How Does Intuitive Eating Affect Your Weight?

Intuitive eating is a non-diet framework designed to improve your relationship with food and connect you with your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues. Many of my intuitive eating clients are ready to ditch restrictive, ineffective diets in favor of a gentler, more mindful approach to eating, but there’s often one thing holding them back: How will intuitive eating affect their weight? 

The health benefits of intuitive eating

Intuitive eating has a number of benefits, both physical and mental, including:

• Reduce food anxiety and guilt
• Regulate hunger and fullness
• Enjoy a satisfying and diverse diet
• Establish a positive relationship with food
• Decrease disordered eating thoughts and behaviors
• Incorporate more mindfulness
• Better body image and sense of self worth
• End yo-yo dieting cycle
• Improve cholesterol levels

And

• Stabilizing your body at its set point weight

What is set point weight

Your set point weight is genetically predetermined, just like your shoe size or your hair color. Your body prefers your weight to be stable (we call this homeostasis, which is just a fancy word for ‘staying the same’), which is part of the reason why dieting doesn’t result in long term, sustainable weight change for most people.

Research suggests that intuitive eating can help your body reach its stable set point weight and stay there, reducing the risk of health problems related to weight cycling.

Intuitive eating and weight gain

An important step of intuitive eating is granting yourself permission to eat all foods. This step is important because without permission to eat all foods, some foods will still feel off limits, and will therefore always feel tempting to overeat when you have access to them.

For some people, permission to eat all foods will result in weight gain, especially if your eating has been very restrictive or your weight has been suppressed by diets for a long time. But don’t let this discourage you!

The benefit of finally giving yourself permission to eat all foods is being able to make peace with food– especially those foods that you currently feel most out of control around.

If you find yourself eating a lot of “bad” food during the permission phase of intuitive eating, remember this: This phase does not last forever. The ultimate goal of intuitive eating is not to eat “whatever you want, whenever you want it,” but rather to eat according to your body’s hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues.

This means that while it might feel great to eat ice cream every night during the permission phase, you might eventually find that you no longer crave ice cream quite as often, or that eating it every night doesn’t feel great in your body. You will always have permission to eat ice cream, but you might find that you choose not to from time to time.

Intuitive eating and weight loss

For some people, intuitive eating might result in weight loss. This may result from becoming more mindful around food and your eating behaviors, thus ending frequent binge eating episodes.

It’s important to remember, however, that intuitive eating is not a diet. Using intuitive eating for the sole purpose of losing weight will stall your progress and stop you from becoming a true intuitive eater. This is because treating intuitive eating like a diet will not allow you to explore true permission around all foods or challenge your food rules, nor will it allow you to experiment with hunger and fullness.

How to manage weight fluctuations while intuitive eating

Fluctuations in your weight might feel scary during the intuitive eating process. Try to remember that it’s normal and natural for your weight to fluctuate, even within your set point weight range. Here are some tips to help you navigate the discomfort you might feel around your weight while practicing intuitive eating:

• Put away the scale and stop weighing yourself
• Find clothing that fits your body in the present
• Practice self care that makes your body feel appreciated and respected
• Make a list of your non-weight-related intuitive eating goals and keep track of your successes
• Explore body positive resources online and in your community
• Set boundaries with friends, loved ones, and health care providers about weight-talk
• Work with an intuitive eating, HAES-aligned dietitian who can help guide your eating journey

Summary

Intuitive eating is a non-diet way of eating. Some people may experience weight gain while intuitively eating, while others may experience weight loss. Some people may experience no change to their weight at all.

Focusing on your weight too heavily while practicing intuitive eating may get in the way of you making progress towards true food freedom. Finding ways to feel comfortable and practice respect towards your body, no matter how it changes, will help you foster a greater sense of self worth and boost your confidence in your intuitive eating abilities.