According to Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, co-authors of Intuitive Eating, intuitive eating is defined as listening to your inner hunger signals, eating whenever you choose without experiencing guilt or an ethical dilemma.
Principle 1: Reject the Diet Mentality
- Dieting damages your body and mind. It is linked with eating disorders, stress, feelings of failure, lowered self-esteem, social anxiety, erodes confidence and self-trust, and is linked to depression (1992 National Institutes of Health, Weight Loss and Control Conference)
Principle 2: Honor Your Hunger
- Learn to honor your first biological signal to eat, otherwise intentional, moderate, and conscious eating is out the window!
Principle 3: Make Peace with Food
- Give yourself permission to eat!
Principle 4: Challenge the Food Police
- Don’t assign moral qualities to food. This comes from unreasonable rules of dieting. Stop counting calories.
Principle 5: Feel Your Fullness
- Listen for the body signals that tell you you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show you are comfortable full. Pause in the middle of eating and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what your current fullness level is.
Principle 6: Discover the Satisfaction Factor
- Eat with all your senses!
Principle 7: Cope with Your Emotions without Using Food
- Learn the difference between your emotional, spiritual, and physical cues for hunger. If you use food to cope, you’ll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion as well as the discomfort of overeating. (See Emotional Eating Blog)
Principle 8: Respect Your Body
- It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical for your body shape.
Adapted from Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works, by: Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch..
Cara Engle, LAPC – cengle@ growcounseling.com