What is Intuitive Eating?
Let’s begin with a simple definition.
🔍 Intuitive eating is a self-care eating framework; a NON-DIET approach to health and well-being that enables you to:
Get back in touch with your body’s signals.
Identify your body’s needs and understand how to meet them.
Recognize the toxicity of Diet Culture.
Quit dieting and/or chronic dieting.
Dismantle detrimental beliefs & behavior around food and movement and implement more sustainable mindful habits!
Ultimately - intuitive eating is a tool to help you HEAL your relationship with food and body for the long haul. 🙌
Discovered and made by popular by Registered Dietitians. 📚
In 1995, Registered Dietitians — Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch decided they were done with the broken cycle of dieting. After spending decades of their careers putting patients and clients on diets and/or assigning meal plans, only to experience the frustrating, [seemingly never ending] cycle of dieting run its course… They were determined to offer a better path!
The “diet cycle” goes a little something like this:
👉 Feel uncomfortable with body/self/health
👉 Go on a diet/restrict
👉 Get tired, hungry, or bored
👉 “Cheat” or binge
👉 Fall of the wagon entirely
👉 Rebound weight gain (often, in excess!)
👉 Feel bad/guilty about it
👉 Start another diet
(REPEAT)
If you’ve been there, which most have, you know it’s not a fun way to live. What’s been discovered in research is that dieting is NOT actually helping people get healthier. In fact, it is associated with increased binge eating, preoccupation with food, feelings of deprivation, sense of failure, chronic dieting, rebound weight, weight cycling, and increased ghrelin or hunger hormone. Dieting is also associated with decreased metabolic rate and decreased leptin or satiety hormone.
Another diet is not the answer.
Once Tribole and Resch discovered the scientific literature around moving away from dieting, it was only a matter of time and experience before they founded a hopeful method for helping ex-dieters find lasting [holistically] healthy change.
The two of them co-authored a book called, “Intuitive Eating; A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach,” which is now available in it’s 4th edition!
An evidence-based model with over 125 studies to date.
As a Registered Dietitian, I uphold a code of conduct to share evidence-based nutrition information. Disclaimer: Not everything you read OR see on the internet is backed by research 🤯…especially when it comes to food & nutrition!
It’s a JOY to watch the body of research on Intuitive Eating continue to grow and support the benefits of moving away from dieting and towards healthier patterns in relation to food and body.
Some of the research-backed benefits of intuitive eating include, but are not limited to: lower occurrence of disordered eating, less emotional eating, lower triglycerides, lower blood pressure, less body dissatisfaction, greater variety of foods eaten, greater pleasure from the eating experience, higher self-esteem, increased good cholesterol (HDL), use of more proactive coping strategies, psychological hardiness and greater life satisfaction!
Click here to check out the research! 🔬
The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating:
Practicing Intuitive Eating is much more nuanced than it sounds. There is a necessary un-learning component to off-load the unhelpful information picked up in diet culture.
This self-care eating framework is made up of 10 principles. As you learn and put each principle into practice, you may pick up on the fact that babies and small children live much closer to an Intuitive Eating approach than adults. It makes sense, as they have yet to be hindered by Diet Culture when it comes to the way they view their bodies, move their bodies, and honor their body’s signals. So in a way, we are all just getting back to our Intuitive Eating roots!
🌟 Here’s a brief synopsis of each principle:
Reject the Diet Mentality - acknowledge the reality that more dieting won’t resolve issues with food.
Honor Your Hunger - all healthy relationships are built on trust & communication. Relearn how to listen & respond to your body’s needs.
Make Peace with Food - learn how to be around any and ALL food and not feel anxious or “out of control.”
Challenge the Food Police - decipher voices of food-guilt and shame, understand where they come from, and how to silence them.
Discover the Satisfaction Factor - slow down, eat with all you senses, enjoy food again without checking out.
Feel Your Fullness - understand and re-familiarize with levels of satiety and what is most comfortable for your body.
Cope with Emotions with Kindness - diversify coping mechanisms so that food is no longer your go-to emotional escape.
Respect Your Body - change your language, thought process, and self-talk when it comes to your vessel.
Movement - Feel the Difference! - Human movement in necessary to thrive and should feel good to take part in.
Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition - learn to nourish in ways that helps prevent illness and promote individualized well-being.
Are you ready for lasting change?!
The Intuitive Eating journey is truly an ALL-IN experience! If you are ready to ditch diet culture, break the oh-so-familiar cycles, and build a better relationship with food & body — I invite you to join me for a 12-week group program called, ‘Able Together!’
This is a unique group for women, fully virtual, and proven to be the catalyst for lasting change.
Click the link below to learn more and schedule a FREE 30-min chat today!👇
I hope to connect with you soon. ♡
Grace Lopez, RD, LD/N, CLC, CPT
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist