When you remove guilt and morality from eating, it allows you to truly feel the physical sensations you get from eating. Once you’re in tune with these feelings, you’ll likely notice that eating some foods make you feel great and other foods make you feel not so great. Intuitive Eating is an evidence-based self-care framework that honours both physical and mental health. It’s a weight-inclusive practice that enables people to let go of food rules and tune in to their body’s innate wisdom. Once the restrictive mindset is dismantled, the focus shifts to honoring the body’s physiological signals.
Do you instinctively label foods as good or bad and feel guilty when you “give reviews of unimeal in” to those bad foods? So while I do believe that intuitive eating is for everyone, I also acknowledge that it will look different for every single person. Everyone deserves to have a positive relationship with food and dieting is not the solution to such. Intuitive eating dietitians and intuitive eaters themselves are of course allowed to be thin. Body shaming is never acceptable, not matter the body size, and that is not my intention with bringing up this topic of inclusivity.
There are no “good” or “bad” foods in intuitive eating; only the recognition that all foods serve a purpose and that all foods can be part of a balanced eating pattern. By granting yourself this freedom, you remove the allure of “forbidden” foods and reduce the likelihood of binging or overindulging when they’re around. Becoming an intuitive eater takes time and practice to unlearn all of the diet-y practices that we have that currently seem like second nature. And ironically, it probably won’t feel “intuitive” at the beginning.
The Unapologetic Life
Unfollow social media accounts that promote diets, weight loss, or diet culture. Surround yourself with positive, weight-inclusive messaging about food and body. Intuitive eating isn’t designed as a weight loss plan, and its goal isn’t to change your size or shape. That said, some people do experience weight shifts as their bodies find their natural balance without the stress or restriction of dieting. The focus is really on building a peaceful, sustainable relationship with food and your body, which usually feels a lot better than chasing numbers on a scale in the long run.
It also provides actionable steps for becoming a more sustainable eater. I want to also make the point that intuitive eating is flexible. It’s not like a diet, where you have to do it perfectly — if you make a mistake, you’ve blown it.
Gut feelings: the surprising connection between fibre and your mental well-being
In the bestselling “Not a Diet Book,” he offers refreshingly straightforward advice on how to adopt healthier habits, boost your training routine, and improve your life. Personal trainer James Smith is known for his blunt approach to fitness and nutrition. It also suggests daily exercises intended to help you reflect, practice self-compassion, and cultivate gratitude. Intuitive eating is the perfect combination of using logic, emotion, and instinct to eat, move, and live in a way that best serves you.
That pressure builds up, and over time, it can turn eating into a source of stress instead of nourishment. If you have a health condition, it’s important to work with your healthcare team and honor any medical needs. Intuitive eating can actually help you rebuild trust with your body and food, which is a powerful part of healing. It’s not about ignoring nutrition or medical advice; it’s about finding a compassionate, personalized balance. The first principle is basically about calling out the lies diet culture has sold us.
- It is hard to reject the diet mentality if you are critical of your body size and shape.
- So the key is to stop having rules around food and really listen to your body.
- Besides, exercise isn’t the best tool for burning extra calories anyway.
- In my book, I discuss how you can take control of your hunger and make intermittent fasting intuitive.
- With recommendations like chew 20 times, eat small bites, and choose modest portions, mindful eating quickly gets tied up in diet culture.
- One study found that eating intuitively may promote post-partum weight loss without the required weighing, measuring, recording, and calorie counting involved in traditional weight loss programs.
Make Peace With Food
Intuitive eating can be challenging to attempt alone, so I highly recommend working with a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor or a practice who specializes in IE, like my practice. You’ll also want to dive into the literature, starting with the Intuitive Eating book (fourth edition) by Resche and Tribole. If you want more, check out this list of my go-to intuitive eating books that even an IE expert will find helpful.
Feel Your Fullness
Instead, we’re just bombarded with advertising from commercial weight loss companies, and these companies prefer to provide anecdotal evidence and exaggerated testimonials. Because there’s money to be made in the weight loss industry, and a lot of it. The diet industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and growing. So, let’s look at the current body of evidence for weight loss, health, and Intuitive Eating. To understand why there’s been a shift to weight-neutral approaches such as Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size®, it’s essential to look at the traditional model of health. Learning to cope with emotions in different ways is challenging if you are used to turning to certain foods.
#3: Make Peace with Food
This book, which many reviewers call the ultimate resource for parents, could make a great gift for any soon-to-be parent in your life. What’s more, it includes a variety of recipes and nutritional information to make mealtime a breeze. Because this book is quite thorough and research-heavy, it is an especially great read for science lovers and health enthusiasts. With plenty of research and years of experience to back up his claims, Lustig offers a science-based look at how changing what we put on our plates can affect our health and the planet. The book investigates the connection among diet, health, and chronic disease. Unlike other options on this list, the book isn’t designed to be read cover to cover.
Intro to the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
With time, you’ll develop the skills to identify negative or distorted thoughts and replace them with more positive and rational thoughts. The Food Police can be an overpowering voice that has developed through years of living in diet culture. Identifying it when it surfaces is the first step towards changing https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5556586/ that negative self-talk.
Learn to Revel in That Satisfied Feeling
What matters most in your intuitive eating journey is consistency. Over time, you’ll notice that the freedom to eat what nourishes you is what brings you pleasure, satisfaction, and feeling great about yourself. A popular concept within intuitive eating is the 80/20 rule — aiming to nourish your body with wholesome, satisfying foods about 80% of the time, while allowing 20% for indulgence and pleasure. This balance supports both physical health and mental freedom without rigid restriction. Intuitive eating means listening to your body’s hunger and fullness cues instead of following strict diets, timetables, or eating when you’re triggered by emotions. Additionally, years of dieting may have left you feeling “out of control” around certain foods.
Check out my full blog post on why Intuitive Eating doesn’t work to learn my expert opinion on this topic, and some helpful Intuitive Eating troubleshooting if you’ve tried it out and struggled. We all have different genetics, health conditions, preferences, goals, activity levels etc., and Intuitive Eating honors these differences. Emotional eating is eating in response to emotions like boredom, anger, sadness, or loneliness. Eating isn’t just about the nutrients and energy derived from food. So, to prioritize weight as the main determinant of health would be remiss. There are potential biological and psychological risks involved with restrictive diets.
How Do I Start Intuitive Eating?
Ultimately, respecting your body means giving it the care and consideration we all deserve. Many people fear that they will “overdo” it if they suddenly have unlimited access to their favorite foods. Our culture has created an arbitrary expectation of what we are “supposed to” look like and how we are “supposed to” eat.
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
Learning to recognize and honor hunger is one step you can take to repair your relationship with food and your body. A crucial (and challenging!) first step toward intuitive eating is to reject the diet mentality. Even one small hope that the next diet could work can prevent you from becoming an intuitive eater.
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