A Dietitian's Evidence-Based Review of Intuitive Eating

Eating intuitively. We’re born doing it, but somewhere along the line, we get distracted by external cues and rules and diets that tell us what, when, and how to eat.

If you’ve ever watched a baby eat, you’ve seen that they choose what they want, in the quantity that feels good to them, and then they stop when they’ve had enough. Simple.

Intuitive Eating is an approach that focuses on the body’s internal hunger and fullness cues, while teaching followers to reject diet culture and its influence. It was developed in 1995 by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch as a way to counsel clients to heal from restrictive dieting and body shame. The book Intuitive Eating, published shortly after, provides a framework of 10 core principles to help readers institute a non-diet approach in their lives.

what is intuitive eating — IE means eating what you want and what you need

The 10 core principles of Intuitive Eating are:

Reject the diet mentality: Get rid of anything that promotes dieting – books, social media accounts, etc.

Honor your hunger: when you’re hungry, eat. Don’t try to suppress or ignore it.

Make peace with food: food is not the enemy; let it be a joyful experience, and give yourself unconditional permission to eat.

Challenge the food police: ignore or challenge your inner voice that makes you feel bad about what you’re eating, and reject the notion that food has moral value.

Discover the satisfaction factor: eat what you crave, and savor how food feels, tastes, and smells.

Feel your fullness: get to know your internal hunger and fullness cues, and eat mindfully.

Cope with your emotions using kindness: comfort yourself without using food.

Respect your body: accept your “genetic blueprint,” and stop trying to make your body into something it’s not meant to be.

Movement – feel the difference: stop punishing your body with exercise for the purpose of weight loss. Move in ways that feel good.

Honor your health – gentle nutrition: nourish your body both physically and emotionally.

Intuitive Eating is not meant to be a weight loss tool. In recent years, it has been closely linked to the Health at Every Size movement, which is based on the rejection of weight has an indicator of health, and promoting equity and unbiased care for everyone, regardless of their size.

What Intuitive Eating gets right

As someone who has counselled countless clients for their nutrition, I wholeheartedly embrace the Intuitive Eating principles. Rejecting weight as a primary indicator of success, learning healthy habits versus focusing only on the number on the scale, rejecting restrictive diets, finding and listening to your internal hunger and fullness cues, enjoying food, and treating your body with respect, are all what I believe to be essential pieces of good nutrition and overall physical and psychological health.

We have been duped by the diet and wellness industries into believing that willpower and going without are honorable, that hunger should be ignored or suppressed, and that “health” looks like one thing: thinness – even when that’s inconsistent with a person’s natural body shape and size. Intuitive Eating challenges this thinking, and that’s a good thing.

A lot of people worry that without rules or restriction, they won’t be able to control themselves around certain foods. IE takes away the morality-based judgement and categorization of food, teaching followers that food is neither “good” nor “bad.” Once a food isn’t off-limits, we’re less likely to overeat it because we see it as just another food, not special or forbidden.

The issues with Intuitive Eating

IE is sold as being appropriate for everyone, but it’s not. It’s a biological fact that some people aren’t able to listen to their hunger and fullness cues and heal their food issues, because eating is complex. What and how we eat is reflective of several factors, including deeply-ingrained core beliefs around food and our bodies, hormones, emotional wellbeing, socioeconomic status, our environment, and others. (PMID: 33921286) “Failing” on Intuitive Eating because it wasn’t appropriate for you in the first place, can lead to the guilt and shame that the program is meant to dissolve.

In a recent New York Times interview with Tribole and Resch, Tribole remarked that people for whom IE doesn’t work, probably weren’t following all of the principles. This is an irresponsible take that reminds me of the diet industry’s habit of blaming people for failing on a diet that’s impossible to follow. Denying that even a small weight loss can being health-promoting shows, in my opinion, willful ignorance of existing research.

IE discourages viewing weight loss as beneficial, even for health purposes. Evidence is very clear around the link between excess weight and negative health outcomes, and for many people, weight loss can mean the difference between life and death. (PMID: 28455679), (PMID: 40423979), (PMID: 39487296), (PMID: 33882682)

In fact, many IE supporters cite the statistic that 95% of diets fail, and say that weight cycling is more dangerous than being obese. Both of these statements are untrue and unsupported by current evidence. 95% of diets do not fail, and the doctor who initially made this claim has since debunked it.

eating intuitively — No, 95% of diets don’t fail.

While weight cycling can have a negative impact on health, a new study there is no causal link between it and increased risk for clinical harm. (Citation) The researchers from this study found that when a person regains lost weight, they don’t increase their risk for negative outcomes; they return to the level of risk they were at before they lost the weight. It’s excess body fat – not weight cycling on its own – that predicts disease risk.

Some people are just unable to see food as neutral, and they find that IE causes them to overeat even after months of trying. This doesn’t mean that they’re “doing it wrong.” It’s just another example of why IE isn’t for everyone.

Is Intuitive Eating worth trying?

Living in a society that views thinness as something that’s worth giving our health for, I think we can all benefit from the kinder, gentler perspective that IE can provide.

However, IE is not meant to be a tool for weight loss, so keep that in mind. You may lose weight by tapping in to your natural cues, eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full, and learning to see food as food, not as the enemy.