Intuitive Eating (IE) is an eating framework which was developed in 1995 by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. IE looks at the interplay between our instincts, our emotion, our thoughts and our body sensations. IE is a weight neutral approach to eating, meaning it places emphasis on nurturing your health while putting weight loss on the backburner. IE is an evidence-based model with assessment scales and over 100 studies!
IE is full of nuance and is about helping people reconnect to their innate wisdom. What I’ve noticed is that the longer I have practiced intuitive eating, I feel more deeply connected to myself and I feel more aligned in other areas of my life. I think this is because during the process of intuitive eating, I’ve quieted all the stress and food rules that used to dictate so much of my life.
I want to be clear that IE is not about moving through each principal sequentially and perfectly. I have found that it is important to be compassionate with yourself, to start and move at a pace that feels most respectful to you and where you are on your own journey.
So if you’re curious about the 10 principals of intuitive eating, I have outlined them below.
- Reject the Diet Mentality
Opting out of diet culture has been one of the most empowering and freeing experiences of my life. This doesn’t mean that I don’t notice diet rules pop into my head at times or I don’t on rare occasions feel the pressure to join my friends in their weight loss attempts. But it does mean that I can let those thoughts go and come back to my own values and beliefs and what I know the evidence shows to be true. That my health is so much more than a number on the scale or the number of carbs I’ve eaten that day!
Rejecting the diet mentality can be a longer-term process for some people and that’s ok <3 This involves getting rid of the diet books, the diet magazines, throwing out the scales, unfollowing diet culture influencers and jumping off the yoyo dieting rollercoaster that’s cost us our precious time and energy.
- Honour Your Hunger
Something that diet culture normalises is sourcing our hunger cues to external things such as Fitness Pal or a restrictive meal plan or a points system (WW I’m looking at you, your rebrand did not fool any of us). The consequence of chronic dieting is that we lose touch with our hunger cues. Part of IE is learning what your hunger cues feel like and learning to respect them. Just like we usually go to the toilet when our bodies tell us it’s time, we do the same with hunger. When we feel hunger, we eat. This is an important part of rebuilding trust with your body. Your body will learn that when it’s hungry, it can trust you to feed it (an important part of survival I might add).
- Make Peace with Food
This involves giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. In this stage of IE, it is important to learn more about the role of restriction. When we have spent years labelling foods as good and bad, keeping certain “trigger” foods out of the home, then we have set ourselves up for the restrict/crave/binge cycle. A huge part of why we feel out of control with certain foods is because we have restricted and deprived ourselves of them. This restrict/binge cycle often includes overwhelming guilt and shame. So creating peace with food is allowing all foods to be part of your diet.
- Challenge the Food Police
This refers to the thoughts that can dictate so much of our eating experience. Does any of this sound familiar:
-I’ve already gone over the calories for the day
-How much carbs are in that?
-I can’t have that, there’s too much sugar.
-I’m not having sugar, gluten, wheat or dairy.
-I must eat certain grams of protein, carbs and fat.
-I need to enter my food into Fitness Pal.
-I can’t have any cake at her party, I must stay strong.
These thoughts are all part of our inner food police that stems from diet culture. Normally, when we act against our food rules, it fuels anxiety, guilt and shame. Hence an important part of IE is learning to challenge and ignore the food police.
- Discover the Satisfaction Factor.
This is by far my favourite principal LOL! This refers to considering what sounds good to you, slowing down to mindfully eat and take pleasure in what you’re eating. I have learned to check in with myself- am I wanting something sweet? Crunchy? Salty? Bitter? I have found that rather than being fuelled by guilt or shame or what I “should” eat, I feel happier, and more satisfied with my eating experience and have way less urge to binge eat. It’s also been fun reconnecting to happier experiences through food. For example, when I make my Memaw’s chicken noodle soup, I feel deeply connected to the warmth and comfort it brings.
- Feel your Fullness
I find that this principal can highlight shame for many people. After all, we’ve likely spent years feeling guilty or anxious about our fullness. Especially for those who have struggled with emotional eating and binge eating, there is a way we can disconnect from our bodies during those eating episodes, which means we aren’t as present to truly notice our fullness. Rather we notice once we feel “sick fullness” and then beat ourselves up about it! This principal is about tuning in, slowing down, take a pause while you’re eating to check in: how does the food taste, do I feel full, what is my current hunger.
- Cope with your Emotions using Kindness.
In my 16-week group program, I teach people how to practice self-compassion. This is such an important part of this whole process! We must understand the role of mental and physical restriction (ie- dieting) in our relationship with food. We must understand that “emotional eating” is a concept developed by diet culture to define when we’ve been “bad” and eaten over our allotted calories or meal plans. Giving ourselves grace, self-compassion and adding to our list of coping mechanisms is a key part of this.
- Respect your body
Part of what we learn in my 16-week group program is that our health is not defined by our weight or our BMI (the BMI has many limitations and should not be used but more on this in another blog or video). We focus on moving from body hatred to body neutrality and then ultimately to body respect. This can take some time but again, for me this was one of the most healing and liberating experiences in my life. Rather than obsess about weight, respecting your body means knowing regardless of size or shape or cellulite or stretch marks, that your body deserves dignity and nurturing.
- Movement- Feel the Difference
This involves examining your relationship with exercise. It involves shifting from a perspective of exercise that you must burn x number of calories or walk x number of steps or punish yourself for last night’s splurge or do exercise you hate every day to a perspective of enjoying body movement. This means thinking of movement as what feels good and what brings you joy. Perhaps you hate running but love swimming. Perhaps you prefer working out in a group rather than alone. Perhaps you prefer outdoor hiking rather than walking on a treadmill in the gym. This principal can be quite exciting and fun!
- Honour your Health- Gentle Nutrition
This involves making food choices that honour your mental, emotional and physical health. It means eating foods that you enjoy, that taste good, that support your body to feel its best! However, this is all about progress, NOT perfection. Perfection stems from diet culture and we just don’t have time for that anymore.
Resources:
If you’d like to learn more about intuitive eating, please feel free to contact me about my 16-week women’s group called the Body and Food Freedom Project! Some other great resources would be the latest intuitive eating book by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Or you could check out Evelyn’s latest book called “Intuitive Eating for Every Day: 365 Daily Practices and Inspirations to Rediscover the Pleasures of Eating”. Wishing you all the best on your intuitive eating journey!