What Intuitive Eating is And What it Gets Wrong

Let's break down the basics first, shall we?

What is Intuitive Eating?

IE is a non diet, weight inclusive, and researched backed self care eating framework that revolves around 10 principles. The principles work by either cultivating or removing obstacles to body awareness. It recognizes that a person's relationship to food is just as important- if not more- than what a person actually eats.

Intuitive Eating honors your health by teaching you how to learn and respond to your own body’s cues- instead of the outside noise from the diet and wellness industry.

Where did IE even come from?

The year was 1995 (although the idea of eating intuitively as a concept started around 1970)...

Dieticians Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDERD-S and Elyse Resch, MS, RDS, CEDS-S were both working as nutritionists, helping clients to lose weight.  After several years in the business, they began noticing how all the weight loss methods they were using weren’t working.  And that the majority of their clients would regain all of their weight back, despite their best efforts.  They saw that it was affecting their clients mental health as well.  Elyse and Evelyn decided that there needed to be a new way to look at health. 

And thus, Intuitive Eating was born. 

What are the Ten Principles of Intuitive Eating?

1. Reject the Diet Mentality.  Recognize how harmful that endless pursuit of a specific body size has been, and accept that your weight doesn’t equal value or health.
2. Honor your Hunger. Recognize and allow yourself to eat off a schedule or a clock.
3. Make Peace with Food. Give yourself unconditional permission to eat; stop turning foods into shiny objects.
4. Challenge the Food Police.  Food doesn’t hold moral value; reject the idea that it does.
5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor.  Eating should be a pleasurable experience to be enjoyed.
6. Feel Your Fullness. Recognize and listen to your body's signs that it’s done eating.
7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness.  Find ways to comfort, nurture, and distract without using food.
8. Respect your body.  Stop criticizing it for how it looks and what it can’t do.
9. Exercise and Feel the Difference.  Find a movement practice that brings joy to your life.
10. Honor your Health with Gentle Nutrition.  Eat in a way that makes you both feel good and enjoy.

What benefits have been shown?

As of this writing, there are over 150 studies that show the many benefits of Intuitive Eating.  Some of them are:

• Improved cholesterol levels
• Decreased depression and anxiety
• Improved body image
• Improved metabolism
• Lower rates of disordered and emotional eating

In addition, IE has been associated with less weight cycling, a side effect of a diet that 45 million Americans will go on each year. Losing and gaining weight increases your overall mortality rate.

Although there are many positives to IE, there has been some critique of the framework as well.   And because there is no one solution for all, or one way to do things, I get why IE might not be right for you.  Intuitive Eating isn’t the only way to heal your relationship with food. Let’s discuss some of the critique…

What does Intuitive Eating get wrong? 

I do believe that some of the issues  with IE have more to do with how it’s being interpreted than what it is.  And that sometimes it boils down to whether you have a system in place that supports your specific needs or not.  Let me explain by using some of my own critiques, and others I’ve heard.

The steps feel like rules, just like any other diet plan.

Yes, there are ten steps to go through.  And because of that, some may feel a sense of ‘failure’ when they struggle with a certain part of the process.  This need for perfectionism is absolutely rooted in diet mentality, where most people have spent their entire lives.  

The process of IE is exactly that- a process.  One that doesn’t require you to ‘get it right’ all the time.  One that acknowledges how hard it can be to change your entire belief system about what it means to be ‘healthy’.  One that doesn’t require ‘completion’, because living in a culture of weight stigma and fat phobia means this will be an ongoing process that will likely take steps back and a while to get to a place of peace with it. Anyone who says differently isn’t aligned with IE as it was created.

Some people don’t know how to recognize their hunger cues, so how can they honor hunger?

This is so valid.  Years of following a structured diet plan, those who’ve dealt with eating disorders (myself included),  people with specific medical conditions, live with chronic stress, or take certain medications may not be able to recognize body cues like hunger and fullness.  Here is where just reading the book and doing the workbook won’t work.  Working with a mental health professional and/or a dietician that can help you utilize these principles- and create a plan that considers your own personal needs- could be the most helpful in these situations.

It requires attunement with your body, which is not a safe place for everyone.

For many people who experience trauma, dissociating from their bodies- from what it feels like to live and be in it- can be a survival mechanism.  It can feel like safety.  And attempting to access how your body truly feels, what it wants- can feel extremely distressing.  Again, here’s where the support of a mental health professional would be needed for this framework to benefit you.  IE recognises that there’s more to just eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full, but finding a good fit for your needs is crucial for it to work for you.

It’s for the privileged only.

Again, very valid (I’ve mentioned a mental health professional twice- I know access to that kind of support is its own privilege).  I’m not a dietician who works with food insecure people, so I can’t speak to the depth of this concern in the ways they could.  But I do understand that some of the steps of IE- like the process of habituation to a food that asks you to buy a forbidden food in quantity- is not something that is possible for those who have limited resources, or who live in food apartheids.  And although there are pieces of the framework that could be used, addressing the systemic issues regarding food insecurity needs to be at the forefront.  IE might not be the right pathway for healing here.

Intuitive Eating isn’t a diet plan, a quick fix, or easy to do- and none of that is inherently appealing.

But…

What many get out of it (unlike following a diet) is a lifelong changed relationship to food. 

 One that not only feels good in your body, but in your mind.  One that gives you back brain space and energy that you spent years wasting on unnecessary food thoughts.  And changes how you move through the day.

If you think it might be right for you, and need help in finding an IE professional, you can access a list of providers here.  As a Certified Intuitive Eating Facilitator who is also a fitness coach, I use the concepts of IE and apply them to both food and fitness (here’s some info on what it looks like to work with a non diet trainer).  Getting support from either a professional- or your friends and family- is super helpful in changing your relationship to both food and fitness.