Wow, that’s a long title for an article! Let’s break it down:

Intuitive Eating (yep, with a capital I and a capital E) is an evidenced-based, weight-neutral framework that helps you to honour your health by listening for, understanding and responding to the cues your body gives you.1 It is an approach created around 27 years ago by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, who describe it as:

“a dynamic integration between mind and body”, where instinct, emotion and rational thought are combined to enhance self-care.1,2

Intuitive Eating goes beyond paying attention to and honouring your hunger and fullness cues to also consider the broader structures in place that influence how we interact with ourselves and food, allowing us to remove the things in our life that get in the way of us meeting our nutritional and psychological needs.

Intuitive Eating has 10 principles:3

  • Reject the Diet Mentality
  • Honour Your Hunger
  • Make Peace with Food
  • Challenge the Food Police
  • Discover the Satisfaction Factor
  • Feel Your Fullness
  • Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
  • Respect Your Body
  • Movement – Feel the Difference
  • Honour Your Health – Gentle Nutrition

As for why we’re not all doing it, well, diet culture has a bit to do with that part!

What is diet culture, I hear you ask? The way I see it, diet culture is the pervasive, insidious rule-maker that insists being thin is of utmost importance. It’s the thing that tells us being “fat” is bad, having food rules is good and being happy and healthy is dependent on our body size. It fosters fear, shame and guilt and chips away at our autonomy. It has us clutching to the new diet of the times – grapefruit diet, soup diet, no sugar diet, low fat diet, the it’s-not-a-diet-it’s-a-wellness-plan diet – as if it will make our lives better and see an end to all our woes.

As many studies are finding, diet culture’s weight-centric focus is generally ineffective in the long term,4, 5 and all too often leads to negative consequences such as high blood pressure, bone fractures, increased anxiety and even type two diabetes and coronary heart disease.6 And for most of us reading this, diet culture. Is. Everywhere.

Well that sounds depressing! What can I do about it?

If the problem is diet culture chipping away at our autonomy and encouraging us to look for external cues – for when and what to eat, for how much to move, of validation – then the solution is to go against the grain.

Take back command of your health so that you are in the driver’s seat, making the conscious decisions about your food and movement based on how you feel, rather than being told what to do by a diet.

Tune in to those internal cues our body gives us – signs of hunger, fullness and thirst can be a good start. Try taking a deep breath and asking yourself “how do I feel?”. Look for the place in your body where that feeling sits, and try to notice it without judging it. This fosters curiosity, rather than diet culture’s favourite go-to: judgment.

Get angry at diet culture and the lies it has sold you; call it out when you notice it popping up in your thoughts – “I’m not allowed to eat that”, “I really should burn off that piece of cake” or maybe even “I haven’t done anything to deserve a treat today”.

And, to bring this article full circle: actively engage in the process of Intuitive Eating. You could start by choosing one of the ten principles above, and exploring what working on that principle means to you. What could change to align you better with that principle? What can stay the same?

Sound scary? Have questions? That’s where seeing a dietitian can help! If you’re ready to start diving into Intuitive Eating and distancing yourself from diet culture book in with Stefanie today!

References:

  1. Tribole, Evelyn. What is Intuitive Eating? The Original Intuitive Eating Pros. [Online] www.intuitiveeating.org/what-is-intuitive-eating-tribole.
  2. Tribole, Evelyn. Definition of Intuitive Eating. The Original Intuitive Eating Pros. [Online] www.intuitiveeating.org/definition-of-intuitive-eating.
  3. Tribole, Evelyn and Resch, Elyse. 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating. The Original Intuitive Eating Pros. [Online] www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating.
  4. Mann, T., Tomiyama, A. J., Westling, E., Lew, A.-M., Samuels, B., & Chatman, J. (2007). Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer. American Psychologist, 62(3), 220–233.
    5. Miller WC. How effective are traditional dietary and exercise interventions for weight loss? Med Sci Sports Exerc. 1999 Aug;31(8):1129-34.
  5. Montani JP, Schutz Y, Dulloo AG.Dieting and weight cycling as risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases: who is really at risk?Obes Rev. 2015;16(suppl 1):7-18.