Intuitive eating when you don’t trust your intuition
Intuitive eating when you don’t trust your intuition
July 13, 2021 by Allie Buxton, reviewed by Lesley Seto
It’s been around since the ’90s, but intuitive eating is becoming an increasingly popular topic online and across social media. While the idea of #foodfreedom sounds appealing, some people struggle to align themselves with the concept of intuitive eating. It stands in stark contrast to some health and wellness messaging coming from diet gurus, influencers, and even some health professionals.
One of the more common concerns people have is fear of not knowing what their body needs and when. This article will look at what intuitive eating is, what the benefits are, and how we can become more intuitive eaters when we don’t always trust our intuition.
What is ‘Intuitive Eating’?
At its simplest, intuitive eating is the idea that you should eat what you want when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. We’re used to thinking about dietary patterns being attached to rules and often restrictions. To some, the idea of giving in to our cravings is alarming. Intuitive eating is more than just eating whatever you want whenever you want. But don’t be mistaken, intuitive eating is not a diet.
Intuitive eating is a framework of 10 principles, developed by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. While it centers on food and physical health, the framework goes further to focus on additional elements of health and wellness, including mental and emotional wellness.
The 10 principles of Intuitive Eating include:
Reject the Diet Mentality
Honour your Hunger
Make Peace with Food
Challenge the Food Police
Feel your Fullness
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Cope with your Emotions with Kindness
Respect your Body
Movement - Feel the Difference
Honour your Health - Gentle Nutrition
If you’re interested in diving deeper into these principles, Evelyn and Elyse have several books and workbooks available, and we’ve linked some great podcasts below.
Why should we eat intuitively?
Have you ever watched a baby push away a bottle and thought “maybe they’re not being fussy, maybe they’re just not hungry”? We are born with innate cues about hunger and satisfaction. But as we get older, the food culture we’re socialised in influences that intuition.
Diet and wellness culture tell us that certain foods are “good”, “bad”, “healthy”, or “unhealthy”. It suggests saving “bad” foods for “cheat days”. And it has us convinced that we’ll be healthier, happier, and even more successful if we’re thin. But the same folks peddling these messages are usually the same ones trying to sell us a product, service, or subscription. And many of us have bought into the idea that we need to lose weight to be healthy, and to lose weight, we need to diet.
In reality, it’s both possible to be healthy and to pursue better health, without changing the size of your body.
Long-term weight loss isn’t sustainable for most people. A 2020 meta-analysis looked at weight loss resulting from dietary programs across 121 clinical trials. Researchers found that weight loss and cardiovascular benefits disappeared within 12 months for followers of all popular diets.
We also know that weight is not a marker of health. Clinical trials have shown that the Health at Every Size approach is associated with improvements in cardiovascular health, health-promoting behaviours, stress levels, and life satisfaction.
Intuitive eating encourages us to move past the ideas presented in diet culture to focus on what makes us feel good. Intuitive eating removes the restrictions we place on food, which also removes its power to function as a reward. As we become more intuitive eaters and focus on responding to our body’s needs, we learn to recognize what, how much, and how often eating certain foods makes us feel physically and emotionally.
When we engage in intuitive eating, our weight may change as we settle into our natural size. Research suggests eating intuitively may also improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels, stabilize blood sugar, and result in higher self-esteem and improved body image. As we improve our relationship with food and spend less time and energy focusing on diet culture, we can spend more time focusing on things we enjoy and find fulfilling.
Find balance in intuitive eating
One of the first questions people have about intuitive eating when presented with food freedom is “if I permit myself to eat everything (or anything), how will I ever stop?”. If you have this concern, I bet you’re remembering a past over-indulgence. But are you remembering the context of that over-indulgence? Maybe you had eaten nothing for lunch that day and felt famished. Or maybe you had been purposefully restricting that food for a while.
Research suggests that our brains react differently to food cues when we’ve been restricting calories or certain foods. When we finally allow ourselves to eat those foods, our “reward” centers light up, and we are more likely to overeat.
Overdoing it on one food, any food, can lead to us not feeling great. But if we listen to our body and enjoy foods in moderation when we crave them, we are less likely to enter a cycle of over-indulgence and restriction. The key is to find your balance - there will be times you may still overdo it on a certain food, but this is part of understanding your body’s cues!
Tips to Eat More Intuitively
Becoming an intuitive eater doesn’t happen overnight. Healing your relationship with food takes time. We must re-learn how to trust our body, understanding what hunger, fullness, and even satisfaction feel like. Here are 5 tips to help tune into your intuition:
1. Observe (and challenge) your internal narrative around food
Pay attention to how you characterize food in your head and how you decide what to eat. Do you override your body’s signals because of something you ate yesterday? Challenge these ideas, understanding that there aren’t “good foods” or “bad foods”, and you don’t have to feel guilty for eating (or not eating) them.
2. Think deeper about your end goal for your health
Is your goal weight loss, or is it to feel less tired, have more energy, improve mobility, or feel better about yourself? When we stop fixating on the number on the scale, we can more clearly understand the lifestyle that helps us achieve those goals, while also honoring what feels good to our body.
3. Build habits through structure & repetition
Flexible structure can help us build habits, recognize patterns, and regain trust in ourselves. Start by structuring mealtimes and planning meals while also tracking your hunger and fullness cues. Over time, you’ll be able to let go of the structure and rely on your body cues alone.
4. Reflect on your journey
Keep a journal, reflecting on how you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally before and after eating. Reflection can help us better understand our subconscious eating habits and challenge feelings of guilt or shame. It can also serve as positive reinforcement, reminding us how far we’ve come!
5. Surround yourself with people and media that align with your beliefs
Observe the health and wellness messaging you’re surrounding yourself with and reflect on how it’s serving you. Unsubscribe and unfollow accounts that reinforce diet culture. Body-positivity accounts we love to follow are @mynameisjessamyn, @aliciamaccarvell, and @dietitiananna.
Want to learn more about intuitive eating, body positivity, and anti-diet culture?
These are great places to start:
The Body Kindness Podcast by Rebecca Scritchfield
Nutrition Matters Podcast by Paige Smathers
The Story of Self-Talk by Dr. Shad Helmstetter
Insight Timer - A Free app with meditations for tuning into your intuitive self
Love, Food Podcast by Julie Duffy Dillon
Embrace - A 2016 documentary on body positivity
Episode #127 Food Psych Podcast by Christy Harrison with Ashley Seruya