What is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating is about trusting your body to make food choices that feel good to you, without judging yourself and without the influence of diet culture. It is a gentle and compassionate approach to nourishing your body, where you learn to listen to your hunger and fullness cues and honor your cravings. With intuitive eating, there is no restriction or deprivation, as you give yourself unconditional permission to enjoy all foods in a balanced way. This means that you can savor a slice of cake or indulge in your favorite comfort food without feeling guilty or ashamed.

Intuitive Eating is eating in our most natural way as humans - we are born knowing how to eat intuitively! Unfortunately though, diet culture can be very persuasive with its food rules and weight loss myths, which can cause us to become out of sync with our bodies natural signals.

By practicing intuitive eating, you can create a healthier relationship with food and your body and feel more empowered to make choices that align with your values and needs. It's a journey of self-discovery and self-care, where you learn to tune out the noise of external expectations and tune in to your inner wisdom.

The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

1. Break Free From Diet Culture

   Have you ever dreamed of a life where you don’t have to control what you eat? A life where every decision you make isn’t influenced by whether or not it will get you to your ‘dream body’? Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be free from food rules and restrictions, and never again experience guilt for eating the foods you love? All of this, plus more, is possible when you break free from the influence of Diet Culture, which is exactly what Principle 1 of Intuitive Eating is all about. Breaking free from diet culture is your first step towards healing your relationship with food and your body.

   
   

   Diet Culture: a belief system that stigmatises larger bodies, while worshiping thinness and equating it to health and moral virtue. Diet Culture promotes weight loss and smaller bodies as a way to elevate social status and achieve ultimate health. It perpetuates the idea that not only does a 'perfect body' exist, but that everything else should be sacrificed in order to achieve it.

   
   
   
   

2. Honour Your Hunger

   Do you sometimes struggle to recognise when you’re hungry? Do you trust the clock to tell you when to eat, over your own body’s signals? Principle 2 of Intuitive Eating is all about learning how to recognise and honour your hunger. Our bodies know better than anyone else when it comes to what we need and when we need it. Our bodies have many ways of communicating these needs with us, though unfortunately due to the influence of diet culture and those around us, we tend to become more and more out of sync with these signals and lose sight of how to recognise them.

3. Make Peace with Food

   It’s time to give yourself unconditional permission to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, and as much as you want. Principle #3 of Intuitive Eating is all about making peace with food. When we categorise food as “good” or “bad”, we are giving it moral value. This causes us to have specific emotional responses to the foods we eat, such as feeling guilt when eating chocolate, a food often categorised as “bad”. When we remove these morality based labels it allows us to release the judgement attached to them, which creates a safe space where we can listen to our body and make decisions based on how we are feeling, rather than relying on the ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’ts’.

   
   
   
   

4. Challenge the Food Police

   You know that voice in your head that’s always telling you that you can or can’t have certain foods? That’s the food police, and in Principle #4 of Intuitive Eating we learn how to challenge that voice. Questioning our food rules allows us space to understand our beliefs around food and where they came from. Once we understand these beliefs, we’re able to challenge and change them, so that rather than relying on these external rules and judgements, we can listen to our bodies to tell us what we need.

5. Feel Your Fullness

   If you’ve been out of touch with your body and its natural signals, noticing when you’re full can take practice, patience, and require a lot of attention. Principle #5 of Intuitive Eating is all about becoming present during your eating experience so that you can begin to recognise the signals your body is sending as it’s getting full and notice how this feels in your body. As you become more present in your eating experience and build trust in your body’s ability to tell you what it needs, without the influence of Diet Culture or ‘The Food Police’, you may find that you naturally begin to honour your fullness in a way that feels natural and safe.

6. Discover Your Satisfaction

   Feeling full and feeling satisfied are two completely different things. You can feel physically full, but still feel unsatisfied, with thoughts of food still lingering on your mind. Principle #5 is all about discovering your satisfaction and what brings you the most joy in your eating experience. Among other things, the foods sensual qualities (appearance, smell, taste, texture, temperature), your surroundings, how mindful you are during your eating experience, your personal preferences, and the foods macronutrient balance, each have the ability to influence how satisfied you feel after eating.

7. Process Your Emotions

   Our emotions, such as anxiety, sadness, anger, loneliness, and boredom, can drive us to eat mindlessly, when we choose to push them down rather than process them. Principle #7 is all about recognising these emotions so that you’re able to effectively respond to and process them, instead of ignoring and numbing them with the use of food. Food is so much more than calories. It can provide us with emotional comfort during tough times, and trigger the release of hormones such as endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin, which naturally make us feel good. However, when you’re using food to push down negative emotions so that you don’t have to face them, it can lead you to a place where you’re not listening to your body, which can increase your chances of mindless and/or binge eating and drive you further away from your natural ability to eat intuitively.

8. Respect Your Body

   What would your life look like if you loved and respected your body, rather than criticised it or constantly tried to change it? Just like with shoe sizes, we all have different natural body shapes and sizes, and to try to change this would be like trying to change your shoe size. Principle #8 of Intuitive Eating is all about learning to understand and appreciate your individuality, and show yourself the love and compassion you deserve now, just as you are. You don’t need to change your body to be worthy of love and respect, your worthiness already exists within you - you just need to take the time to see it.

9. Feel the Difference with Movement

   No more worrying about how many calories you’ve burnt. Movement is so much more than just weight loss and muscle mass. Principle #9 of Intuitive Eating is all about learning to feel the difference with movement, and shift your focus from exercise as a punishment, a chore, or a number to be achieved, to focusing on moving your body in a way that feels good, so that you can feel energised, strong, alive and physically and mentally nourished.

10. Honour Your Health with Gentle Nutrition

    No more calorie counting or food plans that tell you what, when or how to eat. Once you’ve worked through each of the other Principles of Intuitive Eating, you’re ready to move on to Principle #10, which is all about nourishing your body in a gentle way; one that feels good and honours your body’s needs. Gentle nutrition allows you to give your body the nutrients it needs without rules or restrictions, so that you can still enjoy all the foods you love. This creates a safe space where you can listen to your body, all while maintaining balance, enjoyment and satisfaction, without the influence of diet culture.