What Is Intuitive Eating and How to Do It

Intuitive Eating is a method of learning to eat in rhythm with your body's natural hunger cues, encouraging a more peaceful relationship with food. Here we’ll discuss how to do it, and the many ways that adopting an intuitive eating lifestyle can support your health.

A review article from Cambridge University identifies intuitive eating as: eating when hungry, stopping eating when full, and having no restrictions on certain types of food eaten, except for medical reasons. The university also notes that intuitive eating has been correlated with a lower BMI, better long-term weight maintenance, and improved psychological health, as well as positive improvements in cholesterol levels and blood pressure.

Dieting and restrictive eating disrupt homeostasis, or the body’s ability to maintain stability when adjusting to stress or change, and cause physical, emotional and spiritual distress, according to the Holistic Nursing Practice medical journal. Dieting is typically a short-term solution, and can often lead to weight gain when the restrictive period is over. Intuitive eating, on the other hand, is a long-term practice, meant to establish a new, relaxed relationship with food altogether.

Where dieting relies on a set of external rules to dictate how and what you eat, intuitive eating teaches you to follow your own internal cues of hunger and fullness to guide you. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that programs which emphasize a nonrestrictive pattern of eating, body acceptance and health, rather than weight loss, helped participants abandon unhealthy weight control behaviors, and resulted in improved metabolic fitness, increased body satisfaction and improved psychological distress.