Intuitive eating is a style of eating that became popularized by two dietitians Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, who wrote the book called Intuitive Eating. In the book, they created 10 major principles which are to be followed in order. They are listed as:

Reject Diet Mentality

Honor Your Hunger

Make Peace with Food

Challenge the Food Police

Feel Your Fullness

Discover the Satisfaction Factor

Cope with Your Emotions

Respect Your Body

Exercise-Feel the difference

Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition

This eating style in short is: eat when you want, what you want, and however much you want all based on listening to your body intuitively. Now it is a lot more complex than what it seems like because learning to listen to your body can be a pretty hard skill to pick up especially if you are coming from a past of disordered eating. Intuitive eating is not mindless eating and it is not a diet. There is no restriction in intuitive eating. This eating pattern is created to be utilized every day over a life span. Everyone is invited to follow intuitive eating, and this eating pattern is meant to benefit all people. Here we will discuss all the benefits of intuitive eating.

Your relationship with food is how you think, see, and eat food. Food is necessary for life, but it should not take over our life or our headspace. We need it for survival, but we also use food for celebration, socializing, and culture. Food is an integrated part of our lives so we need to have a healthy way of interacting with it. Poor relationships with food usually originate from diet culture and false nutrition information in the media. The constant pressure to be thin is never-ending, leading women into a dark tunnel of excessive dieting, bad body image, and obsession with food. The relationship you have with food and your body image is very tightly correlated together. Over time a bad relationship with food can lead to an eating disorder, weight cycling, imbalanced hormones, weakened immune system, and increased risk for heart disease.

Your relationship with food is how you think, see, and eat food. Food is necessary for life, but it should not take over our life or our headspace. We need it for survival, but we also use food for celebration, socializing, and culture. Food is an integrated part of our lives so we need to have a healthy way of interacting with it. Poor relationships with food usually originate from diet culture and false nutrition information in the media. The constant pressure to be thin is never-ending, leading women into a dark tunnel of excessive dieting, bad body image, and obsession with food. The relationship you have with food and your body image is very tightly correlated together. Over time a bad relationship with food can lead to an eating disorder, weight cycling, imbalanced hormones, weakened immune system, and increased risk for heart disease.

Bored eating is another kind of emotional eating that originates from not paying attention to hunger cues. You eat to pass the time between classes, or you are having a lazy day at home and just eat while watching a movie. Bored eating is not inherently wrong, but it is just important to be aware that we are bored eating. When we eat out of boredom, we disconnect from our true hunger and fullness signals, which leads to us not knowing when to start and stop eating. Think about the last time you were bored eating, eating just out of enjoyment when you weren’t hungry, while you watched TV. How full did you feel after? Was it uncomfortable? Did you question how you mindlessly ate so much? If you answered yes, then it is time to dig deeper and discover how you can overcome bored eating. Reminder that eating just for pleasure is not bad, and it is actually normal, but it is important to be more aware of how our eating habits make us feel physically. Eating should not be our first strategy to experience pleasure and satisfaction.

Your relationship with food is how you think, see, and eat it. Food is necessary in life, but it should not take over our life or our headspace. Excessive dieting, trauma, bad body image, and over-exercising can all lead to having a bad relationship with food. This is not good because over time a bad relationship with food can lead to an eating disorder, weight cycling, high blood pressure, high-stress levels, weakened immune system, and increased risk for heart disease.

To heal your relationship with food you need to implement the principles of intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is an eating style where you eat when you want, what you want, and however much you want. Now it is a lot more complex than what it seems like because in intuitive eating, you are eating food based on listening to your stomach, your cravings, your hunger, and your emotions. Intuitive eating is not mindless eating and it is not a diet. There is no restriction in intuitive eating. This eating pattern is created to be utilized every day over a life span. Everyone is invited to follow intuitive eating, and this eating pattern is meant to benefit all people.

Intuitive eating became popularized by two dietitians Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, who wrote the book called Intuitive Eating. In the book, they created 10 major principles which are to be followed in order. Here I will summarize the first 8 principles, but I highly encourage you to read the full book in order to gain the best understanding of the principles. While going through the principles start with the first principle, learn it, understand it, and implement it into your life before trying to implement the proceeding principles.

Hunger signals are what tell us when we are hungry or full, and they are regulated by a multitude of hormones in our body. These signals need to be trusted in order to have a healthy relationship with food, so when you are hungry eat, and when you get full slow down or stop eating. Now it is not as easy as it sounds because there are many variables that get in the way of listening to your hunger signals. If you come from a past of restriction, you may especially have a harder time knowing if you are hungry or full because restriction can put these hormones into overdrive or suppression. The goal here is not to eat less; the goal is to learn when you are most comfortable to start and stop eating and to avoid extreme hunger and fullness. Here we will discuss how you can learn to listen to your hunger signals.

Emotional eating is when we use eating as a coping mechanism for when we are sad, angry, depressed, etc. Eating as a coping mechanism is not always a negative thing, it is normal to use eating as a coping mechanism here and there. The issue lies in the regularity of your emotional eating and how much you eat when you use it as a coping mechanism. There is a difference between having an ice cream on the way home from a hard day at work versus being depressed and eating an entire gallon of ice cream plus a box of cereal until you feel sick. If the ladder is the case, it is time to dig deeper into the root causes of this behavior and ways to overcome emotional eating. The goal is to not have emotional eating as your only coping mechanism when you are feeling a negative emotion. Follow the proceeding steps in order for the best results.