What Is Intuitive Eating? Definition & Principles

What Is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating is a philosophical mindset that inherently counteracts dieting culture, and encourages a radical acceptance of one’s unique nutritional needs. Instead of subscribing to calorie counts, eating rules, or preferred foods, you learn to trust your body to guide how you eat. There are no specific boundaries other than aiming to listen to your body.

Understanding Physical Hunger Vs. Emotional Hunger

To eat intuitively, people must distinguish between physical and emotional hunger. Physical hunger develops gradually, and can be felt in your stomach. When you’re really physically hungry, you’ll eat almost anything. Emotional hunger, on the other hand, tends to be more sudden and frantic. You may experience an intense, particular craving for a specific food. Emotional hunger coincides more with mindless eating, overeating, and guilt or shame over eating habits.²

While it isn’t wrong to sometimes eat emotionally, making a habit of it can perpetuate harmful dieting beliefs and disordered behaviors.

Why Dieting Doesn’t Always Lead to Healthy, Long-Term Weight Loss

Although dieting may lead to initial weight loss, research shows that most dieting efforts are not sustainable. Studies show that 95% of dieters end up regaining the weight they lost within two years. This may be because the body is inherently wired for survival, so consuming less energy (less food) feels like a threat to survival. Calorie restriction may slow down the metabolism and increase hunger cues.³

Furthermore, yo-yo diets often feel restrictive and can trigger a restrict-binge cycle. Even if people lose weight, the scarcity mindset may push them into more disordered eating habits, which can result in weight fluctuations. Rather than intense diets, embracing a more intuitive approach to eating can offer a more balanced approach.

Intuitive Eating Principles

The mindset behind intuitive eating is to encourage people to listen to their bodies. Thelma Wayler, Geneen Roth, and Susie Orbach–some of the earlier influencers of this concept–critically examined the role of dieting in society, paying special attention to the intersection between women, eating, and emotions in their publications. The formalized approach to intuitive eating emerged in 1995 by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Their model introduced ten key intuitive eating principles.⁴

Here are 10 principles of intuitive eating:

1. Eliminate a Diet Mindset

Reject any books, articles, or media that promote dieting or weight loss. Start identifying the insidious ways people, situations, or companies instill these toxic messages. Allow yourself to feel angry or upset by the role dieting plays in modern society.

2. Honor Your Hunger Cues

Trust that you can listen to what your body needs. Pay attention to when you get hungry and eat accordingly. Aim to keep yourself properly fed, to avoid getting to the point of extreme hunger. This response makes you less likely to overeat.

3. Make Peace With Food

Aim to permit yourself to eat whatever you want, without viewing certain foods as off-limits or forbidden. If you keep depriving yourself of certain foods, they tend to feel more appealing. Subsequently, many people find that having free access to foods makes them feel less taboo, thus reducing a scarcity mindset and potential binge eating patterns.

4. Understand & Respect Your Fullness

Trust that you will nourish your body properly and pay attention to signals of being full. Pause when you’re eating, and ask yourself how the food tastes. Rank your hunger periodically and remind yourself that you can eat again anytime you want.

5. Find Healthy Alternatives to Coping with Stress & Emotions

Instead of emotional eating, implement other coping strategies for dealing with stress or anxiety. Meditation, journaling, calling a friend, taking a bath, or going for a walk are all activities to help you feel better. Consider writing down a list of potential alternatives, and refer to it regularly.

6. Practice Positive Self-Talk

Negative self-talk can perpetuate problems with dieting and emotional eating. Alternatively, positive affirmations and self-compassion can help you feel more empowered and grateful–even if you’re having a challenging time. Eventually, this positivity can dramatically improve your self-esteem, body image, and overall well-being.

7. Get Moving

Healthy physical activity helps you feel connected with your body. Try to move away from using exercise as a way to punish yourself, burn calories, or sculpt a certain physique. Instead, focus on enjoying activities like walking, dancing, yoga, or team sports that make you feel good and energized.

8. Make Eating a Pleasurable Experience

Eating can and should be pleasurable! When you mindfully eat your food, you can truly appreciate how it tastes (rather than binging after restriction). Likewise, you will learn that your body reacts to some foods better one day than others.

Consider how you can make your current mealtimes more enjoyable. This may mean investing in a nice set of dishes or trying out new recipes. It may also include hosting loved ones for dinner to connect meals with love and socialization. Furthermore, try to be mindful and engaged when you eat—you should allow yourself to savor the food!

9. Stop Labeling Foods as Good or Bad

Avoid terms like good, bad, healthy, or unhealthy. Stop making categories for food and simply allow yourself to eat freely. While this mindset may seem difficult at first, many people find it incredibly healing over time. By no longer attaching emotional meaning to food, you can reduce feelings of guilt or shame.

10. Eat What Makes You Feel Good

The next time you go out to eat, order exactly what you want. Get in the habit of trusting that your body will tell you what (and how much) you should eat at a given time. However, intuitive eating doesn’t mean disregarding nutrition altogether. Paying attention to how your body reacts to different foods will help you make the right choices for the nutrients you need.

Benefits of Intuitive Eating

In a world of contradicting nutritional advice, one of the best benefits of intuitive eating is that it’s overwhelmingly simple. You don’t need any coaches, nutritionists, or expensive plans. You just need to realign with your body’s hunger cues and physical needs. For these reasons, intuitive eating is associated with improved mental and physical health.

Psychological Benefits

People who eat intuitively are less likely to develop distorted beliefs about food or eating disorders. They typically spend less time and energy thinking about food. They don’t fall into all-or-nothing mindsets, and they don’t experience intense shame over their dietary habits. Because of this, many eating disorder specialists introduce intuitive eating principles into their treatment methods. When someone can “go back to the basics” of eating, they tend to feel less preoccupied with food, weight, and control.

Physical Benefits

People who genuinely eat intuitively honor their body’s hunger cues. As they tune into their bodies, they naturally eat what makes them feel best. They’re less likely to undereat or overeat, and they don’t automatically use food to cope with emotions. Research also shows that intuitive eating can help improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels.⁵

Possible Drawbacks of Intuitive Eating

It takes time and effort to untangle oneself from a diet mentality, and some people may need more structure than intuitive eating provides, especially those with any form of disordered eating or a specific medical condition like diabetes.

Potential drawbacks of intuitive eating can include:

• Potential for weight gain and unhealthy choices: At first, giving yourself unadulterated permission to eat may result in an increase in overeating or binge eating. If you stick with the principles, this urge will naturally decline over time. Your body needs to learn that every food is allowed, and that you can trust your satiety cues. Once nothing genuinely feels off-limits, you will no longer have this drastic desire to eat it all and start over again tomorrow.
• Not suitable for people with specific conditions: Some people with specific health conditions, such as celiac or diabetes, may need formal nutrition planning. It’s important to consult with your doctor if you have concerns.
• Doesn’t address food addiction: People who struggle with food addiction may need to adhere to a more structured approach to eating before trying intuitive eating. For example, they may need to eat 3 meals per day with 2-3 snacks to start.
• Could be difficult for people who don’t feel hunger cues: Some people may not feel hunger cues due to medication, neurodivergence, or specific health issues. For these people, structured eating on a schedule may be better than intuitive eating.

How to Start Practicing Intuitive Eating

Rigid dieting beliefs often backfire—repeated attempts to lose weight can dramatically affect your physical and emotional well-being. With that said, intuitive eating allows you to eat without shame or judgment. Moreover, it gives you complete freedom to choose when, how, and what to eat without needing to follow specific rules.

Here are six tips for how to eat intuitively:

1. Stop looking at nutrition labels: Stop letting these numbers dictate what or how much you eat. Instead, trust that your body is the expert in guiding your nutrition.
2. Unfollow any social media that promotes diet culture: Social media can negatively affect your self-esteem, and diet culture often permeates through these platforms. When you first start this eating journey, consider taking a social media break altogether–you may realize just how much your online activity affects your well-being.
3. Learn your fullness cues: Aim to familiarize yourself with your own fullness cues. As you begin this work, commit to asking yourself before, during, and after every meal how full you feel. Practice sitting with different types of fullness. Consider referring to the hunger-satiety scale if you need a visual reminder.⁶
4. Don’t punish yourself for emotional eating: Eating can be an integral part of social connection, and you have the right to enjoy foods, even if you aren’t physically hungry for them. If you do eat for emotional reasons, be kind to yourself and try not to dwell on it.
5. Stop weighing yourself: Intuitive eating is not about weight loss. It’s about having a neutral approach to eating. But if you’re focused on the number on the scale, that number will inherently guide your food choices, which undermines basic intuitive eating principles.
6. Aim to be mindful when eating: Stop distracting yourself when you eat. Get in the habit of making eating a more pleasurable, slow experience—rather than something you rush through.

The History of Intuitive Eating

The actual practice of intuitive eating is not new. Eating without dieting has been practiced for generations and around the world. However, the official term was coined in 1995 by authors Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Other fat liberation and mindful eating proponents, including Susie Orbach and Geenen Roth, date back to the 1970s-1980s.

The official Intuitive Eating based on its 10 principles is now thirty years old. Today, it’s evidence-based with over 90 studies to date. However, it’s important to remember that many people throughout the world eat intuitively and follow these practices without necessarily realizing it!