What is intuitive eating?

The definition of intuitive eating, the innate mechanism, how and when we lost it, and how we can rediscover it.

You probably have no recollection of it, but when you were a baby and probably a toddler, you had the most balanced relationship with food. Infants and young children usually eat only when they are hungry and stop when they are full. They mainly think about playing and not about food at all, at least not until they receive the known hunger signals from their bodies. They only “listen” to their bodies and their taste buds, when it comes to selection of foods, and they have zero interest for quality, ways of cooking or nutritional value of the food they eat. In other words, once, not very long ago, you were, I was, we were, all, instinctively following the intuitive diet.

If you are a parent, you must surely remember the above period in your child’s life. Your futile attempts to feed them at times when they were not hungry, your difficulty in convincing them to eat those vegetables that they didn’t like, and their tantrums when after several hours of play, they would suddenly realize their hunger and its intensity. All of the above are characteristics of the instinctive feeding mechanism with which most beings on the planet are born. A mechanism that today’s human society has unfortunately suppressed and we need hard work in order to recover it.

What is intuitive eating? | offadiet.com

The definition of intuitive eating

So, what exactly is intuitive eating? It is a way of eating based solely on the signals that our body sends us. We eat only when we are hungry, we stop when we are full. It sounds simple, right? But before we talk about how easy it is in today’s reality, let’s look into how the term “intuitive eating” came about, which is now a very popular term among the scientific nutrition community.

The story of intuitive eating

The idea of an instinctive way of eating had been around since 1970. But the term “intuitive eating” was first used in 1995 by American dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Rech in their book “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works”. They also created the website intuitiveeating.org, where anyone can find more information about it.

The principles of instinctive nutrition

At intuitiveeating.org, Tribole and Rech list the top 10 principles of intuitive eating:

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 – Gentle nutrition

Naturally, you will come to wonder “Why would I need principles or guidelines for something that my body knows how to do instinctively?” Well, the answer, unfortunately, is that you do need guidance. Simply because you have forgotten how to do it.

The influences that drove us away from the instinctive way of eating

Let’s go back to those little kids who were instinctively fed. What happened and how did their habits change? When did they stop listening to their bodies?

As children grow up in our society, bad influences start taking place. Food becomes reward or punishment by parents, grandparents, and even teachers. Orders like “must-eat-that” and “don’t-eat-that” become everyday language, based on the family’s food choices and the parents’ beliefs. Peers’ different food choices may seem more interesting, and everyday life is influenced by all aspects of the obesogenic modern society that we all live into.

And then… here comes dieting. Because that’s what a classmate who wants to lose weight does. Or that’s what the gym coach said and he certainly knows better. Or simply because all these perfect bodies on Instagram look so much better than the one in the mirror. And eating, one of our most basic needs, becomes associated, consciously or subconsciously, with negative emotions and behaviours. Foods get categorized in good and bad, deprivation becomes exemplary, wrong food choices bring guilt, and our eating habits and nutrition become the subjects we love to hate.

Our instinctive relationship with food has been disrupted. We are led to wrong eating behaviours, and food becomes a source of frustration, anger, social isolation, and even fear. At the same time, however, it takes up a huge space in our thoughts since it is no longer an automatic process, but a problem that is asking for a solution.

The way back to intuitive eating

Intuitive eating is not something we need to learn how to do but something we have to remember. And to do that, we need to “unlearn” chronic problematic eating behaviors and, most importantly, identify wrong thinking patterns. And as every good teacher knows, the most difficult thing is not to teach, but to make someone unlearn what (they think) they know. The goal is to go back to eating based on the hunger and satiety signals sent by our bodies. But this transition cannot happen overnight. We have forgotten how to recognize these signals and our brains get disoriented by our disordered eating behaviours. The first step is to recognize them so that we can eliminate them. The basic principles of intuitiveeating.org are based on this logic.

The benefits of intuitive eating

In recent years, there has been a lot of research on intuitive eating, which is usually defined by the scientific community as a diet that prioritizes the normal signals of hunger and satiety and minimizes dieting and emotional eating. In one of the most recent studies conducted on college students, those who followed an intuitive diet for, showed less psychological stress but also lower BMI, in relation to those who were on a diet or were following a healthy eating lifestyle. Another study that looked at the eating behavior of families, found that parents who follow intuitive eating spend more time preparing home-cooked meals for the family and tend to use more fruits and vegetables in the family diet. The most important data, however, comes from a 2021 meta-analysis of 97 studies, which concludes that intuitive eating is inversely proportional to multiple indicators of psychopathology and nutritional pathology, as well as body image disorders. Additionally, it is positively associated with high self-esteem, general well-being and a positive body image.

The off-a-diet approach to nutrition

At offadiet.com, I support intuitive eating, combined with mindful eating, an equally important element of nutrition in today’s lifestyle, and both in conjunction with a nutritionally-dense type of eating. At the same time, I equally value other important aspects of our diet, such as seasonality and food safety.

Learn more about the off-a-diet approach to nutrition!