Intuitive Eating has become a bit of a buzzword lately. It might leave you wondering, what does Intuitive Eating really means? What does it look like if you’re eating intuitively? How do you learn how to do this? Is this just going to end up being another fad diet that doesn’t work for you? If you’re wondering if Intuitive Eating could be the solution, to overcome emotional and overeating, then read the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating. This is a guide for Intuitive Eating for beginners!
First, let’s address the elephant in the room: Intuitive Eating is a hot topic and the diet industry wants in.
“Eating intuitively” is often promoted in ways that are not in line with what Intuitive Eating really stands for. As a binge eating therapist, it’s my goal to help you learn the true definition of the principles of intuitive eating . I want you to be accurately informed and find peace and freedom from food once and for all.
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What is the Definition of Intuitive Eating?
Put simply, Intuitive Eating is a weight-neutral approach to eating. It focuses on genuinely attuning to your body’s needs and hunger cues in order to nourish your body.
With Intuitive Eating, there are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods to worry about. With this anti-diet approach, you develop a relationship with your body that is trusting and respectful. This allows your body to lead the way when it comes to food and nutrition.
10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
Reject the Diet Mentality
I’ve been an intuitive eating coach for years, and impact diet culture has always amazes me. It seems like new diets are always being shoved in our faces. This makes it hard to escape that negative diet mentality.
As you start your Intuitive Eating journey, you need to acknowledge the overwhelming impact that diet culture has on you.
As you may have heard me say before, diets simply don’t work. Yet, the diet industry and everyone who feeds into it are set on promoting dieting in new and creative ways. Let me tell you a not-so-secret-secret… dieting doesn’t work. They only serve to make you feel worse about yourself in the long-run.
The promises of diets are tempting and hard to let go of. That’s why rejecting the diet mentality is the first step in becoming an Intuitive Eater. You can’t move forward into healthier habits when you’re still stuck in a diet mentality. One moment you’re invested in a better relationship with food and the next, you’re jumping on a new dieting fad. It’s like a never-ending emotional and physical rollercoaster.
This principle of intuitive eating focuses on science-based education. You can be informed about the impacts of dieting and make decisions about what is best for you moving forward.
Honour Your Hunger
The next principle of intuitive eating is to honour your hunger. If dieting has taught you anything, it’s to ignore your internal cues for hunger and follow an external meal and exercise plan. When you feel hungry, you’ve learned to tell yourself you’re fine. You tell yourself you don’t need larger portions, and you can hold off on eating until the next time you’re ‘allowed’ to eat.
The problem with this is that it desensitizes you to your internal hunger cues. Your body knows what it needs, not some cookie-cutter diet plan. It’s your job to tune into your body and listen to what it’s communicating to you about hunger.
This step can take time, because you’re likely used to ignoring and suppressing your hunger cues. With this principle of intuitive eating, you’ll practice attuning to your body and noticing patterns in your hunger.
It might come as a surprise to you, but one of the biggest ways to reduce overeating is to eat! We often hold out and then become overly hungry. In my work as a binge eating therapist, I often work with clients who tend to binge after they skip lunch, go a long time between lunch and dinner, or eat an unsatisfying midday meal.
The goal of this step is to honor your hunger by listening and responding to the cues your body gives you. Your body is pretty amazing and wildly smart, so trust it!
Make Peace with Food
If you have a history of dieting, you likely have a list of foods that you believe you shouldn’t eat. Or that you at least try to avoid. These might be the foods that trigger you to lose control. You might think you’re helping by keeping them out of the house.
When you tell yourself you can’t eat something, it only increases your cravings for that food. It results in the opposite of what you’re hoping for!
Making peace with food is an important Intuitive Eating principle. It involves giving yourself permission to eat anything and everything your body craves.
I know, this is where Intuitive Eating can be confusing for some. It gets an unfair reputation that it encourages a free-for-all with food.
Let me assure you, that’s not the case at all. Think about Intuitive Eating as a phased practice: it’s important that you release yourself from the taboo of these foods. This allows you to freely make choices about what you want and need to eat to satisfy your body.
In the beginning, when you finally allow yourself to eat the foods that have been ‘off-limits’ for so long, you may tend to overeat. This can lead to a ton of anxiety and fear, but trust me, it won’t last forever. Eventually, your cravings will subside and your eating will become more balanced.
It can feel counter-intuitive, but in order to become an Intuitive Eater who doesn’t lose all control around your favourite foods, you need to loosen the reins. This decreases the power and hold they have over you.
Take a deep breath. It will be okay and you’ve got this!
Challenge the Food Police
How are you feeling knowing that one of the principles of Intuitive Eating is to give yourself full permission to eat anything you want? You may be telling yourself that there’s no way you can follow that advice for fear of losing control.
This is the food police in your head. This voice tells you that you aren’t strong enough to stay in control while eating the foods you want. This brings us to our next principle, challenging the food police!
The food police is the internalized voice of diet culture that watches your every eating and exercise move and tells you how you can be dieting better and what you shouldn’t be doing or eating. This voice tends to stick around for a while and can make your Intuitive Eating journey challenging. As an Intuitive Eating coach, I approach this principle by teaching you how to challenge this nasty voice and cultivate new allied, more positive voices that will help you on your journey.
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Discovering the satisfaction factor is my favourite Intuitive Eating principle, because it’s the most fun! When you restrict what foods you’re allowed to have, you likely put foods into ‘all or nothing’ categories of things you ‘can eat’ and things you ‘shouldn’t eat.’
You fill the ‘shouldn’t’ category with high-fat and high-carbohydrate foods, but by doing this, you fail to recognize all of the variables that make food tasty and satisfying, such as texture, consistency, flavour, temperature, heaviness, freshness, aroma, and more.
When I was struggling with binge eating, Taco Bell became my go-to cheat day meal for this reason. There was nothing special about it, but I craved it simply because I wouldn’t allow myself to eat it because it was in my ‘shouldn’t’ category. Now that I’ve explored the satisfaction factor of food, I know that I don’t even really like Taco Bell, but I love fresh, baja style tacos from a local restaurant.
This principle of Intuitive Eating is fun because you get to explore and be a scientist with your taste buds. This also helps you learn what you really care about and enjoy with food and make decisions to not eat something if it doesn’t truly satisfy you, which curbs overeating.
Feel Your Fullness
After practicing giving yourself permission to eat the foods that satisfy you, the next principle of Intuitive Eating is to feel your fullness. In the beginning, the excitement and thrill of eating ‘off-limits’ foods can make it hard to be attuned to your fullness signals, which is why this principle shows up later in the timeline.
This principle involves continuing to develop a strong, healthy, trusting relationship with your body and recognizing the cues it gives you when it’s satisfied and full.
This might feel like a scary step, because feeling full has been associated with guilt and shame in the past. Now, you’re learning to experience fullness as a neutral or positive experience.
Cope With Your Emotions With Kindness
In my research and work as a binge eating therapist, I’ve learned that there is a lot more to overeating than just food. Emotions like stress, overwhelm, sadness, uncertainty, anxiety, anger, and boredom can all lead you to cope with your feelings by eating and overeating. The after work, TV and snack food scenario is something almost all of my clients can relate to.
The issue is, when you cope with your feelings with food, you’re not solving the problem. Instead, you’re making a habit of using food to cope. Therefore, you’re more likely to do it again in the future. Then, you feel even more unpleasant emotions like shame and guilt when you overeat.
This principle of Intuitive Eating focuses on coping with your emotions and being self-compassionate rather than beating yourself up and going into a downward spiral.
Respect Your Body
Your body is a temple, so this principle of Intuitive Eating is aimed at helping you respect it and treat it as such! Your body deserves your love, acceptance, and respect.
When you wish your body was different than how it is, it can be hard to feel any kindness or love towards your body.
This principle isn’t about toxically forcing yourself to love all parts of your body, but it’s about starting with a basic level of respect and decency. Your body deserves sleep, nourishment, and movement.
When you begin treating your body more gently and kindly, you’ll be more forgiving of how it doesn’t measure up.
Movement
As a professional ex-dieter, I used to see exercise as an unpleasant necessity. I’d be militant with myself and focus on the calories burned and the distance moved. It wasn’t fun, I dreaded my workouts, and I was filled with guilt if I didn’t work out.
The movement principle of Intuitive Eating is not just about exercise, but movement in general. There are no outcome expectations, but instead, you focus on the in-the-moment process of actually moving your body.
For me, this has opened up my love for hiking, going on casual walks in my neighbourhood, and even making getting up from my desk and stretching during the work day a priority because it FEELS GOOD, not because I ‘should’ be moving.
As with the other principles, there is a lot of experimentation with the movement principle, so you can find the type of movement that works for you that you enjoy.
Gentle Nutrition
Finally, the last of the principles of Intuitive Eating is gentle nutrition. This principle is the final step because all of the internal work of the previous principles is necessary before you can develop the mindset that you can respectfully consider how you’d like to approach nourishing your body.
This principle focuses on what feels good in your body without the nagging voice of the food police. You continue to honour your hunger and satisfaction and eat while respecting your fullness. There is no shame, guilt, or diet culture surrounding your decision.
I hope these 10 principles of Intuitive Eating have helped break down some of the misconceptions you may have had and given you some insight as to whether or not Intuitive Eating may be the solution for you.
As a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Intuitive Eating coach, it is my greatest passion to support women through their journey to binge eating recovery and make peace with their body and relationship with food through my One Body to Love program. If this blog post has intrigued you and you want to learn more about implementing this approach in your life with the guidance and support of me and other women on this journey alongside you, feel free to book a free application call with me to learn more about how I can support you.
I’d love to know, do any of these principles of Intuitive Eating surprise you? Comment below and let me know what new part of Intuitive Eating you learned in this post.
