At its core, IE involves going back to the way we were naturally born to eat. When we were young, we ate when hungry and stopped when full, something we innately felt by listening to our body’s cues. Finding a way back to those internal cues is a large part of the intuitive eating practice. As a non-diet approach, IE involves meeting both physical and psychological needs, because mental health is equally important, and only you know what you need at any given time. Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach to health that helps you reconnect with your natural hunger signals. Beyond that, the 10 principles of intuitive eating provide you with the necessary tools to fight back against weight-obsessed culture.
Start learning the language of the body
As a former college athlete, I must admit this principle is one that I really struggled to figure out for a long time. If you’re in the same boat, or have used exercise to “earn” your right to eat in the past, it might take you a while to find your version of joyful movement, too. The difference boils down to why you’re doing the activity in the first place. Which means the donuts and ice cream mentioned earlier are morally neutral, as are fresh fruits and vegetables, or a balanced meal with whole grains and lean protein. Yes, they are nutritionally different (we’ll talk more about nutrition in a bit) but eating the former doesn’t make you a “bad” person just like eating the latter won’t make you a “good” person.
Movement – Feel the Difference
Food is not good or bad and you are not good or bad for what you eat or don’t eat. Before that, Thelma Wayler founded a weight management program in 1973 called Green Mountain at Fox Run, based in Vermont. Though this should be an intuitive process, for many people it’s not.
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The point is, by honoring our unique preferences and tastes, we can find a balance between nourishment and enjoyment in our eating habits more often. We also relinquish the pressure to eat “perfectly” all the time, along with other unrealistic expectations. Diet culture often teaches us to ignore these aspects of eating in favor of rigid rules and restrictions.
Eating on the go or cleaning our plates hasn’t taught our bodies to recognize when we are full. Intuitive eating wants us to slow down and learn what being full feels like so that we can eat exactly what our body is craving – nothing more and nothing less. Years of diet culture can have us believing some crazy strict lies surrounding calories and certain foods. Instead of accepting these thoughts as “normal”, challenge how they apply to you and throw anything out the window that isn’t serving you and your health goals. Yes, food keeps us alive, but it is also meant to be enjoyed and savored.
Principle 6: Feel your Fullness
Alix completed her Master’s in Clinical Nutrition at NYU. Alix is passionate about helping others find a more positive and peaceful relationship with food and body via Intuitive Eating. She feels strongly that there is no single image of health and that diets do not work. Alix specializes in Intuitive Eating, Eating Disorders and Disordered Eating, and body image work.
This approach to food, while temporarily comforting, often perpetuates a cycle of guilt and distress. First, it’s important to recognize that emotional eating is okay, and in fact, a normal coping response. It’s also important to develop tools other than eating when emotions run high so that food becomes one of many coping skills in your toolbox for you to choose from. You may also experience a lot of difficult emotions around food, but you can begin to work with those emotions by viewing them with kindness and self-compassion. If this feels like a foreign idea, check out this post on how to practice self-compassion, in which I go over what self-compassion means, why it matters, and how you can practice it.
Honor your health — gentle nutrition
Intuitive eating includes mindful eating, but it focuses on physical activity for the sake of feeling good, rejecting the diet mentality, eating the foods you enjoy, and respecting your body. As with all things related to nutrition, the answer is not so simple. Whether intuitive eating helps with weight loss largely depends on the person. By definition, part of intuitive eating is learning to let go of weight stigma and diet culture.
Reliance on Internal Hunger and Satiety Cues
These scenarios are all too common in our fast-paced world, and it’s normal to recognise yourself in one (or all) of them. But while they’re understandable, they don’t support your body’s true needs or your overall wellness. As with most things, eating intuitively is a process, and most of us can’t unlearn harmful diet messages overnight. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5556586/ Be sure to give yourself plenty of grace and patience as you embark on this next chapter. If you never deprive yourself of your favorite foods again, you’ll notice that you don’t have the urge to overdo it because you can trust that those foods will always be there. There is a misconception that intuitive eating means that you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want.
Create a Peaceful Connection with Food
“Instead of making a beeline for food, pause and ask, ‘What am I feeling? This will help you differentiate between physical hunger cues and emotion-driven eating. Each principle offers a different way to tune into your body, challenge diet culture and approach food with curiosity instead of judgment. Together, they lay the foundation for a healthier, more peaceful relationship with food. Intuitive Eating unimeal app reviews is a self-care framework that sets the foundation for re-establishing trust in your body’s innate wisdom. It’s not a diet, and it takes a weight-inclusive approach to wellness.
It means feeling good even if you indulge, feeling good when you eat your favorite treat (like peanut butter), feeling good when you’ve gone a few days without vegetables. I’m Sarah, a UK registered dietitian and eating disorder specialist. I am passionate about helping individuals and families overcome the challenges of eating disorders, disordered eating, and mental health conditions.
- The fifth of the 10 principles of intuitive eating encourages finding pleasure in food.
- This principle encourages you to pause and notice, without judgment, how you’re feeling during and after meals.
- Here are 13 of the best books on healthy eating, as well as tips on how to choose the best book for you.
- You might also notice their changing preferences – one day they eat tons of fruit, the next day all they want is pasta with butter.
- We are not born tracking calories and measuring the portions of everything we eat.
- Understanding that not everyone is going to look the exact same is the first step in loving yourself and using food to fuel your unique body composition.
Are There Any Downsides to Practicing Intuitive Eating in Lieu of a Traditional Diet?
If you take anything away from this guide, let it be that intuitive eating is not a diet. A non-diet (or anti-diet) approach takes the focus away from judging success based on a number on the scale and places it on behaviors that promote health. Intuitive eating isn’t a free-for-all — it’s a framework that helps you rebuild trust with your body. It’s based on 10 guiding principles developed by dietitian Evelyn Tribole and nutrition therapist Elyse Resch. Instead, think of them as tools to help you unlearn harmful diet patterns and reconnect with your natural cues. The initial step in Intuitive Eating is the complete rejection of the diet mentality.
Recognise your hunger
Muting the Food Police is a key step to returning to Intuitive Eating because it will finally allow you to start listening to your body’s innate wisdom. Sometimes you might need to eat at a 6 because that’s the only time you’re able to eat. Sometimes you might eat at a 2 because you didn’t have time to eat at a 3 or 4. If you’re sick of dieting, Intuitive Eating could be the solution you’ve been looking for. Enjoy monthly non-diet and body liberation insights, practical strategies and tools, non-diet recipes, and the support of a like-minded community. It might mean yoga, swimming, gardening, dancing, or simply walking your dog.