what is intuitive eating
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What is Intuitive Eating?

What is Intuitive Eating? I’m so glad you asked! Here I’ll cover the basics of Intuitive Eating: what it is, what it’s not, and a simple overview to get you started.

What is intuitive eating? learn the basics

What if there was a way that you could ditch diets forever and actually become healthier?

You might even think that sounds too good to be true, but I am here to tell you that it’s not.

Hi, my name is Erin and I am an Intuitive Eater.

I wish I could say that I invented Intuitive Eating because it is so mind-blowingly brilliant that it makes me want to stop strangers on the street and tell them about it. But, alas, I did not invent it.

Intuitive Eating has actually been around since the 90’s but has started to garner some mainstream media attention lately with the rising tide of the body positive movement and recent backlash against diets. You might have seen the anti-diet article in the New York Times or the Intuitive Eating article in the Atlantic.

Intuitive Eating was developed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch who first published their book “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works” in 1995, beckoning readers to “Make Peace with Food, Free Yourself from Chronic Dieting Forever, Rediscover the Pleasures of Eating”. The two authors are prominent dietitians and they developed Intuitive Eating in response to a common problem so many of their clients had: feeling stuck in a cycle of yo-yo dieting.

I was stuck in this cycle myself for nearly two decades. I tried every diet and wore every pants size and never got it right. But in the summer of 2017 I discovered Intuitive Eating, began listening to podcasts about it, read the book for myself and decided to give it a shot. 

Here I am nearly two years later singing its praises and blogging about Intuitive Eating so that other women can find the freedom and peace with food that has changed my life.

What is Intuitive Eating?

Besides the book itself, Intuitive Eating is an ANTI diet approach to food and health. Intuitive Eating fundamentally rejects diets, rules about food and attempts to lose weight.

Rather than looking to external factors to tell us when, what and how much to eat, Intuitive Eating looks to the internal wisdom of our own bodies and teaches us to reconnect to and honor that intuition.

What is intuitive eating?

But it’s not only about food. Intuitive Eating is bigger and broader than simply what you’re eating. Intuitive Eating is made up of 10 principles that address your mindset, your food and your body. When all 10 principles are applied, you can experience a fuller and richer health mentally, physically, emotionally, and (the way I do it) even spiritually.

Here are a few of my favorite explanations of Intuitive Eating:

“Intuitive eating is a dynamic mind-body integration of instinct, emotion, and rational thought. It is a personal process of honoring your health by paying attention to the messages of your body and meeting your physical and emotional needs. It is an inner journey of discovery that puts you front and center; you are the expert of your own body.”

Intuitive Eating Workbook by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

“Intuitive Eating is both incredibly simple, and deep, complex well of psychological and nutritional study. Essentially, the mission is to deprogram the diet-addled mind so you can learn to eat again like you did as a child — by instinct and intuition.”

Kelsey Miller, Refinery 29

10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

Intuitive Eating has 10 core principles that help its followers unlearn dieting and begin to heal their relationship with food and their bodies.

Here is an overview of the 10 principles so you can begin to get a sense of the depth in this anti-diet framework.

What is Intuitive Eating? 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

(1) Reject the Diet Mentality – Diets can’t and don’t live up to their promises. If you keep buying the lie that thin equals happy, you will never break free of diets. Let go of the false hope of weight loss. 

(2) Honor Your Hunger –  Listen to your body’s hunger cues (not diet rules or even what your own judgement says) and eat when you’re hungry.

(3) Make Peace With Food – Food is not your enemy. Peace comes when you give yourself unconditional permission to eat.

(4) Challenge The Food Police – Learn to question and silence the critical, bossy, self-righteous food police messages you’re bombarded with daily.

(5) Feel Your Fullness – Learn to eat mindfully and listen to your body’s fullness cues.

(6) Discover the Satisfaction Factor – Food is meant to be enjoyed. You are allowed to take pleasure in eating.

(7) Cope With Your Emotions Without Using Food – Food can’t fix your problems. Find other ways to nurture yourself that don’t involve eating.

(8) Respect Your Body – Accept your genetics and your body just as it is right now. You don’t have to love it, but you do have to respect it.

(9) Exercise – Feel The Difference – Exercise is not meant to be punishment. Find something you actually enjoy and embrace how it makes your body feel. 

(10) Honor Your Health – Gentle Nutrition – Gentle nutrition is about finding what works for your taste buds and makes you feel good. Don’t worry about eating perfectly. 

For a deeper dive into each of the 10 principles, check out Season 1 of my podcast Intuitive Eating for Christian Women which unpacks the 10 principles of intuitive eating, one at a time.

For an ever deeper dive into the Christian perspective on each principle, read my Intuitive Eating Principles for Christian Women post HERE.

Episode 4: Introduction to Intuitive Eating

If you’d rather listen than read, check out the Intuitive Eating for Christian Women podcast episode that unpacks the 10 principles specifically from a faith-based perspective!

Listen on Apple Podcasts

What It’s Not

Now that you have a sense of what intuitive eating is, let me clarify what it is NOT.

  • Intuitive Eating is NOT a diet
  • It is NOT the “hunger and fullness” diet
  • It is NOT the “love yourself to lose weight” diet
  • It is NOT for weight loss!

Is It Right for You?

If you are sick of dieting, tired of hating the way you look and longing for peace with food and your body, then do yourself a favor and learn some more about Intuitive Eating.

Here are a few of my favorite resources to help you learn more:

Whether you’re an emotional eater who feels out of control around food and uses food as a coping mechanism, or you’re a food restrictor (like I was!) counting calories, containers and macros and doing anything to try and stay in control, or whether you’re a member of the “clean eating” club where you turn your nose up to anything that’s not organic and non-GMO, you have something to learn about yourself and about food from Intuitive Eating.

If you value your physical, mental and emotional health and have ever followed a single diet in your life, you really do need to hear the other argument, the anti-diet approach, and then you can judge for yourself whether you think it’s right for you.

Benefits of Intuitive Eating

The benefits are extensive and invaluable. Of course, they will be different for everybody, depending on your unique and personal history with food and body image.

Since my journey began in 2017, I’ve seen so many benefits – large and small. To give you a taste, these are a 5 benefits that have made a big impact in my life:

  1. My mind is able to rest now that I’m not thinking about food 24-7.
  2. I don’t have to stress about how much or when to eat anymore, my body will tell me.
  3. I have all this free time now that was previously occupied with meal prepping, meal planning or working out. It’s made space in my life for me to begin following my passion for writing.
  4. It has helped me to embrace the imperfections of my body and just make peace with it. My body is not the center of my world anymore. I’m finally able to feel some real gratitude for the body I’ve got right now.
  5. The awareness I’ve cultivated around my own thoughts, behaviors and patterns with food has helped me to become a more mindful person in other areas of my life, too. For me mindfulness helps so much with stress management, it makes me more calm, and it helps me to stay in the moment… ya know, where life is happening!

Intuitive Eating for Christians

This is kind of my specialty… here are a few resources you can check out if you want to learn more about intuitive eating specifically from a faith-based perspective:

what is intuitive eating? takeaway

What is Intuitive Eating? It’s the opposite of dieting!

What’s the one thing holding you back from ditching diets once and for all? What questions do you have? Drop a comment below or email me [email protected] – let’s chat!

Erin L Todd Ginger In Progress