What is Intuitive Eating?
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive Eating is a clickbait term nowadays so let’s clear up any confusion. Intuitive Eating is an anti-diet approach to one’s relationship with food, founded by two dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995. If you have not read the Intuitive Eating book yet – I highly suggest you add that and the accompanying workbook to your proverbial Amazon cart immediately.
Intuitive eating is an evidence-based framework that focuses on non-diet principles to develop a more positive relationship with food. Many people, and a quick google search, may tell you that intuitive eating is simply eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are full. While this is only slightly true, a big piece of intuitive eating is listening to your body’s cues which includes hunger and fullness.
Interoceptive Awareness is the foundation for intuitive eating. “Interoceptive awareness is the ability to perceive physical sensations that arise within your body”. Due to diet culture influence many people do not trust their interoceptive awareness and instead focus on external sources and cues such as rules, diet plans, and social media influencers.
What Are The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating?
The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating are broken up into two 2 categories. Those that Improve Interoceptive Awareness and those that Remove Obstacles to Interoceptive Awareness.
Improves Interoceptive Awareness:
1. Honor Your Hunger
2. Respect Your Fullness
3. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
4. Movement – Feel The Difference
Removes Obstacles to Interoceptive Awareness:
5. Reject the Diet Mentality
6. Make Peace with Food
7. Challenge the Food Police
8. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
9. Respect Your Body
10. Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition
Is Intuitive Eating Right for Me?
As a non-diet registered dietitian focusing my work primarily in the area of disordered eating and eating disorders, I believe that intuitive eating is for everyone that is interested in developing a positive relationship with food. That being said, everyone’s relationship and journey with intuitive eating is going to look different because we all have diverse bodies, minds, and experiences in life. For this reason, I highly recommend working with an experienced non-diet, intuitive eating dietitian for individualized support.
Studies have shown that a significant number of individuals who diet will likely progress into disordered eating behaviors and/or develop a full eating disorder. Raising intuitive eaters and focusing on this weight neutral approach is preventative in nature.
What Are the Benefits of Intuitive Eating?
There are many benefits to Intuitive Eating – we have listed a few studies and their outcomes below for reference. These studies have been provided from the Intuitive Eating Book mentioned in the beginning of this blog.
Ricciardelli 2016: Intuitive Eating was associated with the following benefits
Increased body appreciation and satisfaction
Positive emotional regulation
Increased satisfaction in life
Unconditional self-regard and optimism
Psychological hardiness
Greater motivation to exercise when focus is on enjoyment instead of guilt over food or appearance
Dockendorff 2006: adolescents who scored high on an intuitive eating scale exhibited:
Lower internalization of culturally thin ideals
Lower body dissatisfaction
Fewer mood problems or imbalances
Van Dyke & Drinkwater 2014: intuitive eating as associated with improve blood pressure readings, blood lipid numbers, and dietary intake
Plateau et al. 2016: a study with retired athletes suggested that intuitive eating may aid in reducing disordered eating behaviors and help athletes relearn to trust their bodies hunger and satiety cues after leaving their sport
A chart provided in the book is listed below to summarize the wealth of research the authors accumulated and reviewed regarding the benefits of intuitive eating:
Intuitive Eaters Have Lower
Disordered eating
Triglycerides
Emotional eating
Self silencing (suppressing thoughts, feelings and needs)
Loss of control eating
Binge Eating
Weight bias internalization
Blood pressure
Body dissatisfaction
Intuitive Eaters Have Higher
Self esteem
Well-being and optimism
Variety of foods eaten
Body appreciation and acceptance
HDL (helpful cholesterol)
Interoceptive awareness
Pleasure from eating
Proactive coping
Psychological hardiness
Unconditional self regard
Life satisfaction
What Are Some Common Misconceptions with Intuitive Eating?
Becoming an intuitive eater happens over night now that I know the principles
Intuitive eating is great for weight loss
Intuitive eating is a diet
Intuitive eating is not designed with those that have chronic health conditions in mind
You can be too “unhealthy” to benefit from intuitive eating
All intuitive eaters do is eat all the time with no focus on nutrition
In future blog posts we will dispel some of these myths and go into further details regarding the principles so stay tuned!
We’d Love to Hear From You!
Note to Self Nutrition LLC is an outpatient dietetics practice specializing in the treatment of eating disorders, women’s health and fertility including PCOS, endometriosis, and hormonal imbalances, diabetes and prediabetes, disordered eating, along with other chronic health conditions such as heart health, hypertension, and kidney disease. Owner and dietitian Lauren Hirschhorn-Tieu is passionate about empowering individuals to build trust with their relationship with food and their body. Lauren provides multiple services including nutritional counseling, recovery coaching, supervision and nutrition presentations. In person availability is offered in Denver. Virtual telehealth services are offered in Maryland, Virginia, Washington DC, Colorado, and Florida. We would be honored to join you on your journey to discovering food and body peace!
Contact us for more information regarding our services offered. To schedule a discovery call please visit this link. Be sure to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page.
