What is Intuitive Eating?
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is an approach to food and eating that emphasises tuning into your body's natural hunger and fullness cues, rather than following external diets, rules, or restrictions. It's about reconnecting with your body's innate signals to guide your eating habits, promoting a healthier relationship with food and your body. If you look at children, you will notice that they eat intuitively; they eat when they are hungry, stop when they are full and eat a wide range of foods without guilt or restriction. We lose this intuition as we become teenagers and adults due to external influences, such as social media, cultural pressures, peer pressure and societal values that emphasise the “ideal” body size and shape.
There are six main principles that summarise intuitive eating well:
Rejecting Diet Mentality
Intuitive eating involves moving away from diets and the mentality of strict rules or restrictions around food. It encourages letting go of the cycle of dieting, which often leads to feelings of guilt, shame, or failure.
Listening to Hunger and Fullness
Intuitive eating focuses on tuning into your body's hunger cues to eat when you're genuinely hungry and stopping when you're comfortably full. It's about honouring your body's signals and trusting its wisdom regarding nourishment. Your body has been instrinsically designed - you can learn to trust it again!
Honouring Your Body
Intuitive eating approach promotes body acceptance and respect for your body's unique shape and size, focusing on overall health and well-being rather than weight or appearance. I find this particularly helpful for tackling comparison, as I learn to accept my body for how it was designed and created.
Mindful Eating
Intuitive eating involves being present and mindful during meals, paying attention to the sensory experience of eating, savouring flavours, and being aware of how food makes you feel physically and emotionally. It is actually quite mind-blowing how much more we notice when we are mindful during meal times. This is something I encourage my clients to do regularly, and we can practice this in session as well.
Making Peace with Food
Allowing yourself to enjoy all types of food without judgment or guilt is a core principle. It encourages the removal of "good" and "bad" labels from food choices, fostering a balanced and non-restrictive approach to eating. This is a biggie and we can do a lot of work in our Coaching sessions to make this a reality for you!
Respecting Your Body's Needs
Intuitive eating emphasises giving your body the nourishment it needs without rigidly following external food rules or trends. Once the connection and trust has been made again with your body, you will find that your body will tell you what it needs, when it needs it. Eating intuitively really does bring Food Freedom.
Intuitive eating isn't a diet but rather a mindset shift towards a more sustainable and compassionate approach to eating. It's about developing a healthy relationship with food, promoting overall well-being, and trusting your body to guide your eating choices. It can take time and practice to relearn how to listen to your body's cues, but many people find it leads to a more balanced and enjoyable relationship with food in the long run. At Food Freedom Coach, this is one of our main principles that drives our sessions. After many years of practice, I have achieved Food Freedom and I am committed to help you achieve your Food Freedom too!
