Embrace Food Freedom: Exploring Intuitive Eating Principles for a Healthier Relationship with Food

The intuitive eating principles are designed to help you nourish a healthier relationship with food by ending the dieting cycle. The core principles of intuitive eating involve rejecting the dieting mentality, honoring your hunger and fullness, making peace with food, coping with your emotions without using food, and respecting your body.

Intuitive eating was first introduced in the 1990’s by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Since then, intuitive eating has gained popularity as a non-diet approach to healthy, mindful eating.

The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

Reject the diet mentality

Ever wonder why dieting never felt like it worked for you? You’re not alone. Research shows that diets fail for upwards of 95% of people. Diets and the pursuit of weight loss are a key attunement disruptor, creating barriers to you being able to tap into your own inner eating wisdom. The first step towards intuitive eating is rejecting the diet mentality and letting go of the idea that the next best diet awaits you around the corner.

Honor your hunger

Dieting makes it hard to recognize and honor your hunger when you feel it. Under-eating will silence natural hunger cues, while endless rules about what, when, and how to eat will have you second-guessing your hunger. To truly honor your hunger you need to learn what your hunger cues are and how to consistently and adequately fuel your body.

Make peace with food

Continue healing your relationship with food by allowing permission to eat all foods– yes, ALL foods! Restricting certain foods, like carbs or fats, will create a sense of deprivation which ultimately leads to binge eating and feeling out of control around food. Break the restrict-binge cycle by giving yourself permission to eat all foods, especially forbidden and “unsafe” foods.

Challenge the food police

The food police make food out to be good or bad (and make us feel like a good or bad person for eating them!). Food policing thoughts sound like “I’m so bad for eating this” or “I’ll be good and skip dessert.” The food police are attunement disruptors– you won’t be able to tap into your inner food wisdom while the food police make you feel guilty for eating foods you enjoy. In this step of intuitive eating you’ll learn how to reframe challenging thoughts about food and chase the food police away for good.

Discover the satisfaction factor

Satisfaction is often overlooked as being a crucial part of the eating experience. We gain satisfaction from the meals we eat by eating foods we truly enjoy, creating a peaceful eating environment, and being present in the eating experience. This step helps you identify what food flavors, textures, and sensations provide you the most eating satisfaction and sets the stage for you being able to assess comfortable fullness.

Feel your fullness

Many diets encourage us to eat too little, ignoring satisfaction and fullness in favor of reducing calories. This leaves you vulnerable to overeating at future meals. Explore your fullness cues and how to challenge “clean plate” thinking by slowing down and incorporating more mindfulness into your meals.

Cope with your emotions with kindness

Intuitive eating is not just eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. Explore when and how you are using food to cope with emotions with curiosity, not judgment, and discover how it feels to approach emotions, and emotional eating, with kindness and compassion.

Respect your body

Poor body image often results from years of negative self talk encouraged by diets that make you feel as though your body is a problem to be “fixed.” Body respect focuses on rejecting the idea that you are only worthy of love and care in a smaller body and encourages you to embrace your body and all of its perceived “flaws” and embrace all the wonderful things your body does for you every day. All bodies are good bodies, and all bodies deserve dignity and respect.

Joyful movement

Just like how diets strip the joy away from eating, they may have also impacted the way you view or perform exercise. Moving your body doesn’t have to look a certain way to be beneficial. Feel how liberating movement can be when it doesn’t focus on burning calories or dropping pounds. Discover how different exercise feels when you perform it in an adequately nourished body as well!

Gentle nutrition

Diet culture will have you believe that healthy eating can only look a certain way. Gentle nutrition acknowledges that healthy eating is important, but that it is far from black and white. Instead of using ‘healthy’ to describe specific foods that are ‘safe’ to our health, gentle nutrition defines ‘healthy’ as eating a variety of foods while encouraging a healthy relationship with all foods.

Who Can Follow the Intuitive Eating Principles?

We are all born intuitive eaters! From birth we are programmed to know when we are hungry, when we are full, and how much food we need to eat. But as we grow, we are exposed to a culture fixated on thinness, weight loss, and dieting which can negatively impact our ability to feed ourselves intuitively.

Engaging in dieting and weight loss is the number one reason why many people feel disconnected from their bodies and hunger cues. Many dieters report feeling fearful, obsessed, or out of control around food. They restrict calories in an attempt to lose weight and feel in control of their eating which ultimately backfires and results in bingeing. They get caught in a cycle of under- and over-eating which feels impossible to stop.

As a result, dieters tend to have low self esteem and a low sense of self worth, feeling as though they have failed every diet they’ve tried. They regard their body as something that cannot be trusted and have poor body image or even body dysmorphia.

Intuitive eating is for you if you are:

• Tired of yo-yo dieting
• Stuck in a restrict-binge eating cycle
• Struggling with mindfulness
• Unsure of your hunger and fullness cues
• Out of control around food
• Wanting to eat healthier but don’t want to diet
• Feeling self conscious or have poor body image

The Benefits of Intuitive Eating

The benefits of intuitive eating include:

• 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
• Improve mental well-being
• Better body image and self worth
• End yo-yo dieting cycle
• Find your body’s set point weight
• Improve cholesterol levels

Is Intuitive Eating Healthy?

Yes! Intuitive eating is healthy! Studies have shown that those who follow intuitive eating practices have lower total cholesterol levels, lower LDL cholesterol, higher HDL cholesterol, and lower triglycerides. Many people with chronic health conditions, like type 2 diabetes, also find intuitive eating helpful in managing their blood sugar without having to follow a restrictive diet.

Will Intuitive Eating Help Me Lose Weight?

Intuitive eating is not a weight loss diet. Through the process of intuitive eating you are encouraged to put weight loss on the back burner and explore how diets are impairing your ability to achieve body attunement. Some people lose weight by eating intuitively, some gain weight, while still others maintain their weight. The focus of intuitive eating is not weight changes, but rather improving your relationship with food.

How Long Does Intuitive Eating Take?

Intuitive eating is a lifelong process! It can take anywhere from several weeks to several years to feel as though you have achieved body attunement and mastered mindful eating. However, there is never an end point while practicing intuitive eating– there will always be new challenges and things to learn about yourself along the way!

How to Overcome Challenges with Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating can feel like a big change if you’ve spent many years of your life dieting. It will be important to have a knowledgeable support system to help you navigate the principles and challenge diet culture. 

An intuitive eating dietitian can help you come up with an eating plan to keep you consistently and adequately nourished as you begin your intuitive eating journey. We can also support you as you explore your dieting history, challenge food rules, practice honoring your hunger and fullness, and set boundaries with diet culture.

More Resources About the Intuitive Eating Principles

• Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach by Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch
• The Intuitive Eating Workbook: 10 Principles for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food by Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch
• Intuitive Eating for Every Day: 365 Daily Practices and Inspirations by Evelyn Tribole
• More disordered eating and eating disorder recovery resources