Intuitive Eating For Beginners: Start Here
Heard of Intuitive Eating, but confused if it’s right for you? Want to learn more about Intuitive Eating? Or ready to try Intuitive Eating, but don’t know where to start? This Intuitive Eating For Beginners guide will help answer your questions about what is intuitive eating, from a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor.
But first, HI, I’m Chelsey Amer, a registered dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor who helps women stop binging and improve their relationship with food to stress less over food.
Intuitive eating has gained popularity, especially in the last 5 years, but it has been around since 1995.
Intuitive eating is an anti-diet approach to eating created by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole. Resch and Tribole are both dietitians who were frustrated with standard diet recommendations, centered in a weight-centric practice, NOT working for their clients.
Perhaps you can relate… You try a diet, or try to “eat in moderation,” or “cut back” on your favorite foods, and then a week, two weeks, a month, 3 months later feel absolutely out of control around food.
You “fall off the wagon,” and wind up in a spiral of food, nowhere near your goals and weighing MORE than you did before you started the diet in the first place.
As a result of standard diet advice NOT working for their clients, Resch and Tribole created the Intuitive Eating philosophy.
What is Intuitive Eating for Beginners?
Intuitive Eating, at the most basic level, is an eating philosophy that focuses on a self-care framework, including physical attunement to your body and satisfaction from eating.
It is an evidence-based model with over 125 published studies validating Intuitive Eating and proving its benefit.
There are 10 basic principles of Intuitive Eating that explain the philosophy and you can work through. These are the principles that I use with my clients to guide their food choices and achieve their health goals.
Because yes, Intuitive Eating is a health-first approach to nutrition, despite social media making it look like a free-for-all, “eat whatever you want” approach.
The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating for Beginners
The 10 principles of Intuitive Eating include:
- Reject the Diet Mentality
- Honor Your Hunger
- Make Peace with Food
- Challenge the Food Police
- Feel Your Fullness
- Discover the Satisfaction Factor
- Cope with Your Feelings Without Using Food
- Respect Your Body
- Exercise: Feel the Difference
- Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition
The principles of Intuitive Eating were designed to help you tune into your body (i.e. notice your hunger and fullness cues), as well as remove obstacles to body attunement (i.e. thinking of foods as “good” versus “bad,” which keeps you stuck in diet culture).
Let’s break these all down…
1 . Reject the Diet Mentality
You’re likely reading this because you’ve been dieting for years and it’s not working. You want to try something new. In order to become an Intuitive Eater you must first reject the diet mentality and diet culture. Stop thinking that a new diet solution is around the corner. Understand that you’ve been told lies about dieting.
Dieting is a billion dollar industry because it thrives on repeat customers. Diets are not designed to help you achieve your best health.
2. Honor Your Hunger
As mentioned above, a key component of becoming an Intuitive Eater is to trust your own body’s cues and understand what YOUR body is saying… not an arbitrary set of rules put forth by your latest diet.
Understanding your hunger cues and honoring them is a key part of becoming an Intuitive Eater.
3. Make Peace with Food
Stop limiting foods you love! The basis of this principle is to give yourself unregulated permission to eat, including ALL foods.
If you don’t give yourself permission to eat all foods, this can lead to feelings of deprivation and feeling out of control around food (like the binging you’re experiencing), plus guilt and shame for eating these foods.
4. Challenge the Food Police
This principle is all about the food rules you’ve created or adopted for yourself. “Don’t eat after 7pm!” “Don’t eat before noon!”
Chase away the food police and the negative beliefs and thoughts you have about food.
When working with my clients, we really focus on reframing your beliefs and thoughts about food into more positive ones, or at least neutral thoughts that support you in your goals.
5. Feel Your Fullness
It’s time to figure out the other side of hunger, FULLNESS! Respect your fullness to avoid overeating.
6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
This is my favorite principle of Intuitive Eating and one that I spend the most time working on with my clients, typically. Satisfaction is at the center of Intuitive Eating.
It’s essential to eat satisfying meals and foods in order to stop thinking about food so much, respect your hunger and fullness levels, and derive pleasure from eating.
Enjoying food is not a bad thing!
7. Cope with Your Emotions Without Using Food
As the title mentions, this principle is all about emotional eating. You can find ways to cope without using food and this is the principle that explores that.
Food will not solve your problems, even if it feels good at the moment. Learn how to cope without using food.
8. Respect Your Body
Bodies come in all different shapes and sizes. You wouldn’t cram your size 8 foot into a size 6 shoe because that’s uncomfortable! Instead, accept your genetic makeup and embrace your body at the size it was destined to be.
9. Exercise: Feel the Difference
Say goodbye to exercising for aesthetic reasons and hello to exercising because it FEELS good in your body!
10. Gentle Nutrition
The last principle of Intuitive Eating focuses on nutrition, eating in a balanced way that feels good for your body.
So yes, Intuitive Eating does care about your health and wants you to eat in a health-promoting way, without sacrificing satisfaction or flavor along the way!
(Psssst – that’s what my balanced plate method teaches!)
The Benefits of Intuitive Eating for Beginners
There are numerous benefits of Intuitive Eating, including…
Studies show Intuitive Eaters have LOWER…
- Triglycerides
- Blood pressure
- Binge eating/loss-of-control eating
- Weight cycling
- Emotional eating
- Body dissatisfaction
Studies show Intuitive Eaters have HIGHER…
- HDL (“good” cholesterol)
- Self-esteem
- Variety of foods eaten
- Pleasure from eating
- Proactive coping skills
- Satisfaction
As you can see, there are physical and mental benefits of becoming an Intuitive Eater.
While these are the documented, studied benefits of Intuitive Eating, as a practitioner of Intuitive Eating my favorite benefits are those directly from my clients…
“Feeling a bit less alienated when it comes to food.”
“I used to sit at breakfast and have a coffee, and now I sit at breakfast and actually eat breakfast and dont feel as isolated.”
“[my eating concerns] could have ruined my life, but I know the work we’ve done is going to change my life and my kids lives forever.”
“I have seen and felt such a shift in my mind. Even giving myself grace with the head in my voice, staying conscious of the connection from my brain to my gut, trusting the process, knowing each meal is a new opportunity to choose balance, not needing to hold myself back from anything but trust my body and eat based on how it makes my body feel verses “bad food/good food.”
Is Intuitive Eating Right For You?
If you fit any of the below criteria, Intuitive Eating is right for you…
- You’re sick of dieting
- Mindless snacking in the afternoon or evening has taken over your life
- You’re confused about what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat unless you’re follow a strict plan
- You want to improve your health (bloodwork, blood pressure, etc.)
- Looking to manage a chronic health condition, without strict rules
- You want to raise kid who are intuitive eaters
Can You Want to Lose Weight and Become an Intuitive Eater?
Yes! You can want to lose weight and become an intuitive eater. It’s normal to have a desire for weight loss. Most of my clients come to me wanting to lose weight.
However, there’s often another desire present too… To:
- Stop binging
- Feel less out of control around food
- Improve their relationship with food
- Stop restricting
- Stop counting and tracking every bite
- And more
As such, we work on these 10 principles of Intuitive Eating in order to achieve these goals.
What typically happens is that you reach a weight that you can maintain. A weight that doesn’t fluctuate or yo-yo every few months. A weight that you feel your best, having energy for your kids!
How to Get Started with Intuitive Eating for Beginners
The first step I would take if you want to become an Intuitive Eater is to get support (<< book a call to chat about how I can help!)
It’s hard to do on your own.
You can read the book, but having support and accountability from a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor will help you become an intuitive eater much quicker, without overwhelm or more stress over food and your body.
I’d love to support you on your journey! The first step is to book a call below to chat about working together!
XO