First off, Intuitive Eating was created by two registered dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch wayyyyyy back in 1995! Intuitive eating is focused on healing your relationship with food, where you are in control of your food choices, rather than diet culture or the food police.
Intuitive eating is an ongoing practice between you and your body. It is a way of eating that has no rules, no guilt, no judgement, and nothing is off limits. The quick fixes promised by the diet industry are simply not sustainable and have been proven by research not to work.
Intuitive Eating consists of 10 principles:
- Reject the Diet Mentality
- Honor your Hunger
- Make Peace with Food
- Challenge the Food Police
- Discover the Satisfaction Factor
- Feel your Fullness
- Cope with your Emotions with Kindness
- Respect your Body
- Movement – Feel the Difference
- Honor your Health with Gentle Nutrition
These principles are meant to be guidelines, a free flowing map, of your own personal exploration of Intuitive Eating. They 100% do not need to be followed in any particular order.
The principles are here to help you become the expert of your body, because you are the only person who knows what you need.
What is NOT Intuitive Eating?
I can tell you this – Intuitive Eating is NOT
- Another diet (you may have heard it referred to as the “hunger fullness diet”)
- A 30 day cleanse or something you try for a month and then give up.
- Something that happens overnight
- The same experience for everyone
Where to Begin?
Intuitive Eating is a very “intuitive” process (see what I did there)!
Here is where you can get started – there are a ton of resources available but I would recommend starting with these two. Read the book and work through the exercises in the workbook.
Give yourself A LOT of compassion during this literal (long-term) journey you will be on. There is really no end – no one has “perfected” the way to eat intuitively.
There are always more things to learn as your body continuously changes. So the best time to start is now.
There will be ups and there will be downs.
There will be times when you wonder if this is actually “working.”
There will be times when you question the “process.”
BUT here is where the intuitive part comes in. This is the time when:
- You start listening to your body and becoming in tune with your needs – both physical (ex: hunger) and mental (ex: emotional).
- You try to open your eyes to a new way of living
- You less on numbers and more on behaviors
- You focus less on trivial things and more on things that matter most to you
You Are Allowed to Ask for Help
There is an overwhelming amount of nutrition information available in this crazy world to fully understand what is true and helpful.
The more we focus on the numbers, the counting, the recommendations, the more we lose touch with our inner Intuitive Eater and internal hunger and fullness cues.
This free download can help you unlock your intuitive eater!
The 5 Ways to Unlock your Inner Intuitive Eater download is a great place to start your journey and continue learning about yourself and your relationship with food.
The download walks you through 5 challenges to get you thinking about how you can ditch diet culture in your everyday life. Things like – focusing less on numbers and more on behaviors, or paying more attention to your internal cues, rather than external ones.
Go through these challenges at your own pace and take time to reflect on each one.
It may seem scary to jump right in and actually just eat and enjoy food – and that’s OK! Consider it a big experiment. Give it some time and see how it goes!
And remember – I am here, along with a big supportive team of fellow Intuitive Eaters and Intuitive Eating Dietitians, to help you along the way!
Schedule a free discovery call here to start your own intuitive eating journey.
