Guide to Intuitive Eating

• Intuitive eating

  

  It is a philosophy of eating that makes you the expert of your body and its hunger signals. Essentially, it’s the opposite of a traditional diet. It doesn’t impose guidelines about what to avoid and what or when to eat.

  A Quick Guide to Intuitive Eating

• The basics

  To eat intuitively, you may need to relearn how to trust your body. Distinguish between physical and emotional hunger: Physical hunger. This biological urge tells you to replenish nutrients. It builds gradually and has different signals, such as a growling stomach, fatigue, or irritability.  Emotional hunger. This is driven by emotional need. Sadness, loneliness, and boredom are some of the feelings that can create cravings for food, often comfort foods. 

  A Quick Guide to Intuitive Eating

• History of intuitive eating

  Some of the concepts of intuitive eating have been around at least since the early 1970s, though the term wasn’t coined until 1995. The program was built on the principle that diets don’t work and that lifestyle changes and personal care are more important for long-term health.

  A Quick Guide to Intuitive Eating

• Key principles

  

  Reject the diet mentality. The diet mentality is the idea that there’s a diet out there that will work for you. Respond to your early signs of hunger by feeding your body. Food is not good or bad and you are not good or bad for what you eat or don’t eat. Respect your fullness. Just as your body tells you when it’s hungry, it also tells you when it’s full. Discover the satisfaction factor. When you make eating a pleasurable experience, you may find it takes less food to satisfy you. Honor your feelings without using food. Find ways that are unrelated to food to deal with your feelings. Respect your body , rather than criticizing your body. Exercise — feel the difference Honor your health — gentle nutrition. One meal or snack isn’t going to make or break your health.

  A Quick Guide to Intuitive Eating

• Research-based benefits

  

  Emerging research suggests that intuitive eating is linked to healthier attitudes toward food and self-image , as well as that it can be learned through interventions.

  A Quick Guide to Intuitive Eating

• Get started

  Without judgment, start taking stock of your own eating behaviors and attitudes. When you eat, ask yourself if you’re experiencing physical or emotional hunger. If it’s physical hunger, try to rank your hunger/fullness level on a scale of 1–10, from very hungry to stuffed. Aim to eat when you’re hungry but not starving. Stop when you’re comfortably full — not stuffed.

  A Quick Guide to Intuitive Eating

• Intuitive eating

  

  Intuitive eating involves coming to peace with your body’s needs, letting go of the guilt associated with eating and ending the struggle of followingdiet rules. The end result of intuitive eating has nothing to do with your weight. 

  What Is Intuitive Eating? Ditch Your Diet And Eat For Wellness, Instead

• Intuitive eating and mindful eating

  With mindful eating , there is no explicit rejection of dieting.  Intuitive eating rejects the diet mentality altogether—that’s the biggest difference.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? Ditch Your Diet And Eat For Wellness, Instead

• Principles of intuitive eating

  

  Honor your hunger . Reject the diet mentality, make peace with food and challenge the food police. The act of eating. Respect your fullness, and discover the food delight factor. The emotion of eating.  Honor your feelings without using food, and respect your body. Exercise —feel the difference. Honor your health.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? Ditch Your Diet And Eat For Wellness, Instead

• Break out of the diet cycle

  When you are in touch with your body’s needs and desires, you honor those without judgment and start to see the ridiculousness of trying to get smaller at all costs.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? Ditch Your Diet And Eat For Wellness, Instead

• A healthy relationship with food

  Eating or not eating certain foods doesn’t make us good or bad people , according to the philosophy of intuitive eating.  The number on the scale doesn’t make us good or bad people —it’s just a number. It’s so much easier to come to these realizations when you aren’t worrying about every bite you put in your mouth.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? Ditch Your Diet And Eat For Wellness, Instead

• Reject the diet mentality

  

  Dieting isn’t sustainable.  Quick-fix plans cannot deliver lasting results. 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. 

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• Honor your hunger

  Eat 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.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• Make peace with food

  

  Give yourself “unconditional permission to eat.” 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.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• Challenge the food police

  The “food police” are those voices in your head that tell you it’s good to eat fewer calories and it’s bad to eat dessert. The food police can be real people too.   “Chasing them away” is an important step in embracing intuitive eating.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• Respect your fullness

  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? 

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• 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.  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.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• Honor your feelings without using food

  It’s not always big, extreme emotions that are causing overeating.  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 .

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• Respect your body

  Intuitive eating is also about 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.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• Exercise: 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.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet

• Honor your health with gentle nutrition

  

  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.

  What Is Intuitive Eating? A Nutritionist Weighs In On This Popular Anti-Diet