Back to basics - The principles of intuitive eating

What are the principles, what is my take on them, and one thing you can do to explore each of them for yourself!

1. Reject the Diet Mentality*

This first principle of intuitive eating is the foundation underlying all the other principles: understanding that weight-loss diets don't work long term, and that the diet industry has lied to us and us hooked with false promises of weight loss and the lure of a diet or meal plan that will eventually work. In the meantime, diet mentality will make you feel like a failure whenever a diet stops working and you regain your weight. It puts the responsibility on you and gaslights you into believing there is something wrong with you. Let me assure you that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with you and your body! It's just that the diet culture messages drown out our self-compassion, our self-believe and our acceptance of diversity. Understanding that the pursuit of thinness originates in racist and patriarchal oppression and has nothing to do with health will provide you with the fire in your belly to ditch diet culture thinking for good!

What you can do: Reject these messages by throwing out diet books and unfollowing diet proponents on social media to free yourself from diet culture for good. Observe how bodies are portrayed on TV and the media. Educate yourself about Health at Every Size® and a non-diet approach to health (check out my resources page for some great starting points!)

*(Diet mentality is the hugely problematic belief that being in a thin or small body is a prerequisite for happiness, health, acceptance, moral superiority and health. Let me tell you now that that is a) not the case and b) an oppressive system based on racism and patriarchy.)

2. Honour Your Hunger

Hunger is often seen as something negative, as something we should ignore. We are worried that we may never stop eating if we ‘give in’. The fear of hunger is real, because we are being told that we shouldn't be hungry.

We often also don’t really know what our internal hunger cues are. Do you know when you are hungry? What does hunger feel like for you? If you come from a place of dieting or disordered eating, your hunger signals might be muted or not very clear to you.

What you can do: Eating regularly will help you understand your hunger cues better and also curb cravings and binges. You need to keep your body fed, otherwise a very strong drive to eat will kick in and you are likely to feel out of control around food. Deprivation is powerful; make sure you honour your hunger by listening to your internal signals and feed your body when it needs to be fed and with enough food to sustain your.

3. Make Peace with Food

Don't make food the enemy and instead give yourself unconditional permission to eat what you like. This can be scary as you may feel you will only be eating those ’forbidden’ foods for ever more. The 'unconditional' part is really important: if we give ourselves pseudo-permission (e.g. 'I'll eat that now, but will be better tomorrow' or 'It's ok to eat that because I am going to the gym later') we won't be making peace with food at all, we are just finding ways to compensate for eating.

Restricting certain foods can lead to feelings of deprivation, which in turn can lead to cravings and binge-eating. Restriction can be physical (i.e. not having something around) or mental (having negative thoughts about something or feeling guilt and shame for eating something you think you shouldn't eat).

What you can do: Allow all foods into your life and know that you can eat them guilt-free if you choose to have them. Remember that foods don’t have a moral value, they cannot be ‘good’ or ‘bad’, they are just foods. Start noticing when you or others label foods and explore if you can make those labels more neutral (see my blog on Food Neutrality for more information).

4. Challenge the Food Police

The food police is the voice in your head that tells you that you have been 'good' or 'bad' for eating something. It uses unreasonable food rules that have been created by diet culture and that often get ingrained in us during childhood. Remember that our parents and wider social network are also surrounded by diet culture rules, and therefore not to blame for using them and using diet messages.

The food police makes you feel guilty and ashamed for breaking these rules. It's important here to understand that most of the food police's rules are based on things that are not true, and it's crucial that we meet the food police with a curious and inquisitive attitude. Why do I think that? Where does that belief come from? How does that thought serve me?

What you can do: You can start on reframing your mindset by changing your language around food, eating and our bodies, and by shutting down that critical voice through non-judgmental questioning.

5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor

We don’t just eat in order to fuel our bodies. We also eat for pleasure and social connection, for emotional and celebratory reasons. Some of us can find that challenging, especially since we have learnt that eating for pleasure is ‘indulgent’, ‘greedy’, ‘frivolous’. Eating what you really desire, taking pleasure in eating, eating enough to be comfortably full are all aspects of satisfaction you can explore for yourself. Beware of 'air foods' that don't give you much in terms of energy and nutrition, add foods rather than anything take away, and make the eating experience pleasurable and enjoyable.

What you can do: try and have one meal a day (or even week) without distractions (yes, put that phone away!). Really taste your food, explore the texture, experience the flavours. How does that make you feel? How much do you enjoy the meal? Is it different from how you imagined it or are used to? Be curious!

6. Feel Your Fullness

This can be challenging, either because you can't really feel your fullness gradually increasing, or you feel full super quickly and it misleads you into thinking you have had enough. Feeling into your body, it will tell you when you have eaten enough to be comfortably full, but this takes practice. It can be tricky after years of dieting, so be patient and compassionate with yourself. Have frequent pauses while eating and check in to see how the food tastes and how hungry you still are. Don't eat just until you are no longer hungry, eat until you are comfortably full.

What you can do: don't worry too much about this part if you struggle with fullness signals. Honouring your hunger will gradually lead to you feeling your fullness cues. Use your hunger cues to guide you as to whether you eat enough at mealtimes (if you are hungry again after a very short time, you may not have eaten enough previously!)

7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

We eat for emotional reasons, for joy, celebrations or to soothe and comfort us, therefore emotional eating is not a bad thing in and of itself. Would you call yourself an emotional eater? Eating when you are experiencing negative emotions may become problematic when it becomes the only way you can cope. Food won't fix these emotions, even though it might give you a short-term relief. Don’t be scared of using food and don’t judge yourself when you do. Showing yourself compassion, learning to sit with your feelings and finding ways to work out what you really need can help you cope better.

What you can do: put together a self-care plan for when you need something to get you out of the funk. Think of things that could help you feel better physically, emotionally and mentally and use this list to guide you when you are feeling low.

8. Respect Your Body

Whilst loving your body can be hard and too overwhelming for some people, showing your body respect for what it does for you is less challenging and can get you to a stage of acceptance. Most of us have a body in mind that we would like to live in but that is not necessarily achievable for us. Accepting that this 'ideal' might not be realistic for us can be hard, and it involves a process of grieving. It also requires showing ourselves kindness and compassion, which can be practiced. You don’t have to love your body, if that is a step to big for you. Showing your body respect and working towards acceptance might be a better place to start.

Remember always that your body has the same right to be respected as every other body. You are not defined by your body, your body is a vessel that holds your beautiful soul and personality. You are worthy of love and respect, regardless of your body’s size, shape, colour, gender, health or ability. Respecting your body will help you feel better about yourself and will help you free yourself from diet mentality.

What you can do: write a list of all the things your body enables you to do, anything it does for you!

9. Movement—Feel the Difference

Many of us exercise because we want to lose weight or because we want to ‘tone’ up. Some of us exercise for health reasons (but with a side order of weight loss - ask yourself: would I exercise if I could only get health without the weight loss?). These reasons mean that we want to change our body according to what diet culture tells us we should look like. But do we enjoy exercising? Would we do it if weight-loss and shape-shifting was off the table?

Movement and exercise is an amazing stress buster and great for physical and mental health, but it doesn't have to be structured gym sessions or high intensity.

What you can do: Shift your focus from shrinking your body to how movement can make you feel, how you can get stronger rather than slimmer, how you can get more energy rather than burn it. Get active, choose what you enjoy, be intuitive about moving your body. Rest when your body needs rest, this is part of intuitive movement – knowing when it is time for a break. That way you will make exercise and movement sustainable and feel the amazing benefits for your physical and mental health.

10. Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition

I am a nutritionist, so of course nutrition is important. Having said that, if you are coming from a place of dieting and restriction/bingeing, focusing on the nutritional side of foods too early on in your intuitive eating journey can make this into yet another diet. It is important to explore the other principles first so that your relationship with food is on a solid foundation. Gentle nutrition will then come in automatically because you will intuitively choose foods that make you feel good (and not foods that someone tells you will make you feel good..).

You don't have to make perfect choices all the time! Looking at food intake over time is more important than having a perfectly balanced meal every time you eat. And bearing in mind that our so-called lifestyle choices don’t contribute as much to our health than we are told to believe can help put it all into perspective. Food is not medicine: food is fuel, food is joy, food is nourishment, food is social connection, food is fun.

What you can do: explore the other principles of intuitive eating first and put this one on the back burner for a while, until you have unconditional condition to eat and come to nutrition from a position of curiosity rather than a wish for a set of rules.

If you are excited about intuitive eating after reading this, or if you feel like this could make a massive positive difference to your life, or if you recognised how much your unhelpful thoughts and habits have impacted on your relationship with food, I'd love to hear from you! Get in touch or book a free zoom discovery call with me to chat about your needs and goals!