The Ten Principles of Intuitive Eating: A Therapists Perspective

As a therapist, I've seen firsthand the transformative power of intuitive eating. This approach, which emphasizes listening to your body's cues rather than adhering to external dieting rules, can promote a healthier and happier relationship with food. Here are the ten principles of intuitive eating:

Reject the Diet Mentality: Diets often lead to a cycle of restriction, overeating, and guilt. By letting go of the diet mentality, you can focus on what your body needs rather than what a diet tells you to eat.

Honor Your Hunger: Learning to recognize and respond to your body's hunger signals is a key part of intuitive eating. Eating when you're physically hungry can help prevent overeating later.

Make Peace with Food: Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. When you stop labeling foods as "good" or "bad," you can start to neutralize the emotional power they hold.

Challenge the Food Police: Challenge the thoughts that declare you're "good" for eating minimal calories or "bad" because you ate a piece of chocolate cake.

Respect Your Fullness: Just as you should honor your hunger, you should also respect when you're full. Listen for the signals your body sends to tell you that you've had enough to eat.

Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food: Find ways to comfort, nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, and anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement.

Respect Your Body: Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight wouldn't expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally futile (and uncomfortable) to have a similar expectation about body size.

Exercise—Feel the Difference: 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 energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm.

Honor Your Health with Gentle Nutrition: Make food choices that honor your health and taste buds while making you feel well. Remember that you don’t have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts.

Each of these principles can play a role in creating a healthier and more peaceful relationship with food and your body. As a therapist, it's a joy to walk alongside my clients as they discover the freedom that comes from intuitive eating. As always, this blog is not meant to serve as medical advice and should never be used to delay speaking to a physician about nutrition.

Reference: “10 Principles of Intuitive Eating.” Intuitive Eating, 19 Dec. 2019, https://www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/.