What is Intuitive Eating and How Does It Support Eating Disorder Healing?
Intuitive Eating can be a transformational self-care practice. The framework can help heal your relationship with food through self-compassion, body trust, and focusing on nourishment over restriction.
In fact, an eight-year research cohort found that intuitive eating correlates with more self-esteem and a lower risk of body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoms, and other unhealthy weight control behaviors.
What does it mean to practice intuitive eating, and how can you incorporate this tool into your healing process? Here are some insights to help you get started.
What Is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is a framework that can teach you to tune into your natural hunger and fullness cues and food desires, rather than using external, arbitrary rules to regulate and restrict your food choices.
Dietitian Evelyn Tribole and nutrition therapist Elyse Resch first released this framework in 1995 with their 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating:
Reject diet culture. Liberate yourself from the constraints of restrictive dieting, calorie counting, and other weight-focused eating habits.
Honor your hunger. Notice when you feel hunger, then respond to this internal cue by eating instead of trying to repress or ignore it.
Make peace with food. Give yourself permission to eat whichever foods you want and resist the urge to label some foods as “off-limits.”
Discover the satisfaction factor. Lean into the enjoyment of eating—experience all the pleasurable aromas, flavors, and textures of a meal.
Feel your fullness. Pay attention to the signal that communicates when you’re satisfied, then stop eating before you feel uncomfortably full.
Challenge the “food police.” Banish the voice in your head that tries to enforce critical, guilt-based narratives and harmful dietary rules.
Cope with your emotions through kindness. Process emotions at their source instead of using food to comfort, numb, or distract yourself.
Respect your body. View bodies of all shapes, weights, sizes, abilities, and skin tones as worthy of acceptance—that includes your own.
Feel the difference of movement. Reclaim exercise as a fun activity instead of using it to punish yourself or over-compensate for eating.
Honor your health with gentle nutrition. Make food choices that nourish and satiate your well-being, while also pleasing your taste buds.
This sustainable, flexible approach to food intersects with other healing interventions such as body liberation, gentle nutrition, and self-compassion—and this isn’t just effective in theory.
Those who eat based on their hunger and fullness cues are more likely to appreciate their bodies for how they function, rather than fixating on how much their bodies weigh, the Mediterranean Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism reports. They are also less susceptible to body image anxieties or eating disorder behaviors.
Get Started With Intuitive Eating Resources
If this concept of intuitive eating sounds like a beneficial tool for your eating disorder healing journey, below are some resources to help you start exploring it. From books to podcasts to weight-inclusive practitioners to online meal support communities, these resources can help make the intuitive eating journey feel more accessible and less overwhelming.
Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elsyse Resch
Written by the creators of intuitive eating, this book dives into the 10 Principles we referenced earlier to help you nurture an intuitive eating practice that makes sense for your own unique body.
Tribole and Resch outline actionable, science-backed strategies to help cultivate a healthier relationship with food. They also emphasize the benefits of self-compassion, emotional awareness, and gentle nutrition to free yourself from guilt and shame around eating.
The Intuitive Eating Workbook
Put the 10 principles of Intuitive Eating into practice with their workbook. This is a great tool for taking practical steps toward learning, applying, and becoming familiar with trusting yourself and your body and letting go of old food rules.
Intuitive Eating Counselors Directory
If you want to work 1:1 with someone who is certified in the Intuitive Eating framework, check out this directory. You can find certified practitioners all over the world—just input your location to find the right person for you.
Project HEAL Virtual Meal Support
Here at Project HEAL, we have a free, peer-led meal support community that meets four times daily (two lunch sessions and two dinner sessions) on a virtual platform.
Anyone over the age of 16 across the U.S., who does not require a higher level of care, is welcome to drop in. Each live session is facilitated by a clinician to help you evaluate hunger and fullness cues, navigate any mealtime anxieties, and offer encouragement and accountability in a judgment-free space.
Practical Strategies for Intuitive Eating
Ready to make intuitive eating part of your routine? Here are a few practical strategies you can use to incorporate this tool.
Remember that, depending on where you’re at in your eating disorder healing journey, some of this might feel triggering or scary. That’s okay. Take your time and please seek professional support if you feel it would be helpful.
Follow a structured eating plan as you work to restore hunger cues.
In the initial healing stages, your hunger and fullness cues might be unreliable due to past restriction or binge and purge cycles. These eating disorder behaviors can disrupt the brain’s neural pathways that signal when it’s time to eat, so as you relearn what hunger cues feel like, follow a consistent eating schedule (i.e. three meals and two snacks per day) to ensure you’re receiving the essential nutrients you need.
Over time, you can transition out of this structured meal plan into a more flexible intuitive eating framework.
Gradually confront diet rules and reintroduce “fear foods” over time.
Make a list of the foods you’ve labeled as “off-limits,” then incrementally start reintroducing them into your diet. Begin with a small portion that doesn’t feel too overwhelming and be mindful of your experience while eating. Prioritize re-introducing these foods when you’re in a place that feels safe and supported, like dinner with a friend or partner rather than a big event.
Treat emotions with compassion and curiosity instead of self-criticism.
When uncomfortable feelings arise at mealtimes, extend yourself compassion and lean into these emotions with curiosity. Ask the questions:
Why am I afraid to eat, or why do I feel guilty for the desire to eat?
Am I hungry, or am I avoiding (or using) food to numb out from emotional distress?
What does this feeling want to communicate to me right now?
Observe your answers without judgment and know that answers might not immediately come to you. That’s okay. This practice teaches you to shift from critical to compassionate and that’s an important habit to build.
Use Intuitive Eating as a Healing Tool
Intuitive Eating is just another tool you can use to come back to self-trust, let go of food rules, and nourish your mind and body. Use the resources shared to better understand how it works and how you can implement it in your life.
Remember: this isn’t meant to be another set of rules. It’s meant to be used as a framework and practice for healing and reconnecting with yourself. There’s no right or wrong way to do it.
