The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

Intuitive Eating is an evidenced based, mind-body health approach created by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995. “It is a weight-neutral model with a validated assessment scale and over 90 studies to date” (Tribole 2017). Intuitive Eating consists of 10 core principles which I will summarize briefly in this post.

Please keep in mind, this blog post is not a replacement for therapy or dietary support. In addition, Intuitive Eating is a skill and like any skill, takes time to learn and implement fully. It is a journey, not a destination and healing your relationship with food and your body is not linear. This post is meant to introduce you to the core concepts as I very briefly summarize them. I highly recommend further reading and education on these topics whether you get them in your therapy and dietary sessions or from further reading and podcasts

The core of this principle is that diets do not work and cause more harm in the name of “health and wellness.” The goal here is to provide you with the science and psychoeducation you need to overcome diet culture and stop living a life obsessed with weight loss or the next fad diet. For more reading, I highly recommend “Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well Being and Happiness through Intuitive Eating” by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD

Once we reject the diet mentality, we need to start healing our relationships with our body and that starts with honoring our hunger. Overtime through dieting or restriction, we have ignored the body’s hunger ques it has been sending us. For some, hunger ques may disappear altogether and will take time and gentle nutrition to come back. This principle is all about tuning into your body and listening and honoring it’s needs and rebuilding trust with your body.

The core focus here is on unconditional permission to eat and working towards having more flexibility with food without placing moral value or labels on the food. When we tell ourselves we “aren’t allowed” or “shouldn’t have” certain foods, we put so much energy around the food that, “It can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing. When you finally give in to your forbidden food, eating will be experienced with such intensity that it usually results in Last Supper overeating and overwhelming guilt” (Tribole E. & Resch, 2017).

This principle is intertwined with making peace with food as it brings awareness to your inner “food police” that reinforces your food rules you have likely lived with for most of your life. It is the voice that tells you not to have cake at a birthday party or have a salad at a restaurant with friends because it makes you “look healthier” instead of having what you really wanted. In order to challenge these inner narratives, we need to develop a sense of awareness of the thoughts and beliefs we have about food and then actively challenge that narrative using our newly developing healthy self that is being built while on this intuitive eating journey.

This principle is all about noticing and honoring your fullness with each meal and snack by checking in with yourself and your body as to how you are feeling. The biggest thing here is mindfulness and checking in with our body and whether or not we are satisfied and full. A huge challenge here for many individuals is the “clean your plate mentality” that many of us grew up with or learning to assert that we are full when feeling

This principle really ties in all of the intuitive eating principles to explore our satisfaction with the food. This principle also focuses on mindfulness and being in tune to what sounds good sensory wise including taste, texture, smells, temperatures, appearance, and volume. I think of this principle often when deciding what I want to eat for lunch or dinner. I see the satisfaction factor as also considering whether or not I want to cook for myself, cook and try a new recipe I saw on social media, eat with a friend or my partner, cook for others, etc. Our satisfaction with food does not only have to be about the food itself but also about our relationships with others and our relationship with interacting with the food. Some days I am all about cooking an amazing meal for myself and other days I don’t want to do dishes and am all about what I want from take out. Both scenarios involve the satisfaction check ins with sensory and what is also going to feel good in your body.

Feeding and taking care of yourself is an act of self care. Oftentimes, food can also become a way to cope with difficult emotions. Food is so much more than just food. It is culture, it is connection with others, it is nurturing ourselves. Diet culture distorts our relationship with food and for many people, using food to cope becomes a primary coping mechanism. Emotional eating from time to time is a very normal human experience! However, when we feel chronic guilt, shame, and out of control with food, that’s when we then need to explore “what need am I trying to get met right now by going to the food?” When we know that answer, we can then ask ourselves, “How can I get that need met right now instead of going to the food?” For example, maybe it was a really long, exhausting day and you are looking for comfort from the food. Other ways we could meet that need is by taking a long shower, going for a mindful walk, cuddling your pets, reading a good book that takes your mind off of the day, calling a friend or family member to vent and share about the day, and the list could go on of what feels comforting for you since we are all different! This doesn’t mean you can never use food to cope as I mentioned before emotional eating from time to time is very much a normal human experience. This does mean though checking in with yourself, asking yourself what you are needing, catering to that need, and then choosing your food. Food is not the primary coping skill.

This principle is hard for many in the diet obsessed, weight obsessed culture we live in. In this society, it is radical to accept, have gratitude for, and respect the bodies that will be our homes for the rest of our lives. The authors of the Intuitive Eating Workbook excellently state, “Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfort- able) to have the same expectation with body size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel better about who you are. It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape” (Tribole E. & Resch, 2017). This principle is all about body acceptance, gratitude, ending body comparison to others, and shifting the language we use when we talk about our bodies. We are so much more than our bodies AND our bodies also does incredible things for us daily.

Like food, our relationship with exercise when we have been immersed in diet culture can also become distorted. When we are in the diet mentality, exercise is often about burning calories or changing our bodies. The core focus here is joyful movement and moving your body because it feels good! It is about shifting our intentions with movement from that of shame to taking care of ourselves mentally and physically. Our bodies need movement and the key here is getting back to what you enjoy and what feels good. Maybe it’s a mindful walk or learning a new sport. Maybe it’s going on hikes and enjoying nature. The possibilities are endless but the focus here is what brings joy and what feels good and shifting our intentions with exercise that may have been distorted because of diet culture.

The key here is your eating is never going to be perfect and that eating involves honoring your body and what it wants while balancing also what it needs. Our hunger and fullness will fluctuate and change for multiple reasons throughout our lifetime. Health conditions will also come into play. Gentle nutrition is about balance and honoring our mental health and physical health. It is important that we tune into our bodies and respond accordingly and trust ourselves when we don’t like something or it doesn’t feel physically good in our bodies. Get curious! There are no hard and fast rules here. There is only being willing to learn, grow, trust yourself and your body, and listen. We are undoing years of being told not to do those things and that we cannot trust ourselves with food and we cannot trust our bodies. When in reality, we can. Remember, the only person who stands to benefit from you being an intuitive eater is yourself. Diet culture on the other hand stands to benefit and profit every time you choose a fad diet and blame yourself and not the diet when it doesn’t work.