Intuitive eating is a phrase we hear a lot these days, but there are a lot of misconceptions and misinformation about the process.
Here are the 10 core principles of intuitive eating:
What Is Intuitive Eating?
1. Reject the diet mentality
Dieting isn’t sustainable. So the first principle of intuitive eating is to stop dieting—and to stop believing society’s messages that quick-fix plans can deliver lasting results. That includes throwing away diet books and magazine articles that promise fast weight loss, and rejecting any meal plans that dictate what or how much you can eat. This also means not setting weight loss goals
2. Honour your hunger
One reason dieting doesn’t work, is because it can leave you feeling deprived and physically hungry—which can trigger binging and overeating. So instead of counting calories or watching portions, simply pay attention to your body’s hunger cues.
That means eating a sufficient amount of calories and carbohydrates to keep your body “fed” and satiated. Once you learn to recognize these signals in your own body, it becomes much easier to trust your instincts and repair unhealthy relationships with food.
3. Make peace with food
“When you’re on a diet, certain foods are promoted as being forbidden—which tends to make them even more tempting,”. “Then when you finally eat those foods, you binge and feel guilty, which creates a vicious cycle." That’s why one principle of intuitive eating is to give yourself “unconditional permission to eat.” It may sound like a recipe for all-out gluttony, but it almost never plays out that way.
“A wonderful thing ends up happening when you give yourself permission to, say, eat chocolate doughnuts for breakfast,”. “You stop and ask yourself, ‘Do I really want this now?’ Not just, ‘Will I enjoy it in the moment,’ but also ‘Will I feel good when I’m finished?’ And often, people realize they don’t really want that food that was forbidden before; they just got caught up in society telling them they couldn’t have it.”
4. Challenge the food police
Intuitive eating describes the “food police” as those voices in your head that tell you it’s good to eat fewer calories and it’s bad to eat dessert; in other words, it’s your psyche’s way of monitoring all of the dieting rules you’ve heard again and again over the years and making you feel guilty for not following them to the letter.
These food police can be real people, too: friends, family, and acquaintances who offer up judgment and “advice” about what and how you’re eating. In either case, “chasing them away” is an important step in embracing intuitive eating.
5. Respect your fullness
This goes hand-in-hand with principle #2. Yes, it’s important to eat when you’re hungry, but it’s also important to stop when those hunger cues are no longer present.
It can help to pause in the middle of your meal or snack to assess your current state: How full do you feel? Are you still eating to feed your hunger, or are you eating out of distraction, boredom, or stress? “We all have the power to listen to our bodies in this way, but many people don’t realize it,”.
6. Discover the satisfaction factor
The satisfaction factor has to do with noticing and appreciating the taste and texture of food, but also the environment in which you’re eating. “This is the hub of intuitive eating,”. “If we start here and aim for satisfaction, everything else falls into place.”
Getting satisfaction from your food is about truly understanding what feels good and what doesn’t. “Most people have never asked themselves the question, ‘What do I like to eat? What feels good in my body?’” “When you can bring the pleasure and joy back to eating, you can truly feel satisfied after a meal and move on and enjoy the rest of your life, rather than continue to eat for other reasons.”
To put this into practice, start with just one meal a day. “Make it a sacred time in which you eat without distraction,”. “Place your awareness on one aspect of the food, whether it’s the texture or the taste or the visual aspect.” If even that sounds too difficult to do with your busy schedule, concentrate on just the first bite, the middle bite, and the last bite.
7. Honour your feelings without using food
People often overeat because of anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger, or stress. That’s why it’s important to get to the root of these problems, and to find ways to nurture yourself and resolve those issues without turning to food.
“It’s not always big, extreme emotions that are causing overeating, either,”. “Sometimes it’s as mundane as being bored because you’re eating while distracted.” But being more mindful in all aspects of life—with your food and with your emotions—can help you sort out those overlaps.
8. Respect your body
Intuitive eating is also about body acceptance: That means feeling good about your “genetic blueprint” and the body you were meant to have—not striving for unrealistic expectations about how much weight you can lose or what size jeans you can squeeze into.
It’s also important to understand that intuitive eating is not a weight-loss plan, although some people do lose weight once they leave behind their unhealthy history with dieting and food restriction.
9. Move: Feel the difference
You don’t have to go to the gym every day while following an intuitive eating approach, but it is important to move your body on a regular basis. “It’s not about finding the exercise that burns the most calories or the most fat,” “It’s about finding something that’s sustainable and that you enjoy.” Celebrate a body that has the ability to move, rather than move to punish your body. Activities such as yoga, walking, being outside can be a really good place to start, or a safe place to move your movement to if you have a negative history with exercise.
10. Honour your health with gentle nutrition
Despite the fact that intuitive eating preaches an “eat what you want” mentality, that doesn’t mean its founders don’t care about good nutrition. In fact, their final word of advice is to make food choices that honour your health, as well as your taste buds.
In other words, eating “intuitively” should still involve more fruits and veggies than ice cream. But at the same time, a diet doesn’t have to be perfect to be healthy, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up every time you make a less-than-perfect meal or snack choice.
adapted from: https://www.health.com/nutrition/intuitive-eating