The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
What is Intuitive Eating? How is it different than dieting? How can I start incorporating Intuitive Eating into my life?
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In April, I hosted a free workshop outlining the 1o Principles of Intuitive Eating. The class turned out more beautifully than I could have imagined. At one point, I was openly crying, and I looked out to see the faces of the women in attendance glistening with empathy, tears of their own, and deep understanding.
When you struggle with body image, eating, and restriction, the fault can feel circular: your body is the problem, your actions are the solution, your pain isn’t understood by others.
In truth, almost everyone I know (with a few exceptions) has this same pain and struggle.
We are all born intuitive eaters. Some of us stay that way! Folks who grew up in households full of other intuitive eaters likely had that behavior modeled to them. But for the rest of us; whether we grew up in a house with disordered eating and dieting or simply felt the effects of societal messaging around body-image, weight stigma, and diet culture; we lost touch with that innate ability to listen to our bodies and proceed from there.
For those in the latter camp, unlearning a lifetime of food rules can be much more difficult than expected. It may seem silly or backwards to have to “learn” how to “unlearn” eating. How can intuition be instructed?
The concept of Intuitive Eating [IE] was created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995. In their book on the subject, they outlined 10 principles, or guideposts, to follow in order to re-learn how to eat intuitively.
In my class, I mentioned the importance of the word choice here: these are PRINCIPLES, not RULES. Rules are the fruit of diet culture: black and white thinking, all or nothing, extremism, deprivation, YUCK. We don’t want rules in this gentle house. But we do need trail-markers! Just as when hiking, we need signs telling us where to turn, showing us the routes available so we know which path to take home. Principles are meant to guide, not determine. You can’t “fail” at a principle. You can’t “break it” like a rule. You don’t “start over on Monday” with IE, you just keep at it. You adjust. You learn. You change.
It might feel awkward at first, but soon enough, you’ll feel a freedom you didn’t know was possible. That freedom will make space for joy. That joy will make room for kindness. That kindness will allow you to be your best self. All of this leads to a happier, less stressful, more enjoyable life. And isn’t that what we all deserve?
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Without further ado! THE 10 PRINCIPLES OF INTUITIVE EATING:
Reject the Diet Mentality
This is the first principle for a reason. Dieting and IE are diametrically opposed: dieting gives external rules which affect and alter your internal experience of your body. IE asks you to listen to your internal cues for a fully self-integrated experience of life. In order to proceed with IE, you must leave diet culture fully behind. No counting calories or macros. No counting points or dividing foods into “red, yellow, green.” All foods are equal, and all foods are permitted. Ask yourself: where has a hyper-focus on dieting for weight loss gotten you? Are you more stressed and depressed when you’re dieting? Diet culture has been lying to you, and letting go is the first step toward freedom.
Honor Your Hunger
Diet culture teaches you to ignore or even enjoy the feeling of hunger. You can start rejecting this narrative by adequately feeding yourself. Learn to let your hunger guide your eating. Eat if you are hungry. Eat more if you are still hungry. Stop quieting the hunger cues in your body. Stop letting the rules of diet culture tell you when and how much to eat.
Make Peace with Food
Give yourself permission to eat all foods- yes, sugar. Yes, carbs. Cereal. Ice-cream. Whatever it is that you usually deny yourself, remove those restrictions. This is unconditional permission. You might fear that you will engage in an all-out, never-ending binge fest. “I haven’t had a cinnamon roll in years!” you might think, “I’ll likely eat 5 of them!” At first, permission to eat all foods might feel like a loss of control. When you’ve been denying yourself certain foods for months or years, giving yourself permission to eat them can feel like the wild west of honoring cravings. I promise, this phase is short-lived. Your mind will catch up quickly and realize that future cinnamon rolls will be there whenever the craving strikes again, and they’ll lose that powerful hold over you. They’ll always be yummy, but they won’t always be “forbidden fruit.”
Challenge the Food Police
Remove labels from food. Try to stop referring to foods as “good, bad, clean, healthy, junk,” etc. Utilize your mind to consciously stop yourself from going down that path of thought. The thoughts will keep popping up because they are so engrained. Try to shift to descriptions—this food is: “crunchy, sweet, salty, soft, warm, spicy, flakey,” etc.
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Find pleasure in eating! Satisfaction is different from fullness. Fullness is a sensation in your belly, and satisfaction is felt more in your heart, mind, and soul. You can be physically full but not yet satisfied, and that’s okay! Diet culture will ask you to deny your satisfaction—leaving you with diet-culture’s version of these foods that just won’t “hit the spot,” and asking you to stop eating before you really feel satisfied. Challenge this! Let yourself be made happy by food. Laugh, feel grateful, revel in the deliciousness. It’s a privilege to have food to eat and an even greater one to enjoy that food.
Feel Your Fullness
This is one of the principles that feels daunting to beginners. It will naturally get easier over time, so don’t stress if you struggle with this in the beginning. Once you let go of restricting and give yourself permission to eat all foods, it’s natural to feel “out of control,” like you’re eating past fullness. Don’t fret! This will pass once you’ve successfully communicated abundance, freedom, and permission to your body. To help with this, try to eat slowly and mindfully (avoid screens if you can - I know I love to watch TV while eating). Make sure you chew your food. Stop halfway to question if you are still hungry. You might feel compelled to “clean your plate.” If so, I encourage you to save the rest as leftovers so you’ve still “cleaned” the plate, but not in a way where you are overriding your fullness cues. (Reminder- you might be full but not yet satisfied, and that’s okay!)
Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
Start discovering and utilizing self-care methods that are non-food-related. Addressing painful or difficult emotions with a varied elf-care toolkit will help reduce the number of times you either restrict, binge, or fall back into dieting to deal with these feelings. Importantly, be kind to yourself if/when you do use food to deal with emotions, because that’s okay! [Keep in mind: when you have restricted or dieted for a long time, you might feel like you’re eating to soothe emotions when in reality you are just learning to eat intuitively and your body is figuring out how much food it actually wants and needs.]
Respect Your Body
Listen to your body. Take care of your body. Nourish your body. Appreciate what your body is capable of. Attend to how you feel rather than how you look. Try your best not to compare your body to others’. Get adequate rest. Focus on reducing stress. Know your worth: your body is good, just as it is now. Your body loves you. You are your body. Trust your body, and your body will start trusting you back. All bodies are different, and all bodies are valuable.
Movement - Feel the Difference
Learn to move in a way that makes you happy - no pressure, no calorie-burn requirement, and no moving if you’re too hurt or tired! Don’t move as punishment. Don’t move because you feel you need to “earn” food. Vary your movement, try new things, find something you enjoy so much that you can do it for the rest of your life. Pay attention to how you feel when you move. Use that time as an opportunity to strengthen your body awareness and restore your mind-body connection. Relish in how good you feel after moving, and don’t forget to take days off to rest!
Honor Your Health - Gentle [Neutral] Nutrition
An important reminder - eating well does not equal eating “perfectly”—what does “eating perfectly” even mean? Make food choices that honor your unique health. Nutrient-dense foods are a great way to support your body’s total health, but that doesn’t mean you should only eat nutrient-dense foods. You won’t develop a nutrient deficiency in a day or even a week, so anytime you can add in some fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fats, protein, seeds, nuts, etc., it will benefit you, regardless of what else you ate. Your body is unique, so utilize foods that will help bring balance to your unique system! Dairy might not sit well with you, but maybe miso soup feels great! Or maybe fermented foods don’t feel right but a nice european butter sits well—it’s all relative. Experiment to find new ways to cook foods that you don’t go for as often. I don’t love raw beets, but I adore roasted beets! I don’t love mushrooms in salad, but I love them in pasta! Don’t be afraid to try new things. As always, nourish yourself from a place of love and abundance rather than rules and restriction, and you will go far!
Which of these 10 principles stands out to you the most? Leave a comment below!
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REFERENCES:
https://www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/