Intuitive Eating
The holiday season is fast approaching and it is a time of year that often includes a lot of food and eating. While this can be pleasurable it can also be emotionally challenging, particularly if you have a complicated relationship with food. Developing a healthy relationship with food involves practicing balance and flexibility and intuitive eating can be a part of this practice.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is the practice of tuning into your body and making food choices based on what feels good to you without judging yourself or allowing yourself to be influenced by diet culture or rigid rules around eating. It is also referred to as the practice of non-dieting. The intuitive eating movement started with the release of the book Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach written by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in 1995. This NYT article discusses the origins of this approach and how the practice has been adopted since the 1990s.
Intuitive eating is based on the overall premise that we are all born with the ability to know when to eat (feeling hungry) and when to stop eating (feeling full), as well as what types of food are pleasurable and satisfying. Yet, based on diet culture, media, friends, family, etc. we tend to become disconnected from, and less trusting of, our internal knowledge when it comes to food and eating.
The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
In general, practicing intuitive eating involves not being rigid about food and permitting yourself to eat based on what feels good to your body. There are 10 principles of intuitive eating:
Reject the Diet Mentality
Honor Your Hunger
Make Peace with Food
Challenge the Food Police
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Feel Your Fullness
Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
Respect Your Body
Movement – Feel the Difference
Honor Your Health – Gentle Nutrition
More information about these principles can be found here.
The Psychological Benefits of Intuitive Eating
Research, including a 2021 meta-analysis, has found psychological benefits of intuitive eating. For example, those who engaged in intuitive eating were less likely to binge and purge and less likely to engage in unhealthy levels of food restriction. Furthermore, greater levels of body satisfaction and appreciation, greater awareness of bodily cues, more mindfulness, and lower levels of anxiety and depression were reported by those who regularly practiced intuitive eating. Overall, research suggests that the less rigidity you have around food and the more internal cues guide eating, the more helpful a relationship you will have with food, eating, and your body.
There are various ways therapy can support intuitive eating. For example, learning mindfulness skills is an evidence-based therapy technique that aids intuitive eating. Mindfulness is the practice of tuning into the present moment, purposefully and non-judgmentally. It is important to cultivate awareness and mindfulness as you practice changing your relationship with food and eating because if you are not aware of the thoughts, feelings, or experiences that are impacting how you eat, it is difficult to eat intuitively.
Mindfulness allows you to become aware of the beliefs that are impacting how you eat, decide if they are helpful to you, and deliberately respond to them in a beneficial way vs. automatically reacting by doing what they tell you to do.
Cultivating a Healthy Relationship with Food
If you’d like to learn more about how therapy can support intuitive eating practices, please contact us at CBT Denver. We will gladly assist you in creating a more helpful relationship with food and eating, through Mindfulness-Based Therapy.