Intuitive Eating: What Is It Really? Q&A with Amélie Charron

Guest post written by Amélie Charron, 4th year Dietetics Student at the University of Ottawa

The term Intuitive Eating is becoming more popular these days. In fact, the two dietitians who first coined the phrase in 1995, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resh, were recently featured in the New York Times, talking about the history of Intuitive Eating, how it came to be and where it is now. While you may have heard the phrase before, do you actually know what it means? No? Well neither did I until I started my practicum placement with Jennifer at Nutrition IQ. If you’ve never heard the term Intuitive Eating before, or you have but you aren’t quite sure what it means, keep reading and let me walk you through what I've found out.

Intuitive eating is a pattern of eating where nourishing your body is considered a form of self-care and all bodies (yes, even yours) are treated with compassion, dignity, and respect. The goal of Intuitive Eating is to develop a healthy relationship with food and your body by rediscovering the pleasure and satisfaction of eating. Intuitive Eating uses your body’s innate wisdom to decide when it’s hungry and what it wants to eat, and then honours that wisdom. If that sounds crazy to you, I want you to consider how infants and children eat.

Most kids are born intuitive eaters. If you’ve ever seen an infant eat, you know that this is true. Infants cry when they’re hungry, eat as much as they want and then stop eating. The result? They eat freely, which benefits their growth, health and appetite! Before we are influenced by outside forces telling us that our bodies are wrong, most of us are intuitive eaters. We don’t care about the specific make up of our food, we don’t fear certain food groups, we don’t really care about how we look (although self-image issues pop up way earlier than what you’d think, you can read more on that here), we just eat until we’re full and then go back to playing.

Unfortunately, by the time we reach adulthood, the social challenges that arise from diet culture and body image disrupt how well we listen to our bodies. That is, we let outside factors decide what and when we should eat rather than our own internal wisdom. Think about the last time you ate, how did you decide what to eat? How did you decide how much you should eat? Did you enjoy what you ate? Did you feel full and satisfied afterwards?

Unfortunately, many of our food choices as adults are based on the beauty industry, the media, and diet trends. Factors like these change the way we listen (or don't listen) to our bodies. We often care more about what we feel we “should” eat in order to fit a beauty standard rather than what we actually want to eat and what foods feel good in our bodies…so what can we do? We have to bring pleasure back to eating and start listening to what our body is telling us.

Is intuitive eating just “eat when hungry, stop when full?”

Yes, one of the basic principles is eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. But it’s more than that. Here’s why:

• It’s giving yourself unconditional permission to eat when you’re hungry, even if you just ate recently. There's no set times when eating is more or less appropriate.
• It’s rediscovering satisfaction with food, knowing how different foods feel in your body, and then applying that knowledge whenever you eat.
• It’s respecting your body, and everything it’s doing for you.
• It’s honouring your hunger and satiety cues, but also knowing that there may be times when you have to eat in the absence of hunger because you have something in your schedule that occurs when you would normally eat and if you wait until after it’s over, you will get too hungry.

Intuitive eating honours both your hunger and fullness and teaches you to tune into your body's signals rather than ignoring them. However, it also recognizes that we eat for many reasons beyond simple fueling and sometimes, when we look at our day and when it makes the most sense to eat, we can't wait until we feel hungry every time that we eat. Every eating opportunity is seen as an opportunity to learn and find what feels good to you.

If I give myself unconditional permission to eat, won’t I just eat ice cream and chips all day?

You might, but probably not for long. Have you ever spent all day every day eating just ice cream and chips? Sure, it would taste good, but how do you think your body would actually feel? Tired, sluggish, maybe a little constipated? When you tell yourself that certain foods are off limits, it actually heightens their appeal. When you let yourself freely eat all foods, whether they provide pleasure and/or nutrients, food loses its appeal over time. It’s no longer as enticing as when it was “forbidden” and therefore it loses its power.

Think back to the last time you went on vacation. You’re away from home and eating out more frequently than normal. By the end of the trip were you craving some home cooking? Some fresh fruits and vegetables? I’m guessing the answer is yes. While eating out all the time is fun at first, the more you do it, the more the novelty wears off. This is called habituation, and the same thing will happen if you only eat chips and ice cream. 

The more you eat foods that have been deemed “off-limits”, the more normal it becomes, and the less guilty you’ll start to feel. This in turn helps you to actually feel in control around those previously forbidden foods. Those foods don’t have the same compulsive draw they once did. So, yes, you are free to enjoy ice cream and chips whenever you feel like it, and you might feel like eating these very frequently, especially at first, but when you truly tune into your body and become an intuitive eater, eating things that used to make you feel guilty will become less novel and more normal. When we remove the appeal of eating foods that are "off-limits" all you are left with is how the food actually feels in your body.

Am I eating intuitively or am I just giving up?

Whether Intuitive Eating is “giving up” depends on what your definition of giving up is. You’re giving up the weight of other people's expectations. You're giving up saying no to dessert because you feel like you don’t deserve to eat something delicious. You're giving up watching the clock and waiting for when you can eat your next meal because your last one was small and unsatisfying. So in that sense, yeah, it is giving up.

BUT by becoming an Intuitive Eater, you gain so much. By allowing yourself to enjoy eating and appreciate what your food does for your body, you gain some control. You’re no longer a slave to your diet. You also gain brain space. When you are free from micromanaging every calorie you eat, you allow your brain the freedom it deserves to pursue a fulfilling life! By letting go of the pressure to constantly change your body size you finally get to enjoy yourself and actually go out and do the things that you want to do.

What makes Intuitive Eating so wonderful?

Becoming an intuitive eater comes with many benefits. You will feel a sense of freedom that comes with eating foods without having to micromanage or tally up how many calories you're consuming. You get to rediscover the pleasure of eating. It’s a great way to develop a balanced lifestyle that makes you feel good inside and out! Studies have found several benefits to Intuitive Eating, such as  improved emotional and physical health, improved body image, self-esteem, and wellbeing, reduction in the frequency of emotional eating, as well as reduced risk of disordered eating.

Six ways to start using your intuition around food:

If you want to start tapping into your intuition when it comes to food and your body, here are 6 simple ways to get started.

1. Stop focusing on the scale, and shift your focus to how your body feels instead. If every time you step on the scale it makes you feel badly about yourself and turns what was a good day into a bad one, get rid of it. What benefit is it providing you? Your weight is a very poor indicator of your overall health, and if the scale is impacting your mental health negatively, it’s time to go.
2. Respect your body, and reflect on how it is serving you. How is your body showing up for you today? What is your body allowing you to do? All bodies deserve to be valued. This doesn't mean that you necessarily have to like your body, but you do have to respect that it does a lot for you.
3. Clean up your social media for anyone promoting dieting or unrealistic body standards. Surround yourself with positive influences. Unfollow those accounts that make you feel bad about your body, and follow people who make you feel good. If it's a friend and you don't want to unfollow, you can mute them so they don't show up in your main feed.
4. Take a long hard look at your dieting history: did anything actually “work” for a long period of time that felt good and sustainable? If not, consider why you would want to return to that? What do you gain? What do you lose?
5. Eat when you feel hungry! Even if you just ate. The better you are at honouring your hunger, the better your body is at sending you hunger AND fullness signals.
6. Find movement that you enjoy and focus on how it makes you feel. Whether it’s going for a walk, dancing around the house, joining a yoga class, or playing a team sport, find something that you like and that keeps you going and motivated, rather than focusing on the calorie-burning effect of it.

Want to learn more on how you can become an intuitive eater, but aren’t really sure where to start? If you’re in Ontario, you can book a free discovery call with Jennifer Neale, Registered Dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counsellor. She’s happy to chat with you to see if she’s a good fit to help you on your journey towards food freedom.

REFERENCES

Babbott, K. M., Cavadino, A., Brenton-Peters, J., Consedine, N. S. & Roberts, M. (2022). Outcomes of intuitive eating interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Eating Disorders, 31(1), 33-63. doi: 10.1080/10640266.2022.203012

Bruce, L. J. & Ricciardelli, L. A. (2016). A systematic review of the psychosocial correlates of intuitive eating among adult women. Appetite, 96, 454-472. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2015.10.012

Jackson, A., Sano, Y., Parker, L,, Cox, A. E. & Lanigan, J. (2022). Intuitive eating and dietary intake. Eating Behaviors, 45, 101606. doi: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2022.101606

Linardon, J., Tylka, T. L. & Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M. (2021). Intuitive eating and its psychological correlates: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 54(7), 1073-1098. doi: 10.1002/eat.23509

Tribole, E. & Resch, E. (2020). Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Essentials.

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