How to Be an Intuitive Eater

Intuitive eating is about listening to your body's hunger and fullness cues to guide your food choices.  It eliminates calorie counting, macro tracking, and food weighing, focusing instead on mindful eating based on your needs and feelings in the moment.

This approach can positively impact other areas of your life, fostering greater self-awareness and clarity in your actions and interactions.  However, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution.  Structured eating plans may be more effective for some.  For emotional eaters, intuitive eating offers a valuable tool to pause and reflect before eating, promoting increased self-awareness.

If you're hesitant to try intuitive eating, explore your reservations.  Curiosity and self-compassion are key to success.  While fear can be a motivator, avoid basing decisions solely on fear; consider other factors as well.If you are someone curious to try intuitive eating, check out these eight tips below before you get started.

1. Reject the dieting mentality

It’s embedded in our culture. Recognizing the culture we live in is a more diet focused mindset will make a ton of difference for you. We don’t need to lose weight to be happy. Start to experiment with approaching food in a different way.  

2. Honor your hunger

Hunger is different for everyone. Explore what that means for you. Define it and honor it. (Do you get dizzy, lightheaded, spacy, when hungry?) Define what it means for you.

3. Make peace with food

Give yourself permission to have certain foods & allow yourself to enjoy them. This one is all about breaking the diet mindset. Give yourself permission to eat certain foods. You’ll eventually realize your worst fear didn’t come true and you will redefine what certain food means to you.

4. Respect your fullness

Slow down and stop at the point when you’re almost full. There is a natural delayed reaction when we are eating so staying mindful while you are eating so you can slow down as you become mildly full is key. Fullness is finding that satisfaction after your meal but also being mindful while you are eating so you can slow down when you are feeling mildly full. Feeling”full” is ok and not something to avoid or be afraid of.

5. Finding the satisfaction in your food

This one is all about finding the balance between what you are craving and what you actually eat. For example, you can be craving a panini for lunch but you have a salad instead. Your physically satisfied (full) but you are not mentally/emotionally  “full.” Something to help with this is creating a positive and worthwhile experience as you eat and even before. Creating a positive eating environment if you are cooking and taking your time to prepare for the meal can help with increasing our overall satisfaction. For example, putting on music while you cook or walking into a restaurant and smelling the aromas coming out of the kitchen can really help with increasing our overall satisfaction levels.

6. Honor your feelings without using food

How often are you eating because you are hungry or b/c you are feeling emotional? Explore your emotional hunger. If it’s an emotional reason why you are eating, food won’t satisfy it. Being aware and trying to make changes while being more mindful will help. Recognizing how you are feeling physically and emotionally helps with making the right decisions.

7. Respect your body!

Respect and appreciate your own body and it's shaped, what it can do, etc. Make the mental switch from the focus on weight to focusing more on how you are feeling. Set goals in the gym that are focused more on strength (doing ten pushups straight) rather than going for a number on the scale. The less we fixate on our physical appearance, the more we appreciate where we are in the current moment.

8. Exercise but do it in a way you really enjoy

Find something you love to do that’s physically challenging. Working out should not be something you dread.  There are tons of physical and mental benefits of exercise but if you totally hate going to the gym and don’t go because you hate lifting weights, find something you like! Explore and try something new.