What Is Intuitive Eating? 3 Main Principles of Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating is a lifestyle that emphasizes being in tune with your body’s internal cues, such as physical hunger, energy, and wellness signals, with the goal of making food choices a natural process. Sometimes called “gentle nutrition” or an “anti-diet,” intuitive eating discourages traditional dieting tactics such as counting calories, restricting “unhealthy foods,” designing restrictive meal plans, or abiding by scheduled mealtimes.

The intuitive eating model results from the work of dieticians Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, who first published the theory in 1995. A related model is “mindful eating,” a concept that embraces satisfaction but also includes a traditional diet approach with restricted portions.

Intuitive eating is a lifestyle process rather than a one-time diet checklist—here’s how the process works:

• Release the culture of dieting. The first step of intuitive eating is to break down your preconceived notions around dieting as well as your relationship with food. This will vary from person to person—for instance, letting go of the “diet mentality” notion that lower weight means healthier or that food restriction is physically or morally superior to eating what you crave.
• Relearn your intuition around eating. The heart of intuitive eating is reaccessing your intuition around food. Babies are born with a natural food sense—crying when they’re hungry and eating until they satisfy their hunger—and intuitive eating aims to reclaim that cycle for adult eaters.
• Check in with your body. The key to intuitive eating is to pay attention to your body’s reaction to different foods and eating patterns—for instance, taking note of which foods give you the most energy, what mealtimes work best for your body, or how much food in a single sitting satisfies your hunger. As you increase your eating mindfulness, you’ll be able to make the food choices that serve your unique needs and eventually become intuitive.

There are a few principles of intuitive eating, including:

1. 1. Respect yourself. Many diets can reinforce unhealthy thinking about your body or your emotions—for instance, prioritizing weight loss above health, becoming preoccupied with healthy eating, or berating the practice of emotional eating. Intuitive eating is a non-diet, in which the goal is to respect your body and your emotions, releasing ideas of diet culture like restriction or self-deprecation.
2. 2. Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. While most diet programs focus on restricting your diet in some way—whether in calories, health benefits, or macros like carbohydrates—intuitive eating focuses on giving up restricted or disordered eating and embracing the unconditional permission to eat what you want, when you want to eat it. Through satisfying your cravings, you may find that foods that were once “off-limits” aren’t as appealing when they are not restricted.
3. 3. Seek satisfaction. The goal for a meal for an intuitive eater is the satisfaction factor—as opposed to restriction or even fullness. Many intuitive eaters emphasize paying attention to how each food tastes, allowing yourself to enjoy every bite and feel your fullness cues. When you’re truly satisfied with an eating experience, you feel a sense of emotional fulfillment and will naturally stop eating; when you’re unsatisfied, you may notice yourself turning to supplementary snacking that can make you feel frustrated or unhealthy.

Here are a few things to keep in mind if you’re considering intuitive eating:

• Weight loss is not the goal. The primary consideration to keep in mind with intuitive eating is that it is not a weight loss (or weight gain) program—and in fact, having a weight goal or body mass index (BMI) goal in mind when practicing intuitive eating can be antithetical to the model itself.
• Other dietary restrictions can complicate things. Intuitive eating revolves around not having any restrictions in food choices, so it can be difficult if you have mandatory diet restrictions due to allergies, cholesterol or health concerns, or religious exemptions.
• May require consultation with a professional. As with most food approaches, you should consult a registered dietitian, nutritionist, certified intuitive eating counselor, or other licensed health professional before you begin following a new model.
  

Functional foods are whole or fortified fare that can potentially provide health benefits when consumed as part of a regular diet. Since these foods have yet to be legally defined, it’s important that consumers research any claims related to nutritional value and consult an accredited nutritionist or dietician before incorporating new foods into their diets. This article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for nutritional advice from a trained professional.

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