How to Start Intuitive Eating (tips + examples)
So, you’ve heard about Intuitive Eating, and it sounds amazing—maybe even a little too good to be true, if you’re being honest. No more dieting. Listen to your body. Trust yourself. Eat foods you enjoy without guilt. Focus on healthful self-care. Like yourself more.
Yes, please! You’d like all those things, and you’re ready to give it a go. But where on earth do you start?
You’re so used to following the rules of dieting, dutifully counting calories, logging your food choices, or trying to stick to regimented meal plans that you can’t even fathom what it looks like to eat—or keep yourself in check—without doing any of these things. What should you do first? What can you expect when you give it a try? And how on earth will you know if you’re doing it correctly, especially when, in the past, you’ve only ever measured success with the scale?
I’m answering all these questions and more below.
But first, what is Intuitive Eating? A quick refresher…
Intuitive Eating is a weight-neutral, self-care eating framework created by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch over 25 years ago. There are 10 principles of Intuitive Eating, all designed to help you:
Tune out and reject dieting and diet culture
Honor your body’s hunger and fullness cues and other wisdom
Embrace health-promoting behaviors and evidence-based self-care
Practice gentle, flexible, sustainable nutrition
Respect and appreciate your here-and-now body
There are over 200 research studies showing the wide-ranging benefits of Intuitive Eating, including everything from improved lab markers (such as blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, or others) to less disordered eating, better body image, and higher overall life satisfaction.
As I like to describe it, Intuitive Eating can help you find your feel-good, “forever” food solution—or what I like to think of as food and body peace!
So, let’s dive in and take a look at how you can get started breaking up with diet culture and eating intuitively!
Step 1: Get clear on your why with Intuitive Eating
There are no hard and fast rules with Intuitive Eating—it’s about connecting with, honoring, and learning to trust your unique body. But there are a few things Intuitive Eating is not, and I think it’s important to make sure you’re diving into this with a complete understanding of what those are, so you don’t end up frustrating yourself further.
Intuitive Eating is not another diet to embark on for the purposes of weight loss. Yes, some people will lose weight with this approach, just as others will gain or stay at the same weight. At its core, though, Intuitive Eating is about healing your relationship with food and your body so you can promote your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing, or what I like to call your Whole Health.
Since you’re here reading this post, you likely already know that dieting doesn’t work. But truthfully, the problem isn’t just that dieting doesn’t work. It’s that it can actively undermine your health and wellbeing. To understand what I mean, consider some of the common consequences of dieting:
Becoming disconnected from your hunger and fullness cues (a result of counting calories, points, or macros, or following other external “rules” about eating instead of listening to your body)
Struggling with wild cravings and rebound overeating in response to food restriction and deprivation
Increased body dissatisfaction
Yo-yo weight gain and loss, which itself has been linked with negative health outcomes
Plus, dieting leads to all-or-nothing behaviors with food and exercise, negative self-talk, preoccupation with food, confusion about the “right” way to eat and support your body, and so many other negative consequences
All of which is to say that, while I fully understand how tempting it is to turn Intuitive Eating into another attempt at weight loss, please remind yourself that you cannot heal from dieting with another diet.
You cannot make peace with food and your body if your primary focus is on changing or “fixing” your body. Sadly, it simply will not work.
It’s ok to feel torn between wanting to lose weight and wanting to eat intuitively
Please know that It’s ok (and in fact, normal!) to feel very conflicted about this. On the one hand, you want to stop dieting and feel normal around food. On the other, you may not like your current body, feel deeply uncomfortable at your present weight, or believe you need to lose weight to promote your health.
Two things can be true at once. You can know in your mind that dieting doesn’t work and is causing you more harm than good, while also still desperately wanting to lose weight. You can even feel this way and begin your Intuitive Eating journey—as long as you’re willing to explore and understand those desires for weight loss instead of actively pursuing them while you give Intuitive Eating a go.
A certified Intuitive Eating counselor can be invaluable in helping you sort through these conflicting emotions without getting lured back into dieting, while also helping you more successfully adopt and embrace the principles of Intuitive Eating. You can read more about what you can expect when you work with one here.
Intuitive Eating is also not the hunger-fullness plan
Yes, we want to help you honor your hunger and fullness cues, but Intuitive Eating is about so much more than eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. Also, to make things even more complicated, there will absolutely be times when you eat when you’re not hungry or eat past your comfortable fullness point—and that doesn’t mean you’re doing Intuitive Eating wrong. That’s actually a normal part of eating.
Lastly, Intuitive Eating is not an excuse to eat anything and everything with no regard for anything else. In other words, it’s not the ‘fork-it’ diet either.
Intuitive Eating IS about ending the battle against food and your body. It’s about reclaiming your time, money, energy, and brain space from dieting and diet culture. It’s about respecting and appreciating the body you’re in, while learning to nourish your whole health and wellbeing.
If that sounds good to you—you’re on the right path! Keep reading for more tips on how to get started with Intuitive Eating!
STEP 2: Actively opt out of diet culture
It’s hard to drop out of diet culture when you’re still immersed in it.
One of the most helpful first steps you can take is to fully explore your dieting history. Consider making a timeline of all the diets you’ve tried, the results you saw, and how long those results lasted. Be sure to also consider what rules you were following with each diet and how those rules impacted your quality of life.
For example, how much time did they take up? How did they impact your social life? Your family life? Were there any physical consequences (for your hunger, energy levels, sleep, hair or skin, menstrual cycles, digestion, etc.)? How did those diets make you feel about food? Did you become preoccupied with it, feel guilty for what you did or didn’t eat, did you feel hungry all the time, have mood swings, worry what other people thought about what or how you were eating? Did you become hyper-fixated on the scale or your weight?
Your goal is to non-judgmentally explore the full truth of your dieting history so you can evaluate whether various diets really “worked” for you with fresh eyes. We do this because it’s much easier to avoid the lure of dieting once you realize how ineffective and harmful it’s been for you.
As you do this, remember that YOU are not the problem. You didn’t fail all those diets—they failed you!
Ditch your dieting tools
Once you’ve fully explored your dieting history, you can go a bit further by ditching some of the tools of dieting and quieting the influence of diet culture in your life:
Delete your food logging and calorie tracking apps
Get rid of your diet books, food scales, and diet-driven meal plans
Unfollow, mute, or block social media accounts that promote dieting, weight loss, or food and exercise plans that are really just diets in disguise
Reevaluate the media messages you consume—if they make you feel bad about food, eating, or your body, unsubscribe or delete them
Pack up and put away clothes that don’t fit
Consider putting your scale away (some people aren't’ ready to do this right at the outset; if you feel this way, it’s ok!)
Walk away from or change the subject on diet conversations or body bashing sessions
The more diet culture you can sidestep, the easier your Intuitive Eating journey will be.
Step 3: Feed your hunger
It’s a sad truth that dieting typically leaves us hungry—and not just for food! As one of my awesome clients aptly pointed out, dieting also leaves you hungry for freedom… for ease… and for peace. Sadly, there’s so much truth in this statement.
To proceed with Intuitive Eating, you’ll want to make sure you’re eating sufficient amounts of food throughout the day, including carbs, which are our primary source of energy.
Remind yourself that hunger is a biological need. It’s your body doing its job to help you not just survive but thrive. Contrary to a lot of diet culture teachings, hunger is not your enemy. You don’t need to hack it or ignore it, but rather respond to it just as you would any other biological cue (such as needing to go to the bathroom).
You may want to start by making sure that you’re eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day, while also giving yourself permission to have 1 or 2 snacks.
Feeding your hunger sounds simple in theory but can be difficult in practice as many people with a strong dieting history no longer know what hunger feels like. You may view hunger as the enemy… second-guess how much you’re “supposed” to be eating… or have a deep-seated fear of gaining weight if you eat more food. These are all great reasons to reach out to an Intuitive Eating dietitian who can help guide you through this journey.
By avoiding getting to a place of primal or urgent hunger, you’ll be much better positioned to embrace all the other principles of Intuitive eating, including respecting your fullness cues, making peace with foods that currently feel off limits, or making embodied nutrition decisions that support and honor your mind and body.
Step 4: Satisfy your tastebuds
Many of us are so used to thinking about what we’re “supposed” to eat or what we “should” or “shouldn’t” eat, that the idea of considering what we WANT to eat feels taboo.
However, satisfaction is the central hub of Intuitive Eating and a foundation for all 10 of the Intuitive Eating principles. Why? Because how you eat is just as important as what you eat. Enjoying your food without guilt or moral dilemma is part of healthy eating. It promotes your overall wellbeing.
It’s also much easier to honor your hunger and fullness cues, move your body in ways that feel good to you, and eat amounts of food that feel good physically when your approach to food is enjoyable and enriching instead of punishing and restrictive.
Try asking yourself:
What do I want to eat?
What sounds good to me right now?
What flavors, textures, temperatures, or aromas sound appealing?
How can I enjoy those foods in a way that feels good and honors my wellbeing?
Then, practice eating those foods mindfully and with intention.
Step 5: Adopt a no-failure-only-feedback mantra
There are no hard-and-fast rules with Intuitive Eating and it’s not a right-wrong proposition. Ultimately, it’s a dynamic way of eating and caring for yourself with food and helpful self-care.
This means that some days you’ll be hungrier than others, your schedules and routines will shift, your food preferences will ebb and flow, different types of movement will or won’t feel good depending on the day. Some days you’ll feel reasonably ok about or in your body, while others you may experience more intense difficulties with your body image.
In other words, your body will send you different messages, and you’ll feel differently depending on the day. Part of the nuance of Intuitive Eating is being able to tune in and respond to your fluctuating needs and desires.
Also, this is a trust-building journey between you, your body, and its cues. It will take you time to fully understand, trust, and consistently respond to your body’s messages.
Likewise, diet culture teachings run deep–unlearning them is a process that unfolds slowly, over time.
Remind yourself that there is no wrong way to have or nourish your body. Absolutely everything is feedback—feedback for what worked and felt good and what didn’t.
Try to approach your intuitive eating journey with a mindset of radical curiosity. Ask yourself lots and lots of questions and do your best to consider the answers neutrally, without judgment.
For example, you can ask yourself what it is about a particular eating experience that either did or didn’t go well? What was happening in your day that may have contributed to that feeling or experience? What was happening for you physically or emotionally while you ate that? What do you want to remember for next time? What would you like to repeat or do differently in the future?
Food and body peace are yours for the taking
Intuitive Eating is not a destination, it’s a direction.
It’s you, nourishing your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing as best you can each day. It’s you, treating yourself with compassion and care day in and day out. It’s you, living a life FREE of the toxicity of diet culture so you can live your best, most nourished, most holistically healthful life.
I’m so excited for you to reap the rewards of eating—and living—intuitively! These 5 steps will help you get started with your best foot forward. And when you’re ready to go further, be sure to reach out. I’d be honored to help you!
