Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach

by Evelyn Tribole

comment actually distorts the premise of Intuitive Eating. Yes, make peace with food, and eat what pleases your palate. Yes, give yourself the freedom to eat unconditionally, and eat as much as you need to satisfy your body. But eating whenever you feel like it, without regard to hunger and fullness, might not be a very satisfying experience

you took your car to an auto mechanic for regular tune-ups, and after time and money spent the car didn’t work, you wouldn’t blame yourself.* Yet in spite of the fact that up to 95 percent of all diets fail, you tend to blame yourself, not the diet! Isn’t

sustainable or efficacious in the long run, or without harm. Sadly, research indicates that health professionals are one of the main perpetuators of weight stigma.

reconnect with your body’s Intuitive Eating signals. When you focus on weight, it places your attention on external measures for eating—such as the portions of foods, the macros of food—rather than connecting you with your internal cues. (That’s

“Be sure to tell them that if they have a binge, it can actually turn out to be a great experience, because they’ll learn so much about their thoughts and feelings, as a result of the binge.”

Interoceptive awareness is the ability to perceive physical sensations that arise from within your body.

challenge in today’s diet culture is that many people do not value, let alone trust, their body sensations. Instead, they eat based on externality—that is, eating according to rules and diet plans, which ultimately create confusion between mind and body. Interoceptive awareness is based on inner sensation, which is an inside job. That’s why using external methods to eat—such as counting macros, calories, or points—does not help you connect to your body.

Some critics express concern about one of the key components of Intuitive Eating—unconditional permission to eat when hungry and to eat whatever food is desired. They assert that if people were “allowed” to eat whatever they wanted, it would result in unhealthy diets and weight gain. To

Yet it would be a mistake to promote IE for weight loss, as it would undermine and interfere with the process, because IE is an internally based process, whereas a focus on body weight is externally based.

The main purpose of Intuitive Eating is to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, mind, and body. It is a weight-neutral model, meaning that the focus is not on body size, but rather on healing your relationship with food. Health

The most promising study to date asked the question: Can patients with eating disorders learn to eat intuitively? (Richards et al. 2017). The study’s finding was a resounding yes. This

Many people are surprised to learn that body compliments can be a form of judging a person by their appearance, such as “You look great—how much

Binge-Eating Treatment A promising study by Laura Smitham, from the University of Notre Dame, used an eight-week Intuitive Eating program (based on our book) for treating thirty-one women diagnosed with binge-eating disorder (Smitham 2008). The results of this study showed a significant reduction in binge eating; so much so that the women no longer met the diagnostic criteria for binge-eating disorder.

Although the MB-EAT program does not have a specific reject the diet component, Kristeller agrees that dieting interferes with mind-body attunement.

In fact, in 2019, Weight Watchers introduced an app for children as young as age seven, with before and after pictures, called Kurbo, which was decried by health professionals and eating disorder organizations.

overscheduled life, too busy, too many things to do. The chaotic eating style is haphazard; whatever’s available will be grabbed—vending machine fare, fast food, it’ll all do. Nutrition is often important to this person—just not in the critical moment of the chaos. Chaotic

This eater is vulnerable to the mere presence of food, regardless if hungry or full.

And, please keep in mind that these ten principles are simply guidelines and not new rules that can be turned into a new diet. Any desire for weight loss must be put on the back burner, or it will sabotage your process of healing your relationship with food, your mind, and your body.

you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet or food plan might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for rebuilding trust in yourself and in food.

Call a truce; stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing. When you finally “give in” to your forbidden foods, eating will be experienced with such intensity it usually results in Last Supper overeating and overwhelming guilt.

Scream a loud no to thoughts in your head that declare you’re “good” for eating minimal calories or “bad” because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The food police monitor the unreasonable rules that diet culture has created. The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loudspeaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the food police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

Japanese have the wisdom to keep pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In our compulsion to comply with diet culture, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence—the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content.

“If you don’t love it, don’t eat it, and if you love it, savor it.”

order to honor your fullness, you need to trust that you will give yourself the foods that you desire. Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry and observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full. Pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what your current hunger level is.

Jackie made an interesting observation while feeding alley cats during one of her out-of-town parties: the starving alley cat will eat until the bowl is licked clean, but house cats know they will be fed again, so they can easily turn up their tails and leave food in their dish. House cats can honor fullness because they know they will eat again.

First, recognize that food restriction, both physically and mentally, can, in and of itself, trigger loss of control, which can feel like emotional eating. Find kind ways to comfort, nurture, distract, and resolve your issues. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, and anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won’t fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you. But food won’t solve the problem. You’ll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion.

Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size. But mostly, respect your body so you can feel better about who you are. It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and critical of your body size or shape. All bodies deserve dignity.

Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie-burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm.

Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel good. Remember that you don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or become unhealthy from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters. Progress, not perfection, is what counts.

The amount of time that you need to stay in any particular stage is variable and highly individualized.

Sometimes you’ll move back and forth among the stages. If you accept that this is a normal part of the process, it will help you to keep going without feeling that you are backsliding or not making progress.

Our goal is to help you find the richest life you can, regardless of your size or shape, and to help you focus on the behaviors that have kept you from feeling the best you can, both physically and emotionally. Remember, focusing on the goal of weight loss will interfere with your ability to make choices based on your body’s signals.

You have lost touch with biological hunger and satiety signals. You have forgotten what you really like to eat and instead eat what you think you “should” eat.

STAGE TWO: EXPLORATION—CONSCIOUS LEARNING AND PURSUIT OF PLEASURE This is a stage of exploration and discovery. You will go through a phase of hyperconsciousness to help reacquaint yourself with your intuitive signals: hunger, taste preferences, satisfaction, and satiety.

eating large quantities of these foods secretly or with guilt. It is unlikely that the way you eat during this stage will be the pattern that you will establish or want for a lifetime. You

For example, the thought of giving yourself unconditional permission to eat may seem terrifying—and you might fear that you will never stop eating. The

you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet or food plan might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

FEAR: I will be out of control. REALITY: Control is not an issue in Intuitive Eating. Instead, you will be relying on your internal signals, rather than on external factors, social media influencers, and authority figures (whom you’re bound to defy). Nobody can be the expert of “you.”

dieter is often vulnerable to loss of control, overeating when violating “the rules” of the diet, whether there was an actual or perceived transgression of the diet! The mere perception of eating a forbidden food (regardless of actual calorie content) is enough to trigger overeating.

Many folks in larger bodies assume they could not have become large unless they possessed some fundamental character deficit.

Garner and Wooley argue that while many larger individuals may experience binge eating and depression, these psychological and behavioral symptoms are often the result of dieting.

Ironically a “good” or “bad” scale number can both trigger overeating—whether it’s a congratulatory eating party or a consolation party. The scale ritual sabotages body and mind efforts; it can in one moment devalue days, weeks, and even months of progress,

encourages overeating. If you can eat as much as you want of vegetables (in the old days) and fruits (now), it promotes eating to push away feelings, eating of foods that give false fullness signals, and substituting these foods for foods that might be more satisfying. It promotes the concept of “good” and

Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for rebuilding trust with yourself and food.

problem with consistently denying your hunger state is twofold. First, it usually crescendos into a period of overeating. Second, when the mind gets so used to ignoring hunger signals, they begin to fade and you don’t hear them anymore. Or you can only “hear” hunger in extreme, ravenous states, which can be adverse.

Numbing. Many people have learned over the years to quell or avert hunger pangs by turning to calorie-free beverages, such as diet sodas, coffee, and tea. The liquid in the stomach temporarily tricks the gastric mechanism into a sense of fullness.

Take care not to get overly hungry or ravenous. If this is difficult for you to gauge, a general guideline is to go no longer than five waking hours without eating.

Sometimes people may eat simply because it sounds good or because the occasion calls for it. We call this taste hunger.

Yet it’s not unusual for dieters to feel bad about any perceived food transgression, and then feel like they might as well throw in the towel. And that’s when overeating often takes place.