The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

Only when you vow to discard dieting and replace it with a commitment to Intuitive Eating will you be released from the prison of yo-yo dieting and food obsessions. At the beginning of your Intuitive Eating journey, you will be introduced to the core principles of Intuitive Eating. The most significant achievement of any person is gaining a healthy relationship with food and their body. By following the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating, you will normalise and heal your relationship with food. Please keep in mind, these 10 principles are simply guidelines and not new rules that can be turned into a new diet.

Any desire for weight loss must be put on the back burner, or it will sabotage your process of healing your relationship with food, your mind, and your body. Intuitive Eating is an inside job – it’s about listening to the messages of the body through ‘interoceptive*’ awareness. (*knowing how you feel.) When you focus on weight, or any other measure of how you look, it interferes with the process of becoming an Intuitive Eater. Focusing on your body aesthetics in any way immediately introduces an external factor, creating wedge between your inner wisdom and eating choices. Intuitive Eating is not against people losing weight as a by-product or side-effect of Intuitive Eating – but to focus on it means you will not be eating Intuitively.

Later, when we go through each principle in more detail. You may find it useful to return to this overview for a quick reference.

The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

Principle 1:

REJECT THE DIET MENTALITY

Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at diet culture that promotes weight loss and the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time and the diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you let even once more hope to linger that a new and better diet food plan might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

Principle 2:

HONOUR YOUR HUNGER

Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates, otherwise you can trigger primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honour this first biological signal sets the stage for rebuilding trust in yourself and in food.

Principle 3:

MAKE PEACE WITH FOOD

Call a truce; stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can’t of shouldn’t have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that builds into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing. When you finally “give in” to you forbidden food, eating will be experience with such intensity usually results in Last Supper over eating and overwhelming guilt. 

Principle 4:

CHALLENGE THE FOOD POLICE

Scream a loud no to thoughts in your head that you’re “good” for eating minimal calories and “bad” for eating a piece of chocolate cake. The food police monitor the unreasonable rules that diet culture has created. The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loudspeaker shouts negative barbs, and hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the food place away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

Principle 5:

DISCOVER THE SATISFACTION FACTOR

Japanese have the wisdom to keep pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living. In a compulsion to comply with diet culture, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence – the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content.

Principle 6:

FEEL YOUR FULLNESS

In order to honour your fullness, you need to trust that you will give yourself the foods that you desire. Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry and observe the signs that show that you’re comfortable full. Pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what your current hunger level is.

Principle 7:

COPE WITH YOUR EMOTIONS WITH KINDNESS

First, recognise that food restriction, both physically and mentally, can, in and of itself, trigger loss of control, which can feel like emotional eating. Find kind ways to comfort, neutral, distract, and resolve your issues. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are all emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won’t fix any of these feelings. It may comfort in the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you. But food won’t solve the problem. You’ll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion.

Principle 8:

RESPECT YOUR BODY

Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of 8 would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size 6, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size. But mostly, respect your body so you can feel better about who you are. It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and critical of your body size and shape. All bodies deserve dignity.

Principle 9:

MOVEMENT – FEEL THE DIFFERENCE

Forget militant exercise. Just to get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie-burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energised, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze button.

Principle 10:

HONOUR YOUR HEALTH – GENTLE NUTRITION (this principle usually isn’t required as the body is already choosing the food that makes you feel good on it’s own)

Make food choices that honour your health and taste buds while making you feel good. Remember that you don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency from one snack, one meal, or one day meeting. It’s what you eat consistently over time. Progress, not perfection is what counts.