Intuitive eating is a famous book written about by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch back in 1995, it is now in its 4th edition and still going strong. The book was created as a counter to the ever growing diet culture, the endless cycle of plans, restriction and inevitable rebound. It created a movement within nutrition that is still going strong today. I have used many of the principles from it with my clients for years.
Its main approach focuses on learning how to trust yourself again with food. The book identifies 10 pillars by which to live, these focus on listening to hunger, rejecting diet mentality, respecting your body, finding joy in movement, and allowing yourself unconditional permission to eat.
The need for intuitive eating is clear, this should be the long term aim for everyone. Naturally making good food choices, eating in line with your body’s needs and no longer obsessing over rules or guilt.
The main principles of it refer to:
–Attuning to the hunger-fullness scale – Some people never get hungry until they are starving, others are always hungry and never satisfied. Part of the process is learning how to identify both hunger and fullness cues again, which sounds simple but is surprisingly difficult. It is very common to see people use feeling bloated as a signal for being full, which is past the ideal point. The book has you rating your levels for hunger / fullness before and after eating to find your ideal zone.
-Listening to the body’s reactions – As we have discussed here many times, your body gives you various signs after you eat which you need to be attuned towards. If you eat lunch and are hungry again within two hours then something wasn’t right with that meal. Maybe you needed more protein, more carbs, less carbs or a different sized meal. You could then change something and compare the new set of food reactions.
-Being mindful while eating – Intuitive eating wants you focused on your food, not watching TV, playing on your phone or typing on your laptop. The process focuses on slowing down your eating, paying attention to taste, texture, satisfaction. There is an exercise in the book where you actually rate the saltiness, sweetness and other traits around flavour to bring greater awareness and heightened awareness to the taste of food.
-Dropping your rules when eating – This was a controversial principle at the time and still is today. You should drop all your food rules, if you want a sandwich, then eat it, want some cake, then eat it…. chocolate…eat it! Alongside this, you should be eating without judgement. So, you don’t feel guilty over the cake or chocolate etc.
Everyone fears they will eat badly for months, and get huge of course. However, the process of habituation will stop you from overeating, that is, the more you eat of the food, the less rules you have about it, then the less food you will actually eat. The approach believes most of your eating is stemming from the panic and cravings caused from the food being banned, so with the rules removed, you calm that response down.
-Exercise & move to be healthy – The goal of the mindset is to make good choices for your body. You move because it feels good, gives you energy and keeps you functioning well. This is a huge part of intuitive eating too, the idea that you don’t separate food and movement, you live in a way that supports health.
Criticism of Intuitive Eating
Many people are a disaster on it. They hear the drop all rules bit, don’t feel guilty, and then just eat way too much food. They don’t love exercise so they stop moving, they already were sedentary. They take the principles of intuitive eating as permission to let everything go. The authors would say this is because the person hasn’t actually gone through the process properly or stuck with it long enough to develop intuition, but still, it’s a real problem.
Another issue is that some people use it as a justification for eating badly without the actual “listening to the body” part. That is not intuitive eating, that is just doing what you want. So, while many fans swear by this movement, many others have had bad experiences.
What This Means For You
Your long term strategy should be intuitive eating, but you don’t necessarily need to start there on day one. You may use different nutrition approaches along the way, such as calorie tracking, meal planning, fasting, whatever works for you, but the long term aim is to move towards this more natural relationship with food over time.
Likewise, you should be developing a genuine desire to exercise and move, not out of guilt or pressure, but because you want the energy, strength and health it brings. This is the real end goal. Eating and moving in a way that feels natural, works with your body, and doesn’t feel like a constant battle.
One issue now of course, it isn’t 1995 anymore, a time when the world had less food, more movement and better eating habits. It was written just before the boom in obesity across the world. So, this day and age, I feel you need to really work on just staying where you are and not getting worse. The modern world is causing you to be more sedentary, to eat bigger portions and be less healthy overall. You therefore need to be aware of this, and routinely push back against it.
Photos – The famous book & some exercises you can do from their approach:
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