The Secret Behind Intuitive Eating

What is intuitive eating?

At its essence, intuitive eating (IE) is a mind-body approach to eating that includes honoring your hunger and fullness levels. It’s actually the opposite of a diet; instead of following rules, you are listening to your own intuition. IE promotes a healthy attitude toward food and body image, and can help you break the cycle of chronic dieting and heal your relationship with food.

A No Rules Eating Style

You read that right. With IE there is no labeling of foods as good or bad, but rather a focus on eating to nourish and honor your body. IE recognizes that there is room for both nourishing foods and “play” foods in your life and that those play foods should be eaten without guilt or judgment.

So rather than measuring out the recommended amount of pasta, an intuitive eater would use their internal cues to determine how much they eat. Some days this may mean two bowls of pasta other days it may be less. Either way, and whether it was whole wheat pasta, garbanzo bean pasta, or classic white pasta, they would eat and enjoy without guilt.

Intuitive Eating is Normal Eating

We are all born intuitive eaters, but somewhere along the way many of us lose this innate sense. Instead, we turn to outside cues such as our parents, media, health experts, and friends to tell us what (“choose a salad over a burger”) and how much (“finish all your dinner if you want dessert;” “just ½ cup is a serving”) we should eat.

Another disruption to intuitive eating is our emotions. Whether stress, boredom, or sadness, at some point, many of us start to turn to food as a coping mechanism.

Mindful eating is an important component of intuitive eating. It can help you distinguish emotional eating from hunger eating. Likewise, it can help you recognize habits such as fast eating, feeling the need to clean your plate, or mindless snacking.

How Can a “No Rules” Diet Be Healthy?

You are probably wondering how can eating whatever, whenever, and how much you want can be healthy. Look at it this way, IE is not saying “I don’t care about my health and what I put in my body.” Instead, it’s quite the opposite. Intuitive eating means respecting your body and honoring your health, which means most of the time you probably will choose foods that nourish in appropriate amounts. It also means recognizing that it’s ok to choose foods that are less nourishing or eat until we are overfull now and then.

How Diets Can Fail Us

Unlike IE, diets are generally restrictive by nature, and this can lead to a problematic cycle that goes something like this:

• We start following an overly rigid diet (ignoring our hunger cues and cravings) and we become preoccupied with food. We break the diet and give in to our cravings. We feel failure, shame, and other negative emotions. We respond to these emotions by overeating. We feel bad about ourselves again. We start a new diet plan. Eventually, we break the diet again and so the cycle continues.

Put simply, dieting can lead to feelings of psychological distress that lead us to feel bad and stray away from the diet even further, making the dieting behaviors ineffective and counterproductive.

What the Research Says

IE is different in that it’s not a diet plan and its focus is not on weight. Rather, IE emphasizes the importance of loving and respecting your body as it is today, regardless of shape or size.

Interestingly though, IE is associated with a lower BMI. Additionally, a 2017 French study found that intuitive eaters tended to have healthier diets overall.

Research also suggests that IE may help with weight maintenance, improved psychological wellbeing, improved eating behaviors, and improved health indicators other than BMI, such as blood pressure and cholesterol. However, it may not help with weight loss or higher rates of physical activity.  IE can also help increase body satisfaction.

How Intuitive Eating Can Help You

There are many ways that IE can help you feel you improve your health and wellbeing, especially if you struggle with body dissatisfaction, chronic dieting, or emotional eating. In summary, IE can help you:

• Let go of rules and restrictions.
• Let go of negative feelings or judgments surrounding your food choices.
• Let go of perfection.
• Create eating habits that help you thrive.
• Learn how your emotions and feelings affect your food intake.
• Learn to distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger.
• Learn to trust your gut instead of relying on “experts” or diet plans.
• Respect and love your body as it is today.
• Find exercise and movement that you enjoy doing.
• Honor your health; recognize that the big picture of health includes much more than weight.

To learn more about IE, check out www.intuitiveeating.org, the website created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, who first coined the term Intuitive eating back in 1995.

Have you tried intuitive eating? What tactics have you incorporated that helped you find success? Share in the comments below!