Between work schedules, social obligations, and all-too-common diets, a number of outside factors influence or even dictate when—and what—we eat. But our bodies’ specific wants and needs rarely align with society’s schedules and expectations.
Over years of following these outside rules, it’s easy to lose track of our internal hunger and satiety cues or “train” ourselves otherwise. Eating for purposes other than hunger or nutrition can be a slippery slope toward disordered eating behaviors.
Intuitive eating offers a way to return to our inner and individual nutritional needs. Learning how to practice intuitive eating can be beneficial, whether you’re in eating disorder recovery, have struggled with an eating disorder relapse, or simply want to “unlearn” the societal rules that have dictated your diet.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is what it sounds like—eating intuitively or in accordance with your inner feelings and sensations. But the philosophy of the practice goes much deeper than its name.
When practicing intuitive eating, you learn to tap into your body’s “inner voice” or other internal signals to understand when you’re hungry, how hungry you are, and what you’re hungry for. This contradicts the widespread practice of planning meals and eating specific foods at specific times or being influenced by other outside factors, such as advertisements.
Intuitive Eating vs. Dieting
Intuitive eating is the opposite of the dieting mentality. In intuitive eating, there are no “good” foods and “bad” foods, nor “right” foods and “wrong” foods. There are no set times to eat, meal size requirements, or restricted foods. The practice asks participants to let go of these rules and judgments to better understand the needs of one’s own body. (1)
This doesn’t mean people who practice intuitive eating eat mindlessly. Rather, it emphasizes tuning into internal hunger and satiety cues to better reflect the body’s individual needs at any given time on any given day. (1)
Likewise, intuitive eating does not emphasize weight loss or weight control, as most diets do. The practice instead revolves around giving your body the food it wants and needs and maintaining a healthy and balanced approach to eating.
Intuitive Eating in Eating Disorder Recovery
Many people in eating disorder recovery or those who have experienced eating disorder relapses learn how to practice intuitive eating as part of their recovery journey. The practice has been found beneficial in several areas.
One study found that intuitive eating helped reduce disordered eating patterns in college students who had previously reported eating disorder symptoms. (2) The study also suggested that intuitive eating could help improve body image and self-esteem, at least in part by helping people learn to trust—and, subsequently, better respect—their own bodies. (2)
Ten Tips for How to Practice Intuitive Eating
Whether you’ve experienced disordered behaviors around food and eating or are simply interested in getting more in touch with your inner voice, learning to practice intuitive eating can be a beneficial experience.
Remember to be patient and gentle with yourself. It can be difficult to unlearn the kinds of behaviors and expectations society imposes on us. But there are some tips that can make it easier to get started on your intuitive eating journey.
Connect With Your Body’s Hunger Cues
Learning to “tune in” to your body’s internal hunger cues is the primary goal of intuitive eating, but it’s also one of the most challenging parts of adopting the practice.
An excellent way to start is by paying attention to your body. What does it feel like when you’re hungry? Does your stomach rumble, do you feel light-headed, or do you have trouble concentrating? These may all be signs of hunger. (3)
Before you eat something, you can also take a moment to ask yourself, “Am I truly hungry?” “How hungry am I?” or “How do I know I’m hungry?” While specifically thinking about hunger is the opposite goal of intuitive eating, it’s a starting point for listening to your body and what it’s asking you for. (3)
Reject the Diet Mentality
Intuitive eating stands in almost direct opposition to the diet mentality. It doesn’t ask you to follow specific rules or schedules about food and doesn’t label any foods as inherently good or bad. Similarly, intuitive eating isn’t explicitly done to lose weight. Instead, the goal is giving your body the food it needs and is asking for.
Sadly, these “lessons” about dieting are commonly learned young and continuously reinforced in a society obsessed with aesthetics and the thin ideal. It may feel strange at first to reject these ideas, but letting go of any judgments, weight-based dieting goals or pre-ordained rules around food is what opens up the ability to let your body tell you what it wants to eat and when.
Honor Your Food Preferences and Cravings
This goes hand-in-hand with rejecting the diet mentality. Learning to honor your own preferences and cravings can take some unlearning—namely around the fact that certain foods are “bad” or should be restricted.
In many ways, the body is smarter than the brain, and it understands on a physiological level the nutrients it needs at any given moment. That could even include foods like bread, cheese, or other commonly avoided or restricted items.
This isn’t to say, however, that you write yourself a blank check when you’re getting a craving for something. You still need to tune into your body’s hunger and satiety cues, eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re satisfied. But the idea is to trust that your body has these preferences or cravings for a reason.
Make Peace with Food
Making peace with food is similar to honoring your cravings and preferences. It involves accepting the idea that there are no “good” foods or “bad” foods and no foods that inherently need to be restricted (unless you have a condition such as diabetes or Celiac disease).
Making peace with food can be game-changing, not only for how you think about food but also for how you think about yourself and your body image. It can help combat feelings of shame and guilt around eating certain foods, which are key aspects of many eating disorders. It can help you maintain a more positive and balanced perspective when it comes to how you look and what you eat.
Practice Mindful Eating
Mindful eating is another common technique in eating disorder recovery, and it can also be helpful when learning how to practice intuitive eating.
The concept asks us to be more present during the eating process. That can mean focusing on the taste, smell, and texture of food or paying more attention to the overall eating experience. (4)
Essentially, mindful eating asks us to focus on the present moment and all its fullness. This can help us eat more slowly, with more intention, and naturally tune into our body’s hunger and satiety cues. (4)
Cultivate Body Positivity and Acceptance
Learning how to practice intuitive eating is about more than just food. Body positivity and acceptance are a big part of the practice.
At its core, intuitive eating is about building trust and a rapport with your own body. This often means tuning out messages you’ve received from elsewhere about what you should eat, how you should think about certain foods, and how you should look.
Cultivating body acceptance can help you see yourself in a more positive light. This can help you learn to trust and even love your body and put less stress on yourself about what you eat or the types of cravings you may be having.
Feel Your Fullness
Intuitive eating is more than just learning to understand when you’re hungry. It’s also about learning to understand when you’re physically satisfied.
Just as you can pay attention to physical signs of hunger and ask yourself questions to better develop a sense of your hunger patterns, you can do the same to get an idea of when you’re full. You can also use tools like the hunger/satiety scale, which rates your hunger or satiety on a scale of 1-10, or try other techniques to let your mind keep up with your stomach, such as: (3)
Eating slowly
Putting down your fork between bites
Checking in with yourself regularly
Assessing your energy levels
The idea is to stop once you feel satisfied, not overly full.
Practice Gentle Nutrition and Movement
Gentle nutrition is one of the principles of intuitive eating, and it incorporates many of these ideas into one. Gentle nutrition states that a person is an expert on their own body and should, therefore, be trusted to make the best choices for their well-being based on their hunger, satiety, and stress levels. (6)
The concept also asks people not to be too hard on themselves for cravings, how much is eaten, or other common food-related triggers. It similarly dismisses the ideas of “bad” foods, “good” foods, foods that should be restricted, or eating with specific weight loss goals in mind. (6)
Gentle movement is a similar concept. It moves away from imposing strict exercise regimens and invites people to listen to their body’s wants and needs around movement. It also works to expand the ideas of movement and exercise, including activities like walking, stretching, playing with children, gardening, or any other type of movement that feels good and intuitive.
Learn to Identify Emotional Eating
Emotional eating is a very common experience for all types of people. It describes eating or hunger triggered by an emotional reaction rather than a physical one.
People often eat when they’re upset, stressed out, or even when they’re bored. Eating can also help temporarily relieve anxious feelings by switching the body into “rest and digest” mode, and specific “triggering” foods, such as those high in fat and sugar, can become more appealing when someone is feeling these ways. (5)
To help understand whether you’re feeling physically or emotionally hungry, it may be helpful to keep a food journal and make notes about when you feel hungry, what you eat, and how much you eat. You can add information like the mood you were in when you were hungry or any “triggers” you may have experienced before eating. You can look through this information to sort between physical or emotional hunger and other eating patterns or triggers.
Learn Healthy Ways to Cope with Emotions
In nearly all cases, eating disorders present as maladaptive coping mechanisms. When people are feeling stressed, depressed, upset, or dealing with other strong or unpleasant emotions, they may turn their focus to eating, diet, and body image to help distract themselves from these feelings.
As uncomfortable as it might be, dealing with unpleasant emotions directly is a much healthier route and one reason why mental health care is such an essential part of eating disorder recovery. Still, this process can be long and uncomfortable, and it’s important to do it with help from an appropriate doctor or mental health professional.
Several therapeutic methods, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and experiential therapy, have been shown to help ease eating disorder symptoms and related thoughts. If you or a loved one are struggling with an eating disorder or have experienced a relapse in recovery, it’s important not to lose hope but remember that help is always possible.
Updated July 3, 2024
Resources
Srineevas S. (2023, April 21). What Is Intuitive Eating? WebMD. Accessed May 2024.
Katcher JA, Suminski RR, Pacanowski CR. (2022). Impact of an Intuitive Eating Intervention on Disordered Eating Risk Factors in Female-Identifying Undergraduates: A Randomized Waitlist-Controlled Trial. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(19):12049.
Bingeman B, Neid-Avila J. (n.d.). Learning to Listen to Hunger and Fullness Cues. Utah State University. Accessed May 2024.
Nelson JB. (2017). Mindful Eating: The Art of Presence While You Eat. Diabetes spectrum: a publication of the American Diabetes Association, 30(3): 171–174.
Break the Bonds of Emotional Eating. (n.d.) Mount Sinai. Accessed May 2024.
Rohrbach K. (2021, October 22). Four Ways to Embrace Gentle Nutrition. University of California Davis. Accessed May 2024.
