Eat intuitively. We are born this way, but at some point we become distracted by external cues, rules, and eating habits that tell us what, when, and how to eat.
If you’ve ever watched a baby eat, you’ve probably seen them choose what they want to eat in the amount they feel comfortable with, and then stop when they’ve had enough. Simple.
Intuitive eating is an approach that focuses on the body’s internal hunger and satiety cues and teaches believers to reject food culture and its influences. It was developed in 1995 by nutritionists Evelyn Tribor and Elise Resch as a way to advise clients to recover from restrictive eating and body shaming. A book called Intuitive Eating, published shortly thereafter, provided a framework of 10 basic principles to help readers incorporate non-dietary approaches into their lives.
The 10 basic principles of intuitive eating are:
Reject the diet mindset: Delete anything that promotes dieting, including books and social media accounts.
Respect your hunger. Eat when you’re hungry. Don’t suppress it or ignore it.
Make peace with food. Food is not the enemy. Make it a pleasurable experience and give yourself unconditional permission to eat.
Challenge the food police. Ignore or challenge the inner voice that makes you feel bad about what you’re eating, and reject the idea that food has moral value.
Find out what makes you happy. Eat what you want and enjoy the feel, taste, and aroma of your food.
Feel full. Know your internal hunger and fullness cues and eat mindfully.
Use kindness to deal with your emotions and comfort yourself without food.
Respect your body. Accept your “genetic blueprint” and stop trying to make your body something it’s not meant to be.
Movement – feel the difference. Stop punishing your body with exercise aimed at weight loss. Move in a way that feels good.
Take care of your health – Gentle nutrition: Nourish your body both physically and mentally.
Intuitive Eating is not intended to be a weight loss tool. In recent years, it has become closely associated with the “Health at Every Size” movement, which denies that weight is an indicator of health and promotes fair and unbiased care for all people, regardless of their size.
What Intuitive Eating Gets Right
As someone who has advised countless clients on their nutrition, I wholeheartedly embrace the principles of intuitive eating. I believe that rejecting weight as the main indicator of success, learning healthy habits rather than focusing solely on the number on the scale, rejecting restrictive diets, finding and listening to your own internal hunger and satiety cues, enjoying food, and treating your body with respect are all essential ingredients for good nutrition and overall physical and psychological health.
We’ve been fooled by the diet and wellness industries into believing that willpower and going without is an honor, that hunger is to be ignored or suppressed, and that “health” only means thinness, even if it contradicts a person’s natural shape and size. Intuitive Eating challenges this idea, and that’s a good thing.
Many people worry that without rules and restrictions, they will lose control over certain foods. IE removes the judgment and classification of food based on morality and teaches believers that food is neither “good” nor “bad.” When a food is no longer off-limits, we are less likely to overeat it because we see it as just another food, not something special or forbidden.
The problem with intuitive eating
Although IE is advertised as being suitable for everyone, this is not the case. Eating is complex, and it is a biological fact that some people are unable to listen to hunger and fullness cues and thus have trouble solving eating problems. What and how we eat reflects several factors, including deeply held core beliefs about food and our bodies, hormones, mental health, socio-economic status, the environment, and more. (PMID: 33921286) “Failing” with intuitive eating because it wasn’t right for you in the first place can lead to guilt and shame that the program should have been disbanded.
In a recent New York Times interview with Tribole and Resch, Tribole said that people who don’t get IE working are probably not following all the principles. This is an irresponsible perspective that is reminiscent of the diet industry’s habit of blaming those who fail on impossible diets. In my opinion, denying the possibility that even modest weight loss can lead to improved health shows a willful disregard for existing research.
IE does not recommend that weight loss, even for health purposes, be viewed as beneficial. The evidence regarding the link between excess weight and negative health outcomes is very clear, and for many people losing weight can mean the difference between life and death. (PMID: 28455679), (PMID: 40423979), (PMID: 39487296), (PMID: 33882682)
In fact, many IE proponents say that weight cycling is more dangerous than obesity, citing the statistic that 95% of diets fail. Both of these statements are false and unsupported by current evidence. 95% of diets don’t fail, but the doctor who first made this claim has since debunked it.
Weight cycling may have negative health effects, but a new study finds no causal link between it and an increased risk of clinical harm. (Citation) Researchers in this study found that the risk of negative outcomes does not increase if a person regains the weight they lost. They return to their pre-weight loss level of risk. It’s excess body fat, not weight cycling itself, that predicts disease risk.
Some people are unable to see food as neutral and end up overeating because of IE, even after months of trying. This doesn’t mean they’re “doing it wrong.” This is just another example of why IE isn’t for everyone.
Is intuitive eating worth trying?
I think all of us who live in a society where losing weight is seen as something worth sacrificing health for can benefit from the kinder, gentler perspective that IE can provide.
However, keep in mind that IE is not a weight loss tool. You can lose weight by using your natural cues, eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full, and learning to see food as food rather than the enemy.
