What Is Intuitive Eating?

WHAT IS INTUITIVE EATING?

11/9/2024

Learn more about Intuitive Eating and how it can help you stop dieting and make peace with food.

WRITTEN BY DANIELLE LITHWICK, MA, RP

As a psychotherapist and Certified Intuitive Eating Counsellor, the Intuitive Eating framework is something I use a lot in my therapy practice to help people heal from disordered eating and diet cycling. There is a lot of information and misinformation about it out there, so I hope to introduce the framework and the main concepts of it here.

History And Research

Intuitive Eating is a non-diet, research-based model of eating and health, developed in the mid-90s by registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Like most dietitians at the time, they were focused on helping people lose weight by following meal plans or point systems. Even though their patients would lose some weight initially, they were not able to sustain any significant weight loss, nor continue to follow a meal plan. Moreover they noticed these patients felt like failures and ashamed that they were not able to keep up with their diet plans. In short, giving their patients diet or weight-loss plans started to feel like a dis-service, causing more harm than good. They thought that there must be another way...

So Intuitive Eating was born and they wrote the first edition in 1995. However it didn’t start to get international recognition until ten years later, when researchers picked up the model and started finding positive results. According to the fourth edition of the book, there are over 125 studies on Intuitive Eating which can be summarized as follows:

Intuitive Eating is positively correlated with: higher self-esteem, well-being and optimism, eating a wider variety of foods, body appreciation and acceptance, HDL (good cholesterol), interoceptive awareness, pleasure from eating, proactive coping, psychological hardiness, unconditional self-regard, and life satisfaction.
Intuitive Eating is negatively correlated with: disordered eating, triglycerides, emotional eating, self-silencing (suppressing one’s thoughts, feelings and needs), loss-of-control eating, binge eating, weight bias internalization, blood pressure and body dissatisfaction (Tribole & Resch, 2020, p. 17). You can find the most current list of all the research studies on Intuitive Eating here.

Aside from the research, these are the most common issues I see in my practice whereby Intuitive Eating can help resolve:

Feeling “addicted” to food
Feeling out of control with food
Compulsive eating
Emotional eating
Diet cycling (on and off diets)
Weight cycling (losing and gaining weight repeatedly due to dieting failures)
Not able to sustain dieting and “falling off the wagon” repeatedly
Caught in cycle of restricting foods and binge eating
Not trusting yourself around “unhealthy” or “bad” foods
Being preoccupied with food
Erratic eating patterns
Disconnected from your satiety cues and other cues from your body
Binge-purge cycles
Inconsistent or rigid exercise patterns
All-or-nothing thinking with food or exercise
Body image distress or dissatisfaction

The foundation of the Intuitive Eating framework is based on the fact that dieting and the pursuit of thinness isn’t sustainable and may cause more harm to your health. You can find lots of research studies to support dieting and short-term weight-loss success (six months to two years), but there is no research to date that shows that people sustain significant weight-loss from diets in the long term (more than five years)!
Moreover, not only do diets not work in the long-term, they are associated with physical and psychological harm, including: increased weight gain and abdominal fat, decreased metabolism, increased binges, cravings and preoccupation with food, increased risk of premature death and heart disease, increased risk of developing an eating disorder, increased stress and feelings of failure, lowered self-esteem, social anxiety and loss of control over eating.

Why don’t diets work in the long-term? The science is complicated, but basically our body and mind don’t like to be in a restricted food state. Physically restricting your food intake has a cascade of hormonal effects that make it harder for your body to release fat and easier to hold onto it over time, especially with repeated cycles of weight loss and gain. Our body has a weight range it’s most comfortable being in, and if you try to go out of that range by chronically dieting, it will do everything it can to try to keep you in that range and make it even harder to lose weight the next time you go on a diet.

Psychologically restricting your food intake makes certain foods “forbidden”, thereby creating the “forbidden fruit” effect: You think about the forbidden foods even more, crave them and ultimately end up overeating or binging on them. This leads to feelings of loss of control and guilt, which leads to a renewed intention to restrict the forbidden foods again and “do better next time”. And the dieting cycle continues. The pursuit of thinness through dieting and food rules keeps people stuck in this vicious cycle. Intuitive Eating can help people get out of these harmful eating patterns and ultimately let go of dieting and food restrictions. See my resource section at the end of this article if you want to learn more about why diets don’t work (and why it’s not your fault).

Intuitive Eating Definition And Principles

Tribole and Resch (2017) define their model as follows: “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...” (p. 1).
It is a true holistic way of health that integrates food, nutrition, mind, body and emotion. It is not based on systematic steps or rigid rules, but guided by ten evidence-based Principles, which are:

1) Reject The Diet Mentality
2) Honor Your Hunger
3) Make Peace with Food
4) Discover the Satisfaction Factor
5) Feel Your Fullness
6) Challenge the Food Police
7) Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
8) Respect Your Body
9) Movement - Feel the Difference
10) Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition

You can read about each principle in brief here. And I would highly recommend reading their books to understand the science and application of each principle.

As a psychotherapist I don’t get too hung up about the exact principles, but use the main concepts from Intuitive Eating as a guide for helping people be free of dieting and disordered eating.

The main concepts include:

Stop chasing the diet fantasy and pursuit of thinness
Stop moralizing foods as “good” or “bad”
Give yourself full unconditional permission to eat all foods
Attune to and respect your body’s physical and emotional needs
Eat and move your body in ways that support and enhance your well-being
Separate health and well-being from weight
Respect and take care of your body instead of trying to control it
Bring curiosity, compassion, and openness to your internal experiences and feelings instead of judgment and self-criticism
Focus on the process of self-discovery instead of perfectionism or the end goal

Essentially, Intuitive Eating is just eating without guilt or shame, and making choices about food and your body from a place of self-care, calm and trust, instead of punishment, control, and fear. Instead of relying on external sources to tell you what and how much to eat, intuitive eating helps you learn to listen and trust your internal satiety cues, so you can decide what food choices feel best for both your physical and emotional needs.

Common Questions About Intuitive Eating:

Do I have to practice the principles in order?
No. There is some logical order to the principles but there are no firm rules for how you have to practice them. Some principles will feel easier than others to practice, while some may take longer to grasp. Where you start will depend on your dieting history, your current challenges with food, and what you’re willing and able to try right now.

Will Intuitive Eating help me lose weight?
The Intuitive Eating framework is what’s called a “non-diet” or “weight-inclusive” approach to health. This means that the intention of Intuitive Eating is not about the pursuit of weight-loss or weight management, but about the pursuit of health and well-being through learning to listen and respect your body’s needs and wants, whatever weight or body shape you are. Following diets, rules and meal plans are all external ways of trying to control your food and weight. The more you break these rules or don’t see the results you want in following the rules, the less you trust your body and the more you ignore and get out of touch with what you actually need and want.

BE AWARE: Many diet companies have co-opted the term “intuitive eating”. If you see any practitioner or company using the term “intuitive eating” and promising weight-loss, this is not the evidence-based Intuitive Eating model discussed here. You cannot truly practice Intuitive Eating and actively pursue weight-loss at the same time. Because pursuing weight-loss comes with food rules (i.e. I can’t or can eat this), and ALL food rules interfere with your ability to turn inwards - to truly listen to and respect your hunger and fullness cues, and your psychological and emotional needs around food. How your body might change when you practice Intuitive Eating will depend on many factors, including your body’s defended weight range, your genetics, your life experiences, and your health and dieting history. The focus of Intuitive Eating is about being free from food guilt and preoccupation, while accepting the weight or size your body will be as you heal. Having a desire for weight-loss is totally OK and very common for most of my clients when they start therapy. But focusing on weight-loss as a goal when trying to heal your relationship with food and your body is counter-productive. Read more about weight-inclusive care here.

Is Intuitive Eating the Hunger-Fullness Diet?
Intuitive Eating is often simplified, and misunderstood, as the “hunger-fullness diet”. Because of the word “intuitive”, people may assume that this means to just eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. Even though respecting hunger and fullness cues are a part of the Intuitive Eating framework, only focusing on these principles is grossly misrepresenting the framework and leaving out all of the other principles and nuances. Also, Intuitive Eating is not a diet method, but a weight-inclusive approach to eating and health (see previous question & answer).

Intuitive Eating and not restricting foods sounds like an amazing way of being, but how do I actually do this in real life?
It’s common for people to have heard of Intuitive Eating either through books, podcasts or social media, but feel overwhelmed or unsure about how to actually apply the framework in their life. It can feel scary and unsafe to let go of dieting, especially if that’s all you’ve known. Getting individual help from a therapist or coach can provide a more nuanced and tailored support for your needs.

Is Intuitive Eating just eating whatever you want, whenever you want? Isn’t that bad for your health?
Aside from Intuitive Eating being misrepresented as the “Hunger-Fullness Diet”, it is also misrepresented as the “Eat Whatever You Want” or “Eat All the Bad Foods” diet. This is also a gross misrepresentation and simplification of the framework. Yes, Intuitive Eating is about allowing yourself to eat whatever you want without guilt. And there can be phases in healing where you might overeat or binge eat on foods you’ve been restricting just because you can now. And it’s important to honour this part of healing. But eventually, as you trust that you can truly eat whatever you want without guilt, you will be able to make decisions about eating from a grounded place, based on your values, needs and preferences - not just eating whatever you want because you can.

Does Intuitive Eating apply to diagnosed eating disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating and ARFID (Avoidant-Restrictive Feeding and Intake Disorder)?
The Intuitive Eating books and training are mostly focused on healing from disordered eating and dieting, but all of the principles can still be applied to treating eating disorders. There may just need to be some adjustments or other modalities used as well.

What if you have to restrict or limit certain foods for reasons other than weight-loss (ie. allergies, food intolerances, diabetes, medications, vegetarian or vegan, religious beliefs)?
The Intuitive Eating framework accepts and understands that people may still have food restrictions or limitations for all sorts of reasons. There are definitely ways to still apply many of the principles of Intuitive Eating in these cases. Working individually with an Intuitive Eating dietitian or therapist can help.

Is Intuitive Eating really applicable to all people?
There are valid critiques of the Intuitive Eating framework. For example, some claim it may not be applicable to certain populations, such as people with a lot of trauma, who are neurodivergent, or who experience food insecurity. I believe that at least some of the principles of Intuitive Eating can be applied to almost anyone at any given time, but that some principles may not apply to certain populations. As a psychotherapist I also know that the Intuitive Eating framework will be limited when it comes to healing deeper psychological wounds, and may not be the first or only framework I use in supporting my clients. I am not dogmatic about using Intuitive Eating (as that would be going against its main premise), but I believe it can be an essential part for healing one’s relationship with food.

There are many resources out there about Intuitive Eating which can be really helpful and that I often recommend as a supplement to therapy. You can find some listed below and on my website here. And I also hear from a lot of people that trying to figure out how to apply Intuitive Eating on their own can feel daunting, confusing, and discouraging at times. Getting support from a qualified professional can help. If anything in this article resonated with you, please don’t hesitate to get help. You deserve support no matter how big or small your struggles are.

References:
Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2020). Intuitive eating: A revolutionary anti-diet approach (4th ed.). St. Martin’s Essentials.
Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2017). The intuitive eating workbook: 10 principles for nourishing a healthy relationship with food. New Harbinger.

Resources:

Intuitive Eating

The Intuitive Eating books
Intuitive Eating Research Studies

The Ineffectiveness and Harms of Dieting
Articles:
How Weight Loss Attempts Backfire here
Health Experts Explain How Yo-Yo Dieting Affects Your Body here
The Real Reason You Can't Lose Weight here
It's The Diets That Fail, Not The Patients They Are Prescribed To here
Who Says Dieting Fails Most Of The Time? here
Research:
The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health here
Slim Chance for Permanent Weight Loss here
Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatments hereor Effective Obesity Treatments
Medicare’s Search for Effective Obesity Treatme

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Disclaimer: Please note that the information in this or any other blog posts on this site is for educational purposes only and not meant to be a substitute for medical or psychological advice. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before making any changes. See full disclaimer here.