Intuitive Eating 101

Some of you may already know I'm currently working towards my Intuitive Eating Counselor certification, so I thought I would take some time to describe more in detail what Intuitive Eating actually is! (Mainly because this modality - along with most nutrition information out there - is often misconstrued and co-opted by diet culture, and I want to set the record straight). 

A little history: in 1995, two Registered Dietitians (Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole) created and published the first edition of the book after realizing traditional "diets" they were prescribing to patients just weren't working.  Now it's been over 25 years since the first book came out: the 4th revision was just released & includes more weight-inclusive and social justice language.  There's also now over 200+ scientific studies and evidenced-based journal articles backing up this approach.  It's hard to argue against when evidence based is behind the name. :)  

For me, I remember reading the 3rd edition back in 2010 during my nutrition counseling course and being blown away.  FINALLY I was made aware of an eating approach I could get behind (that wasn't riddled in diet culture).  I was also at a place in my Dietetics degree where I was really questioning whether I "fit in" with the other students....yes, it's not surprising I struggle with imposter syndrome in almost every area of my life, my journey to my career being no different. My junior year I was going back and forth whether this degree was really right for me - I thought "Should I have studied psychology instead??"  I knew I wanted to work in eating disorders, but hardly any of my dietetics courses focused on how to counsel clients, but rather more on prescriptive diets for medical conditions.  It didn't feel authentic to me.  That is until I got my hands on this book and got to practice nutrition counseling on a fellow student for the first time.  I realized then that once I was able to include the psychology of eating and motivational interviewing, it all finally clicked. 

I remember our professor asking us to journal after reading each chapter/IE principle, and being surprised that I still was being succumbed to diet culture messages 8 years later, (after which I considered myself "recovered" from an eating disorder). While it still took me a few years to learn about Health at Every Size and Fat Activism, Intuitive Eating and that nutrition counseling course were definitely the first gateways into my career trajectory now.

Below I've outlined the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating, straight from the 4th Edition of their book: Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach.

Principle 1: Reject the Diet Mentality

Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you the false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at diet culture that promotes weight loss and the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet or food plan might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

Principle 2: Honor Your Hunger

Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for rebuilding trust in yourself and in food.

Principle 3: Make Peace with Food

Call a truce; stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing. When you finally “give in” to your forbidden foods, eating will be experienced with such intensity it usually results in Last Supper overeating and overwhelming guilt.

Principle 4: Challenge the Food Police

Scream a loud no to thoughts in your head that declare you’re “good” for eating minimal calories or “bad” because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The food police monitor the unreasonable rules that diet culture has created. The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loudspeaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the food police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

Principle 5: Discover the Satisfaction Factor

The Japanese have the wisdom to keep pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In our compulsion to comply with diet culture, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence—the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content.

Principle 6: Feel Your Fullness 

In order to honor your fullness, you need to trust that you will give yourself the foods that you desire. Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full. Pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what your current hunger level is. 

Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness 

First, recognize that food restriction, both physically and mentally, can, in and of itself, trigger loss of control, which can feel like emotional eating. Find kind ways to comfort, nurture, distract, and resolve your issues. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, and anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won’t fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you. But food won’t solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger may only make you feel worse in the long run. You’ll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion. 

Principle 8: Respect Your Body 

Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size. But mostly, respect your body so you can feel better about who you are. It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical of your body size or shape. All bodies deserve dignity.

Principle 9: Movement—Feel the Difference 

Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie-burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling ou
t of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. 

Principle 10: Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition 

Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel good. Remember that you don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or become unhealthy, from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters. Progress, not perfection, is what counts.

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To be completely honest, the very first principle is probably the hardest to overcome.  That is because most of us look to external cues and information for when and what to eat: time, nutritional value, desire for weight loss, etc. This is why rejecting the diet mentality is the principle everyone needs to tackle first (and yes, this probably will take time) in order to fully embrace Intuitive Eating.  Think of a newborn baby:  they know EXACTLY when they are hungry, and how much they want to eat.  Imagine trying to force an infant to follow a traditional eating "schedule," attempting to make them eat when they aren't asking for nourishment; or worse, restricting them of breastmilk or formula due to "weight concerns."  If you have ever been a parent to a newborn, you know how laughable (not to mention IMPOSSIBLE) this would be; also, the last point would be NEGLIGENT.  So I'm asking you all: why do we do those exact things to ourselves???  We all upon birth are capable with innate ability to feed ourselves EXACTLY the right amount of nutrition - it isn't until someone or something (i.e diet culture) makes us believe otherwise.   

I recommend EVERYONE go out and buy this book, check it out at your local library, listen to podcasts with the authors being interviewed....get familiar with this information, as I have only scratched the surface here.  My last point I will make is this: while it is rare in the residential level of care that my clients get to practice Intuitive Eating (usually because they are medically unstable, don't have accurate hunger/fullness cues, or are just very early in their ED recovery journey),  I do have the opportunity at times to be their first introduction into what intuitively eating could look like for them in the future.  Sometimes I'll use one of our nutrition counseling sessions to go over the principles above, and just process their emotions or reflections on them; which ones they are able to grasp readily, or which ones would seem difficult to implement. We have conversations on how the eating disorder, their mental health/trauma history, or body image struggles have inhibited their ability to nourish themselves, and I suggest small changes they can make in the short-term.  When I did work in outpatient, many of my clients got to practice intuitive eating, and it was remarkable to see their journeys unfold.  And don't get me wrong:  I do sometimes have clients for whatever reason ARE able to start implementing intuitive eating in residential treatment, and that is also amazing to witness!  

I cannot wait to continue learning in this space, and to eventually complete supervision with the OG Intuitive Eating RD's.  As I wrote above, reading the book's newest edition really is like reading an entirely new resource because this area of research has blown up in the last decade. The 3rd edition truly changed my life, and I know this 4th edition will do the same <3