Frequently Asked Questions

IE is framework that includes psychological, emotional and physical aspects of eating. It is, at its core, all about paying attention: Paying attention to your body, paying attention to your physical, emotional and psychological needs. Paying attention to your intuition.

Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch developed 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating in the 1990s. Their ideas were ground-breaking in that they didn’t involve diet plans, cutting out foods or engaging in compensatory behaviours. They stated that if we listen to, and honour, what our bodies and minds tell us, we will be attuned to our needs, respond appropriately to cues and live a life without disordered eating, guilt and shame around our eating behaviours and our bodies.

Each principle of IE is an important part of the whole, so it is important that we make sure we understand and utilise each of them. If we neglect one, then another might not work for us or make sense to us.

IE is not a means to an end, it is a process, that will help us develop a healthy relationship with food, our minds and our bodies. It helps us develop a different view of food and body weight, helps us to find respect for our bodies, and has the benefit of improving our health in the process.

Listen to my podcast interview about how to get started with intuitive eating here

1. Reject the Diet Mentality

This is the foundation that underpins intuitive eating: understanding that weight-loss diets don't work long term, and that the diet industry has us hooked with false promises of weight loss or a diet or meal plan that will eventually work. Diet mentality will make you feel like a failure whenever a diet stops working and you regain your weight (or put some more on). Understanding that you don’t fail at dieting, the diet fails you! Reject these messages by throwing out diet books and by unfollowing diet proponents on social media will help you free yourself from diet culture for good.

2. Honour Your Hunger

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.

3. Make Peace with Food

Don't make food the enemy and instead, give yourself unconditional permission to eat. Restricting certain foods can lead to feelings of deprivation, which in turn can lead to cravings and bingeing. Allow all foods into your life and know that you can eat them guilt-free whenever you choose to have them. Watch out for pseudo-permission and conditionality when it comes to food and eating.

4. Challenge the Food Police

The food police is one of the voices 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 or your family, and it makes you feel guilty and ashamed for breaking these rules. Reframing your mindset and shutting down that critical voice is super important to moving to intuitive eating.

5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor

Eat what you really desire, take pleasure in eating, eat enough to be comfortably full. Beware of 'air foods' and make the eating experience pleasurable and enjoyable. Satisfaction is at the hub of intuitive eating and relates to all the other principles: without honouring them, you won’t feel satisfied, without satisfaction you can’t apply them to their fullest extent.

6. Feel Your Fullness

Feel into your body, it will tell you when you have eaten enough to be comfortably full. This 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.

7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

Emotional eating is not a bad thing in and of itself. But it may become problematic when it becomes the only way you can cope with difficult emotions. Food won't fix these emotions, even though it might give you a short-term relief. Showing yourself compassion, learning to sit with your feelings and finding ways to work out what you really need can help you cope better.

8. Respect Your Body

EVERY body has an equal right to be respected and valued. This is regardless of its size, shape, colour, gender or ability. Respecting your body will help you gain self-confidence and self-esteem, and it will help you free yourself from diet mentality by accepting you’re here-and-now body for all the amazing things it does for you.

9. Movement—Feel the Difference

Shift your focus from calorie-burning to how movement can make you feel. Get active, choose what you enjoy, be intuitive about moving your body. That way you will make exercise and movement sustainable and feel what it can do for you and your body.

10. Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition

You don't have to make perfect choices all the time, but when you become more intuitive in your eating, you will automatically make food decisions that honour your health as well as your taste buds. Looking at food intake over time is more important than having a perfectly balanced meal every time you eat.

For some more details head over to my blog post about the 10 principles here

The simple answer is: No one can tell you whether you will lose weight, gain weight or stay at your current weight. Your body is biologically and genetically wired to be within a certain weight range and will try and stay within that range. Dieting and food restriction can push weight up to a higher level. With intuitive eating your weight will naturally settle within that weight range. Read my blog about why it is so difficult to lose weight long-term here

The HAES® movement is best described as a social justice movement, a framework that is inclusive, respectful and supportive to people of all sizes. It celebrates body diversity and honours differences in size, age, race, ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, sexual orientation, religion, class, and other human attributes. It challenges assumptions, both socially/culturally constructed or scientific. It believes in compassion, self-care, and that joyful movement and intuitive eating are creating a better awareness of one's own body and wellbeing. Within the movement, we should pay particular attention to those that have lived experience of being marginalised and allow their voices to be amplified.

Read more here

Baby-led weaning is a weaning method that allows a baby to explore family foods as they are, without being pureed or mashed and without you having to follow any particular stages. Babies use their intuition to guide them: parents will be responsible for offering the food but the baby decides what and how much they eat.

Babyled weaning is different from finger foods (which are often given alongside purées) in that the baby leads the way in their food exploration and feeds themselves all the foods on offer to them.

Within reason, babies will eat the same foods as the rest of the family, and they will be allowed to learn, explore and experiment with the food while they are learning to feed themselves.

If you are interested in babyled weaning support, head over to my online course and read my blog on babyled weaning

There are loads! To mention a few:

The most important one is probably that children are allowed to use their own internal hunger and satiety cues to guide how much they eat. That way they will eat intuitively, which is super helpful for learning about when they have had enough or when they need some more food.

They also tend to be exposed to a wide range of foods with different flavours and textures and are therefore likely to be more accepting of new foods when they get older. True baby-led weaning will allow babies to say 'no' to something, which makes it more likely that they will try something new (if they know they are allowed not to like it).

In addition to intuitive eating and less picky eating, they will develop a sense of self-confidence because they are allowed to do something for themselves, and take pride in their new-found skills.

And last but not least: it's fun for both caregivers and the babies themselves – such a joy to watch them become intuitive and independent eaters!

Of course you can explore intuitive eating on your own. There are tons of books and podcasts out there to guide you along the way, many are free resources that are super helpful (see my resources page for some of them).

Working with a certified intuitive eating counsellor can help you understand your personal relationship with food and your body a lot better: you will be able to unpack things that you may not have considered, get prompts for exploring areas you feel stuck with, have a sounding board for reframing your beliefs and thoughts, have an ally to support you in a world where diet culture is very pervasive and persuasive, and get guidance on where to focus your energy.

An intuitive eating counsellor will help you get unstuck where you feel stuck, find a path where it feels like an impenetrable jungle, and have your back when you are up against diet mentality beliefs from friends and family.

Make sure that you choose someone you feel comfortable with. And check that they truly are aligned with the intuitive eating framework (check their work, blogs, website, social media to make sure they aren't just using the 'intuitive eating' as a buzzword but are really selling you weight loss).

We are often reluctant to spend money on ourselves for therapy, counselling, or coaching. But by investing in ourselves for once we can free up so much of our time and energy for things that we really want to focus on in our lives. It's an investment in YOU and you are worth it.

Read my blog on this topic

Head over to my ‘about me’ page

I offer flexible packages to suit your needs and budget. Have a look at my ‘services’ page for all the information on prices.

You can book a ‘Nutrition and Eating habits check-in’ directly using this link.

For any of my more in-depth packages please book a discovery call so that I can meet you and we can discuss your goals and needs.

If we are a good fit, I will then send you a link to book a 6 or 11 session package. You will be able to book the first session through the link, all subsequent sessions will be scheduled after discussing a mutually suitable time/date.

You can be flexible with your sessions: you don’t have to settle on a particular weekday or time, although if you find that helpful I can certainly try to arrange that.

If, after you completed all sessions from your chosen package, you would like to add on some additional sessions, you have the option to book a block of 4 follow-ups or individual sessions.