What Does Intuitive Eating Mean?
You might be asking “What’s intuitive eating anyways?”. Intuitive eating was created by two dietitians, and it brings together your mind and body through 10 principles. It is a way to honor your health while also meeting your physical and emotional needs. It’s more important to know what intuitive eating is not. It is not a diet, nor is it intended to promote weight loss. It will not include counting things like calories or carbohydrates. Intuitive eating is an anti-diet approach to your health. In this blog post we will explore the 10 principles of intuitive eating and what they mean.
Principle 1: Reject the Diet Mentality
As mentioned earlier, intuitive eating is not a diet. When you think of the word “diet” you likely see a short-term solution or have a very negative thought around it. If you’ve ever tried a fad diet and felt like a failure, you’re in the right place. Letting go of the current fad diets, and the ones yet to come, is the first step in intuitive eating. Once you realize these fad diets do not work and that they are more harmful than helpful, you can start rediscovering intuitive eating. There are also many food thoughts and habits you may have that you don’t realize are linked to dieting. An intuitive eating counselor can help you recognize these thoughts and habits and learn how to redirect them.
Principle 2: Honor Your Hunger
This principle is all about learning and honoring the internal hunger cues that we’re born with. If you have ever been around a baby, they know when they are hungry and they know when they are full. It may not be their next scheduled time to eat, but they recognize their hunger and let their parent know that they’re ready to eat. Chronic or long-term dieting can cause these hunger cues to disappear – why should your body tell you you’re hungry if you never listen to it? Many things happen to the body when starvation occurs (which can begin at 1,500 calories!) such as cravings, digestion changes, and increased salivation. Have you ever skipped breakfast, and maybe even lunch too, and felt like you had to eat everything in sight? That’s a great example of this! An intuitive eating counselor will help you learn what hunger feels like to you and how to honor it successfully.
Principle 3: Making Peace with Food
This principle is all about the unconditional permission to eat. There are no “good” or “bad” foods – throw those labels out the door. If a food is forbidden, that’s likely the food you’re going to want to eat. Let’s say you label grapes as a “bad” food and swear to never eat one again. Chances are, you are going to start craving and wanting that exact food, grapes. Many people feel like this principle gives you permission to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, and it does. But remember, this is just one of the ten principles. You can’t complete a puzzle with a missing piece. Working with an intuitive eating dietitian gives you the tools to conquer your fears around this principle.
Principle 4: Challenge the Food Police
The food police can be an outside source, like coworkers, family, friends, the media, or it can be internal like the thoughts inside your head. This is referring to those thoughts or people saying that a food is good or bad, and meaning you are good or bad for eating or not eating said food. This principle challenges the way we speak about food. There are many different food voices we can have, and an intuitive eating dietitian will help you see which one is predominant for you and how to think differently if needed.
Principle 5: Discover the Satisfaction Factor
What do you like about food? Is it the taste? Texture? Smell? Many factors make up what we like about a food or an activity, and we are all very different as well. One person could love broccoli while the next might despise it. The same goes for activity. Running might be something you don’t like doing, but you like lifting weights or doing yoga. This principle is all about finding out what YOU like. It also encompasses cravings. If you’re craving a cookie, will you be satisfied with eating an apple instead? I’m going to guess your answer is no, which is completely normal! As mentioned earlier, depravation and starvation leads to increased cravings. If you’re honoring your hunger, you are less likely to have constant cravings.
Principle 6: Feel Your Fullness
Principle two looked at hunger, and number six is about fullness. We can bring back the baby for this case too. They also know when they’re full and stop drinking their bottle. It may not be how much we felt like they needed, but it’s how much they needed for that time on that day. Just like #2, many factors growing up can affect how we feel and react towards fullness or satiety. One example is being part of the “clean plate club”- this puts the goal of eating to cleaning a plate versus achieving fullness. Eating to a comfortable fullness can lead to a positive association with food. If you eat past fullness to an “over-stuffed” feeling, it leads to a negative association. This could also happen if you eat but don’t eat enough, and are hungry again soon after. Working with an intuitive eating counselor can help you recognize fullness.
Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
This principle discusses healthy ways to manage emotions. If you tend to eat as a result of increased anxiety, stress, boredom, or other emotion, then you likely struggle with this principle. The goal is to not use food as a punishment, reward, or distraction for these increased feelings. Knowing what emotions tend to trigger eating for you is a good first step in learning to cope without food.
Principle 8: Respect Your Body
This principle starts with learning to accept your body. Genetics play a huge role in our body weight and distribution. Working through any negative body image or body dysmorphic thoughts is a big step in the intuitive eating process. Through this process, you will learn to respect your body for what it can do. There are many outside voices that come into play in this principle such as media and society. An intuitive eating counselor can help guide you through this process.
Principle 9: Exercise-Feel the Difference
What is your purpose for doing exercise? Is it to burn calories or to earn food? If so, this principle will challenge you! This principle teaches you how to switch your thought process to exercising for the purpose of feeling good instead. Exercise can affect you in many ways: increased energy levels, decreasing stress levels, sense of accomplishment, improved sleep, and much more! There are many ways to think through this principle, which can all be discussed with our intuitive eating dietitian.
Principle 10: Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition
The 10th and final principle is an important one, but there is a reason it is last. By the time you get to this principle, your relationship with food has become a healthy one. This is where we talk more about nutrition. This principle looks at feeding your body the food it needs to excel, while not worrying about food front and center. If you eat fast food for a week straight vs eating fast food once a week, you’re likely to feel the difference. If you don’t, that’s something an intuitive eating dietitian can help you explore even further. You will also look at balancing your food, so both your mind and body are happy and heathy.
The path towards intuitive eating does not look the same for everyone, one person might need to spend a week on a certain principle while another might need a month or even more. The process is self-paced and having someone to teach and listen as you go can be a valuable tool. Lucky for you, we have a certified intuitive eating counselor on our team of dietitians! This post explored a brief overview of each principle, but you might find yourself wanting to know more. Reach out today to schedule your first appointment!
Resources:
Intuitive Eating: a revolutionary anti-diet approach by Evelyn Tribole and Elsye Resch
https://www.evelyntribole.com/what-is-intuitive-eating/
Disclaimer: This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended as individual nutrition or medical advice
