5 Benefits of Intuitive Eating

Raise your hand if you’ve ever started a new diet, only to end up right back where you started? 🙋🏼‍♀️

Yeppp… I think most of us have been there!

Diets promise control, but more often than not, they leave us feeling MORE disconnected from our body.

This is why I’m a big advocate for intuitive eating. There are so many benefits of intuitive eating compared to relying on diets and giving yourself rules, and we’re talking about it in this post.

What is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach to nutrition that encourages individuals to listen and respond to their own internal body cues to meet their physical and psychological needs. It was created by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995.

In simple words…

Instead of following a list of food “rules,” counting calories, or participating in fad diets, intuitive eating is about letting your natural hunger and fullness cues guide what you’re eating, how much you’re eating, and when.

There are 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating:

1. Reject Diet Culture
2. Honor Your Hunger
3. Make Peace with Food
4. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
5. Feel Your Fullness
6. Challenge the Food Police
7. Cope With Your Emotions with Kindness
8. Respect Your Body
9. Movement—Feel the Difference
10. Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition

As a non-diet dietitian, my approach to nutrition integrates these principles, with the goal and hope of guiding my clients toward being an intuitive eater over time.

What Intuitive Eating is Not

There are understandably lots of misunderstandings when it comes to intuitive eating, so let’s break down what it’s NOT.

• Just giving into your cravings. Intuitive eating is about giving your body what it needs and letting yourself enjoy food, not just eating [insert craving here] all day, every day. In the beginning, especially after long periods of avoiding certain foods, it may look a lot like incorporating those foods frequently — but your internal cues tend to level out over time.
• A diet. The point of intuitive eating isn’t calorie count, being restrictive with food, or chasing weight loss goals.
• Only for people in eating disorder recovery. Even if you don’t have an eating disorder, disordered eating has become so normalized. Intuitive eating can be beneficial for a wide range of people, not just those in recovery.

The Benefits of Intuitive Eating

There are many, many benefits of intuitive eating with dozens of studies to back them up. Benefits like:

More awareness of hunger/fullness levels

If you’re used to following diets, you might not realize how disconnected you’ve become from your own hunger and fullness cues. When you stop following external food rules, you’re forced to start tuning back into your body’s OWN signals.

Over time, intuitive eating increases your awareness of when (and what) you need to eat, and when you’re full and satisfied.

Creates a more positive relationship with food

Diet culture teaches us to label foods as “good” or “bad.” I see firsthand all the time how this leads to guilt, shame, and an all-or-nothing mentality around eating.

Intuitive eating removes that moral weight from food, so you’re able to enjoy meals without the mental gymnastics of “earning” a good or “making up for” eating wrong.

Less stress and anxiety

Constantly tracking calories, weighing yourself, and mentally negotiating your food choices can take a real toll on your mental state. I find that my clients often feel lighter mentally once they let go of strict food rules and tune into their bodies again.

And, of course, less headspace being taken up by food is MORE headspace you have for the other parts of your life you care about.

Improved emotional regulation

Intuitive eating helps you recognize and respond to emotional hunger with self-compassion instead of judgment. As you learn to care for yourself while eating and beyond food, you’ll be better equipped to handle challenges and tough emotions like stress, sadness, or boredom — WITHOUT turning to eating as a coping mechanism.

Better physical health

Because intuitive eating supports more consistent, adequate nourishment, physical benefits are part of the deal too!

Over time, you may experience:

• Better digestion
• Reduced inflammation
• Healthy blood pressure & cholesterol
• Less risk of chronic disease
• Higher energy levels

Getting Started With Intuitive Eating

Practicing intuitive eating takes, well… practice. It involves rejecting diet culture and letting go of restrictions and food rules you previously held yourself to, which can be challenging.

If you’ve been avoiding certain foods, restricting your total intake, or noticing binge-like behaviors, it may take longer to regain your hunger and fullness cues. This is why working with a dietitian can be helpful — I help clients re-learn how to fuel their bodies, repair physical and emotional damage done by disordered eating, and start tuning into these cues again.

At the end of the day, intuitive eaters are not perfect eaters. Setbacks are normal, so be patient and kind to yourself. Know that part of getting started with intuitive eating is accepting your genetic blueprint — which strongly influences your metabolism, set-point weight range, and fat distribution.

To get started with intuitive eating, you may want to work with a healthcare professional, nutritionist, or dietitian to guide you.

As a California eating disorder dietitian, I work with clients to implement intuitive eating habits that feel good and help them ditch diet culture. Book a nutrition counseling session to get started.

If you’re located outside of California, I offer telehealth services in 14 states — see if your state is covered here.

FAQs on Intuitive Eating

Can intuitive eating help with weight loss?

You might lose weight with intuitive eating, but weight loss shouldn’t be the primary goal (remember, it’s a weight-neutral approach!). Some people gain weight with intuitive eating, or simply maintain. Your weight will likely stabilize over time as you learn to tune into your body and stop the binge-restrict cycle. Part of intuitive eating and a non-diet approach in general is neutralizing your relationship to the number on the scale, and prioritizing internal cues over external ones.

Is intuitive eating the same as mindful eating?

Intuitive eating is a broader approach to food and eating habits, while mindful eating is about engaging your senses as you eat, eating more slowly, and paying attention to hunger/fullness cues during a meal.

Who is intuitive eating for?

Intuitive eating is for anyone who wants to heal their relationship with food, ditch dieting, or just get more in tune with their own bodies. People in eating disorder recovery often utilize intuitive eating principles to move forward with support from professionals, but it’s useful for many others, too.