The Intuitive Eating Approach
In a world that bombards us with diet culture messages, TikToks on “clean” eating, emphasis on a particular body size and shape, and new fads about this week’s “powerhouse food” that we need to be eating, how do we get off this crazy train and find peace with food and our bodies? Most dietitians say the answer is Intuitive Eating.
In 1995, two dietitians from Southern California had had enough of seeing their patients fail again and again at prescribed diets. They noticed that people were losing weight but then gaining even more back. They saw that people who were limiting their food intake and eliminating foods from their diets were miserable, constantly thinking about food, and even developing disordered eating patterns. Finally, recognizing that weight loss diets don’t work, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch wrote and published the book Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works.
Intuitive Eating in Practice
As a dietitian I see patients with all types of food and eating related issues. Sometimes it’s helping a child gain weight after an illness, it may be helping people who have a hard time eating because of sensory issues also called ARFID (avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder), it may be to help a client manage a new diagnosis of diabetes or cancer, but most often I see new patients who are at their wits’ end about what they’re “supposed” to be eating.
My patients come to me absolutely exhausted of being on diets. They’ve tried Atkins, Weight Watchers, intermittent fasting, “clean” eating, the cabbage soup diet, “cleanses,” the paleo diet, the carnivore diet, and for a few weeks they may have even tried veganism. Heck, there are people who think they’ve tried intuitive eating, but saying, “You can eat whatever you want, in moderation,” is NOT intuitive eating; it is still inherently restrictive.
The idea of intuitive eating can be frightening for people, especially those who have dieted chronically, or from a young age were told when, when, and how much they should be eating. Somewhere along the line, people started to believe that there needed to be rules about food so they could eat “right.”
Why oh why don’t we trust ourselves to feed ourselves!? We know when we have to go to the bathroom, we know when we’re thirsty, we know when we’re tired. Guess what? We also know when we’re hungry and when we’ve had enough to eat.
Clients are often quite nervous when they ask, “So I can eat whatever I want whenever I want?” and I respond, “Yes you can,” and then they usually have a glimmer of hope in their eyes that is quickly overshadowed by, “But if I can eat whatever, whenever, I’ll never stop eating.” Most of the time my patients are so completely exhausted at what they’ve been doing with food that they say, “This sounds insane, but sign me up. If you tell me it will work, I will try to believe you.”
Principles of Intuitive Eating
There are ten core principles of intuitive eating, but I’ll only mention a couple here.
Reject Diet Culture
First is to reject diet culture; stop keeping track of calories, or macros, or points. Recognize how damaging restrictive eating and the crazy weight loss recommendations are to both your physical and mental well-being.
Honor Your Hunger
Another is honor your hunger; you determine if you need more food, not the clock, and not the number of points you have remaining for the day. For many people their hunger and fullness signals are silenced because of years of dieting and restrictive eating, this is something that we usually work on for weeks to months.
Make Peace with Food
One of the most important principles, in my opinion, is making peace with food and giving ourselves unconditional permission to eat. Understanding and embracing this principle gets at the heart of why intuitive eating works. We practice mindfulness with eating; sometimes I’ll challenge a client to get a bag or two of a food they feel a total lack of control around and see what happens. With mindfulness, people start to realize that more than a handful or two of potato chips or more than a bowl of ice cream will lose its “yumminess,” and it’s easy to stop eating. We naturally habituate (or get used to) to flavors and textures. They’re no longer novel or special.
One of the most interesting things about unconditional permission to eat is how it affects our brains’ reward system. If your mindset is, “I can’t eat chocolate cake, it’s so delicious and I will never stop,” the reward system in your brain lights up like a fireworks show. However, if your mindset is, “I can have it if I want it,” and eat the cake, the reward system isn’t as activated. Basically, food restriction increases how rewarding AND how delicious the food is. Once we can eat anything we want, nothing is special, a pizza is as rewarding as a salad, if that’s what you’re hungry for. I actually explain to new clients that their favorite foods simply won’t be as delicious; they don’t believe me until they do.
You can read the book on your own and even get the accompanying work book, but this process is best done with the guidance of a dietitian who understands this material very well. Many clients like to read the book and do their own work, but still want to meet a couple of times a month to ask questions and get clarification.
Resources:
If you’d like to read some of the science about intuitive eating, check out this link.
To read about intuitive eating and all ten principles, check out the website.
Written by Regan Wilson, RD, LN | Counseling Intern
Regan specializes in: Eating disorders, disordered eating patterns, gastrointestinal (GI) disorders and diseases and those who are looking to move past chronic dieting. She is also seeing clients struggling with their mental health as a counseling intern at a discounted rate.