Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach

by Evelyn Tribole

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.

Cynthia found food to keep her occupied when she was bored and to soothe her lonely soul.

For some, food is simply a means of distraction from boring activities or a filler for empty times. For others, it can be the only comfort they have to get through a painful life.

You may begin to find that you choose more nutrient-dense foods, not because you think you should, but because you feel better physically when you eat this way.

The urgent need to prove to yourself that you can have previously forbidden foods will have diminished. You truly know and trust that these foods will always be there, and if you really want to eat them, you can

performative eating, eating to please the expectations of other.

paradigm shifts.

Whether they are highly placed executives, prominent celebrities, or straight-A students, they all talk about their food experiences shamefully, and they doubt whether they’ll ever be able to feel successful in the area of eating.

You can’t fail at Intuitive Eating—it’s a learning process at every point along the way. What used to be thought of as a setback will instead be seen as a learning experience.

clients who go longer than five hours without eating tend to overeat at the next eating opportunity.

second-guessing the needs of their bodies. Their eating appears to be fine until one of their sacred rules is violated. When a rule is broken, so is their restraint—and, wham, overeating begins.

once you truly know you can eat whatever you want, the intensity to eat greatly diminishes.

when you know that previously forbidden foods will always be allowed, the urgency to have large quantities of them eventually dissipates.

Attunement with your body’s satiety cues is an important part of this process.

The newly emerged Nutrition Ally is interested in healthy eating with no hidden agenda. For example, if you were choosing between two brands of cheese that you like equally and that have saturated fat, the Nutrition Ally would advise choosing the brand with lower saturated fat. It’s a choice based on health and satisfaction, not deprivation, or dieting.