs that include self-esteem, improved body image, and improved overall reported well-being (Linardon et al., 2021).
Recently, I was curious about what people in my circle responded when I asked them what intuitive eating means to them. The most common responses I heard were, “eat when you’re hungry,” “eat whatever you want,” and “make good food choices.” And for the most part, each of these phrases has a place in intuitive eating. However, there is much more to it, and I’d like to break it down for you.
The Ten Principles of Intuitive Eating
Intuitive eating is based on a set of ten principles designed to help you make peace with food and allow your food choices to be driven by your internal cues. The principles are intended to work in two key ways, as defined by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resche (2012), the two women who brought intuitive eating to life:
1. “By helping you cultivate attunement to the physical sensations that arise from within your body to get both your biological and psychological needs met
2. Removing the obstacles and disruptors to attunement, which usually come from the mind in the form of rules, beliefs, and thoughts.”
The Ten Principles of Intuitive Eating with brief descriptions are as follows:
Reject the diet mentality: accept the fact that “one more diet” is probably not going to solve the problems you’re looking to solve. Lean into the idea that dieting has likely worsened your relationship with food.
Honor your hunger: when you feel hunger, are you allowing yourself to eat? Or are you waiting until the hunger gets intense, to “save calories for later?”
Make peace with food: the more you tell yourself a food is off limits, the more you’re going to be driven to overeat when you finally do have it. Making peace with food means we need to stop the binary thought process of categorizing food as “good” or “bad.”
Challenge the food police: the food police is the place in our brains where we formulate our food rules, the control center that tells us, “no carbs with dinner,” “you need to work out more when you eat bigger meals,” or “you’re not allowed to eat past 7PM.” Challenge these rules—where did we learn them? Are they still serving us?
Discover the satisfaction factor: what do you need in a meal to feel satisfied? Are you someone who does well with high protein at meals? Perhaps you only feel satisfied when you have multiple textures in a meal, or something cold with something hot.
Feel your fullness: What signals does your body give you when you’re no longer hungry? Notice what factors make you more vulnerable to getting uncomfortably full: eating too quickly, getting too hungry before a meal, not plating food, etc.
Cope with your emotions with kindness: Emotional eating isn’t all bad all the time, but we don’t want it to be the only tool we use to cope with negative feelings and emotional discomfort. Having a range of coping skills will pay dividends when we go through rough patches.
Respect your body: You don’t have to love how your body looks, or even how it feels all the time. If you’ve struggled with an eating disorder or disordered eating, it’s easy to feel betrayed by your body. Maybe loving your body is too much of a jump right now, but what can we do in this current season of life to show our bodies respect and stop fighting our genetic blueprint?
Movement—feel the difference: We know movement has so many benefits, but many people have a fraught relationship with exercise. Joyful movement is movement we get to do, not movement we have to do. How do you feel before, during, and after movement? Does it energize you? Does it make you feel strong, empowered, or capable? If you can’t think of a form of exercise you find joyful, start with brainstorming a list of exercise that you don’t hate.
Honor your health with gentle nutrition: The final principle of intuitive eating. Gentle nutrition is a way to honor your health and show your body respect and affection, rather than a way to punish yourself. While diet culture dictates your food choices against your wishes, gentle nutrition can help as one clue to help guide you to what you might choose to eat.
Okay, I Know the Intuitive Eating Principles, Now Give Me Some Action Steps
I think people get stuck with Intuitive Eating because it feels nebulous—a mystified and intangible concept that people can’t quite put their fingers on. I love exploratory work, but I also love action steps.
1. Keep a food journal—and no, this doesn’t mean MyFitnessPal, Noom, or anything else weird. There are many ways you can do this without it feeling tedious or rigid. One of my favorite ways to do this is by doing a day long summary; at the end of each day, write down how the day went, and what factors seemed to contribute to your overall nutrition self care. For example, I might say, “today, I had more clients than usual, and I let myself go way too long without eating. By 5PM, I was starving, I overate, and I realized it was because I hadn’t eaten in 6 hours.” Now you have a new data point: going long periods of time leads to overeating and feeling uncomfortable. Over time, you’ll build up a data point of internally driven nutrition information to build your own personal nutrition framework.
2. Keep a running list of food rules that come up when your inner critic gets loud. Ask yourself where that rule came from, and if it’s serving you. Build this list over time, and begin to challenge these rules. A good way to identify a food rule is by looking for statements that start with “should.” Should often implies we broke a rule we made for ourselves, or we internalized from diet culture, and often times those rules are actually arbitrary.
3. Make a list—a physical list, in writing—of coping skills that you think could occupy your mind when you feel the feelings that typically lead you to turn to food to cope. When emotions run high, we quickly forget the tools in our toolbox, and having them written down can be really helpful. Plug in one of these skills when you feel that initial urge to engage in emotionally-driven eating. Often times, it will give you enough time to come down from the emotion—we like to call this “taking a mindful pause.” My personal favorite coping skills are painting my nails, doodling, hand lettering, and reading.
4. I’m biased, but of course I’m going to recommend making an appointment with a registered dietitian who has competency in intuitive eating. Most, if not all, dietitians training to treat eating disorders and disordered eating are also trained in intuitive eating. If you’re in Georgia, Maryland, or Tennessee, you can do that with me here, or you can find dietitians in your state at the EDRDpro website. Intuitive Eating is complex and incredibly nuanced, and a registered dietitian will be able to direct you in the safest and most effective way possible.
Too Long, Didn’t Read, Give me the Intuitive Eating Summary
There is so much more to intuitive eating than eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re full, and eating “whatever you want.” With such a strong empirical base, I truly believe intuitive eating is the future of nutrition-related self care. This non-linear process takes a lot of time to learn, and requires a heavy dose of patience and self-compassion. Following the ten principles has the potential to restore your peace with food and relieve you of the baggage that comes with eating. Start small, go slow, and be patient!
References
Linardon, J., Tylka, T. L., & Fuller‐Tyszkiewicz, M. (2021). Intuitive eating and its psychological correlates: A meta‐analysis. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 54(7), 1073–1098. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.23509
Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2012). Intuitive eating. St. Martin’s Griffin.