If you’ve spent years dieting, counting calories, weighing yourself, cutting out carbs, avoiding fat, doing “good” all week and then feeling like you’ve blown it by Friday night, you might be wondering:
What on earth is Intuitive Eating?
And, more importantly…
Could I really stop dieting?
The answer is yes. But it probably won’t happen overnight.
Where did Intuitive Eating originate?
In 1995, American dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch introduced Intuitive Eating, a framework designed to help people step away from chronic dieting and rebuild trust with their bodies and their relationship with food.1
After years of working with clients, they were seeing the same frustrating pattern again and again: diet, lose weight, struggle to maintain it, regain the weight, start another diet, and eventually blamed themselves when the whole thing fell apart.
The problem, they argued, wasn’t a lack of willpower.
The problem was the dieting system itself.
Their approach was revolutionary because instead of asking, “How can I make myself eat less?”, Intuitive Eating asks a very different question:
“What would happen if I learned to listen to and trust my body again?”
Intuitive Eating is now described as a weight-inclusive, evidence-based framework built around 10 principles that address both the physical and psychological aspects of eating. Research into Intuitive Eating has also grown considerably, with studies finding associations with more positive body image, greater wellbeing and lower levels of disordered eating.2, 3
And no, this isn’t another diet cleverly disguised as something else.
There is no meal plan.
No calorie counting.
No “good” foods and “bad” foods.
No earning your food.
No starting again on Monday.
Instead, the 10 principles give us a framework for reconnecting with hunger, fullness, satisfaction, emotions, movement, our bodies, and eventually, gentle nutrition.
Over the next 10 blog posts, I’ll take you through each principle.
And we’re starting with what I think is the most important one.
Principle 1: Reject the Diet Mentality
Make a commitment to step away from dieting.
That doesn’t mean you wake up tomorrow and magically stop thinking about diets.
If dieting has been part of your life for as long as you can remember, the diet mentality doesn’t simply disappear because you’ve decided you’re done with dieting.
It’s a process.
The first step is recognising just how much diet culture has become part of everyday life.
Delete the diet apps.
The macro and kilojoule counters. The tracking apps. The apps that tell you what and how much you are allowed to eat.
Unfollow the social media accounts. Especially the ones constantly showing you:
- Celebrities stating “What I eat in a day.”
- “Eat this, not that.”
- “Lose 5 kilograms in two weeks.”
- “Foods you should NEVER eat.”
- “Superfoods you MUST eat.” Who decided blueberries and quinoa are superfoods? There really is no such thing as a superfood. There is just food.
- “Before and after” photos that quietly tell you that your body is a problem that needs fixing.
Step away from the quick fixes.
- The detox teas.
- The miracle shakes.
- The 7-day resets.
- The overemphasis on protein or fibre.
- The book or app promising that this is finally the diet that will work.
- Forcing down a green smoothie that makes you gag.
And please… stop talking about food as “good” and “bad.”
You are not good because you ate a salad.
You are not bad because you ate cake.
You haven’t cheated.
You haven’t fallen off the wagon.
And you certainly don’t need to pay penance for eating something you enjoyed.
Which brings me to one of my favourites…
Ditch the scale.
Yes. The scale.
And if you’re thinking, “Absolutely not! Weighing keeps me accountable”… well, just notice how unwilling you are to do it. That reaction tells you something. The scale may have become the judge, jury and executioner of your day. You wake up feeling great. You weigh yourself. The number is higher than you expected. Suddenly the day is ruined.
You decide to eat less, skip breakfast or you promise yourself to “be good” today.
And all because of a number that tells you absolutely nothing about your worth and only limited information about your health. You don’t have to throw your scale into the bin today. But you can start questioning the power you’ve given it.
And those “thin clothes”…
You know the ones. The jeans you’ve kept because one day you’ll fit into them again. They’re hanging in your cupboard, silently waiting for the thinner version of you to return.
Maybe it’s time to let them go.
Your body does not need to earn the right to wear comfortable clothes. Buy clothes for the body you have now.
Beware of pseudo-dieting
You might tell yourself: “I’m not dieting anymore.” But you’re still following a whole bunch of diet rules. For example:
- Maybe you’re meticulously counting carbs or macros.
- Maybe you’re eating only foods you’ve labelled “clean” or “safe.”
- Maybe you’re avoiding perfectly ordinary foods because you’ve decided they’re somehow bad for you, like fruit. Too much sugar?
- Maybe you only eat at certain times even when you’re hungry outside those times.
- Maybe you exercise to compensate for something you ate.
- Maybe you skip your next meal because dinner was “too much.”
- Maybe you drink coffee or diet drinks to silence your hunger.
- Maybe you analyse and judge almost everything that goes into your mouth.
- Maybe you’ve become vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free primarily because you believe it will help you lose weight, rather than because of your values, preferences or medical needs.
That is still the diet mentality.
Intuitive Eating isn’t about throwing nutrition out the window. There are absolutely times when medical conditions require dietary changes or specific nutritional guidance. It’s about questioning whether your food choices are coming from your body’s needs and your own values, or from fear, rules and diet culture.
So what does becoming an ex-dieter actually look like?
It looks like learning to relax and trust yourself around food again. It means challenging the belief that you need another diet. It means becoming curious about your hunger instead of immediately trying to silence it.
It means discovering that you can eat something delicious without needing to compensate for it later.
And it means slowly dismantling the belief that your body is a problem that needs to be fixed before you can get on with your life.
Become a committed ex-dieter. But give yourself some grace.
If dieting has been part of your life for years, you are not going to undo decades of diet mentality in a few weeks.
This is a journey.
There will be old rules you don’t even realise you’re following until they suddenly pop up. There will be moments when you panic because you’re eating something you once considered “forbidden.” There will be days when you want to run straight back to the safety of a meal plan.
That’s okay. You haven’t failed. You’re learning something completely different.
You’re learning to trust yourself with food.
And that is where the real work and the real freedom begins.
Next up: Principle 2, Honour Your Hunger.
If any of this feels familiar and you’re tired of fighting food, your first conversation with me is free. No pressure, no pitch, just 30 minutes over a virtual coffee. Book your free discovery call.
Sources
- Tribole, E. & Resch, E. (1995). Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach (subsequently revised and expanded). The framework consists of 10 principles. intuitiveeating.org
- Babbott, K.M., Cavadino, A., Brenton-Peters, J., Consedine, N.S. & Roberts, M. (2023). Outcomes of intuitive eating interventions: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Eating Disorders, 31(1), 33–63. PubMed
- Linardon, J., Tylka, T.L. & Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M. (2021). Intuitive eating and its psychological correlates: a meta-analysis of 97 studies, finding intuitive eating associated with lower eating pathology and body-image disturbance and with positive outcomes including self-esteem and wellbeing. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 54(7), 1073–1098. Wiley