Is ‘intuitive eating’ as simple as it sounds?

Is ‘intuitive eating’ as simple as it sounds?
John Murphy, MDLinx | October 02, 2019

Intuitive eating sounds so simple that it’s hard to believe it can help you maintain a healthy weight: Eat what you want, but only when you feel hungry, and stop eating when you feel full. Here’s what it’s about and how it works.



Intuitive eating, simply put, means eating when you feel hungry and stopping when you feel full.

Intuitive eating was defined nearly 25 years ago by two registered dieticians—Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S, and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S. They define intuitive eating not so much by what it is as by what it isn’t. It isn’t an “eat-this-not-that” kind of diet. It isn’t even a diet, at least not in the same mold as the Grapefruit Diet, the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, or any of those.

In fact, it’s more of an anti-diet. You don’t count calories. You don’t eliminate any particular foods. You don’t follow any schedule, table, or program. According to Tribole and Resch, intuitive eating is a reaction to “diet culture and weight obsession.”

“There is not a single long-term study that shows that weight-loss dieting is sustainable. Study after study shows that dieting and food restriction for the purpose of weight loss leads to more weight gain,” Tribole writes on their website. “Worse—the focus and preoccupation on weight leads to body dissatisfaction and weight stigma, which negatively impacts health.”

Its originators make it very clear that intuitive eating is not intended to be a weight-loss method. Instead, they describe it as a “weight-neutral model.” You may not lose weight, but intuitive eating shouldn’t cause you to gain weight, either.


“Rather than focus on weight, the focus of [intuitive eating] is on cultivating healthy behaviors, period. Body weight is not a behavior,” according to Tribole.

Emerging research appears to support this. In a systematic review and meta-analysis, independent researchers concluded that intuitive eating “was associated with less disordered eating, a more positive body image, greater emotional functioning, and a number of other psychosocial correlates that have been examined less extensively.”

10 tenets of intuitive eating
Instead of counting carbs, adding up points, or going on intermittent fasts, people who get on board with intuitive eating follow a list of 10 principles that serve as guidelines for the process. The first principle must be tackled before any of the others. But after the first one, the rest can be done in any order.

1. Reject the diet mentality. Tribole and Resch use the term “diet” to describe fad diets, celebrity diets, restrictive diets, etc. They say these lead to yo-yo weight loss and gain, loads of unnecessary stress, and thinking of foods as either “bad” or “good.”

“Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently,” they write. Clinging to even a sliver of this false hope prevents any chance of undertaking intuitive eating.


2. Honor your hunger. Do you feel hungry? Then it’s time to eat. Recognize the biological signal of hunger and “honor” it, the authors advise.

The trick is to distinguish the internal physiologic cues of hunger (termed “interoceptive awareness”) from emotional cravings for food. This may take time, and some people can do it more easily than others. Not to worry—strive for progress, not perfection, the authors say.

3. Make peace with food. Food is not the enemy. “Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing,” they write. And then bingeing leads to unwarranted guilt.

4. Challenge the Food Police. Because of dieting’s rules and reprimands, the Food Police have set up a perimeter deep in a dieter’s psyche. The Food Police tell you that you’re “bad” for eating that piece of chocolate cake and you’re “good” for eating your spinach.

“The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created,” Tribole and Resch explain. Ignore the Food Police. Better yet, chase them away.

5. Respect your fullness. Get familiar with the feeling of fullness. Know when your hunger has gone. “Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?” the authors advise.

6. Discover the satisfaction factor. Take pleasure in eating. It can be a “powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content,” write Tribole and Resch. And when you do this, you’ll notice that it takes much less food to tell you you’ve had enough.

7. Honor your feelings without using food. Everyone gets feelings of anxiety, loneliness, boredom, stress, and anger. “Food won’t fix any of these feelings,” they assert. “If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run.” You’ll not only have to deal with problem causing the emotion, but also the discomfort and discontent from overeating.

8. Respect your body. “Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body size,” Tribole and Resch write. So, don’t be unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape.

9. Exercise—feel the difference. “Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference,” they advise. Focus on how being active makes you feel—do you feel more positive, more energized? Bullying yourself to go out for a 5-mile run to burn X number of calories is just not as motivating.

10. Honor your health with ‘gentle nutrition.’ You don’t have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. “It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters,” Tribole and Resch explain. “Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds while making you feel well.”

For your own benefit, ignore this particular benefit
Even though intuitive eating specifically disregards weight loss, it might indeed help an individual lose a few pounds. For instance, some researchers have shown that intuitive eating is associated with lower BMI.

“This is relevant for health practitioners who are concerned that letting people eat whatever food they desire (unconditional permission to eat) would lead to weight gain,” Tribole acknowledges.

But she cautions that promoting intuitive eating as a method of weight loss can undermine and interfere with the process—and even backfire on those who try it.

“If a health professional or coach is offering you intuitive eating for the purpose of weight loss—run away. Fast,” Tribole writes.

I tried it about 15 years ago and it worked pretty well.
I lost 10 lbs in about a month.

I think there something to listening to your body as it calls out for a food type it wants. I don’t eat meat very often, but sometimes my body seems to say it needs some. Of course, if you’re body is calling out for a pizza every day, that’s not working.

I differ a bit on stopping when you feel full. I would say stop before you feel full - there’s a delay between being being full and feeling full.

I've always lost weight this way. The only requirement for it to work is that I must be working out.

When working out and exercising, my body has always told me what it craves. And if obeyed, I lost weight.

Caveat: this was before my operation. Since then, nothing seems to take it off.

I have a "new normal" weight now as well

Glazed doughnuts = superfood

A lot has been been written here about a world wide problem called obesity and the issues it brings with itdiabetes, heart/stroke, cancer, etc). The human and medical costs are enormous. There have been so many diets through the years, some practical, some wacky but in the end the problem of obesity is getting worse. Most of these diets work short term and I believe may work in the long term if people had the dicipline to strictly adhere to diets themselves but we all have personal food failings so after gaining 5 pounds over a weekend of binge high caloric eating and drinking with the boys and having the hard work of taking 2 months on your diet to take these 5 pounds off, we kinda fall off the wagon. It's not the diets fault, its just that we have so many opportunities to eat foods that taste soooo good and have high caloric value like sticky buns, pizza, ice cream, chips, cheetos, well the list is endless as is the times in front of the TV watching your favorite team consumming these tasting snacks that have more calories than a full meal on your diet. When you invite the "boys" over to watch the super bowl, beer and pizza is the rallying cry, not a huge bowl of whipped turnip and fizzy water.

To me, the problem is very simple, calories in = calories out to balance your weight. That is the easy part. The hard part is actually eating foods that are nutritious, fill you up and are not high in calories to push you over the plus calories for the day and you find tasty. When I am hungry, if given a choice between a platter of cheese, sausage meats, salty chips, smoked salmon or a platter of cut up vegetables, I'm going for the salt and fats. This is human nature. The food companies add sugar, salt and fat to foods because they know, that is the food we like which is different than the foods we should be consumming.

Calories out are determined by your metabolism, age, daily activity. An average 70 year old, hey thats me, needs on average, 2000 calories. Thats 2.5 sticky buns or a whole bunch of fruits, vegetables, fish etc that is way better for you. It's your choice to be within the acceptable, healthy weight that the medical profession suggests. Don't blame it on the government if you are fat.

An observation over the changes in our eating habits in the last 50 years or so is the amount of fast food outlets that people frequent on a daily basis and the portion sizes has increased. Also, the snack food isles in the local convenience and super stores now take up a lot more room because of demand for these products.
My younger son who is 36 and thin( a former endurance athlete) says, "Do not drink your calories". What he is talking about is the amount of calories going down the throats of so many young and old folks in the form of surgery, fatening Big Gulps or sugered coffees, plus all of the traditional pops and "sport drinks" that are sold in so many convenience stores, many so close to schools. With a steak, at least you have to take the time to cut it and then chew it before you can swallow the morsel. Not so with a Big Gulp or a Starbucks, super spice latte, just tilt her back and there you have 400 calories in your body before your brain even considers that you have something in your stomach.

We do not eat at fast food places, try to eat good home cooked food, even though we do have some junk food around, get a huge amount of exercise (probably more like over 3000 calories) every day and keep a fairly consistent weight through out the years.(I'm 5'11", 180', she's 5'4", 130')

I believe we all have a choice in fighting this obesity crises. As we live with PC, it is much easier mentally and physically dealing with the many issues that arise from this disease when your body doesn't also have to fight another huge problem called obesity.

Dave