What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive Eating is a proven and well-researched self-care eating approach and framework that helps you to gently retune with yourself and become the expert of your own body, food and movement.
Drawing on both bodily wisdom and science, Intuitive Eating enables you to learn to trust your ability to meet your needs for nourishment, develop confidence in your body, and improve your emotional wellbeing.
However, it isn’t a destination as such - it is a dynamic process and a life-long practice.
WHY EAT INTUITIVELY?
I believe that everyone can benefit in some way from taking an intuitive approach to their eating habits. However, for the many clients I see struggling with a complex or difficult relationship with food, working with Intuitive Eating is an essential component of their journey back to a more peaceful and connected way of eating.
As well as promoting a healthier relationship with food, supporting a healthier psychological attitude, and being protective against eating disorders, Intuitive Eating has been shown to bring numerous physical health benefits including improving digestion and physiological markers of health like blood glucose control, cholesterol and blood pressure.
For those that are very weight-conscious, or have a history of dieting, learning to eat intuitively is about developing self-trust around food and prioritising your body’s health and your mental and emotional wellbeing over the single-minded pursuit of weight loss.
DIETS DON’T WORK
It may surprise you, but there is no scientific evidence that dieting works in the long-term (beyond five years) for anything other than a very small number of people.
Dietary regimes marketed by the weight-loss industry, and sometimes the wellness industry, typically provide impersonal nutritional advice based on ‘food rules’, macro/calorie counting/points systems, and unnecessary food restriction. Followers can sometimes make a short term impact on body fat reduction, but the trade-off can be costly.
Following diet plans undermines a person’s innate ability to listen and respond to their body’s own natural hunger and fullness signals. And when they start disconnecting from their own food-body intuition it can make them feel like they can’t trust themselves around food - which keeps them believing they ‘just need to stick to a plan’.
It is now widely recognised that serial dieting can set the scene for a feast-famine mentality, binge eating, and it may impair the metabolism and lead to rebound weight-gain. Dieting, or restrictive eating, is also recognised as a potential catalyst for eating disorders.
What EXACTLY IS Intuitive Eating
Intuitive Eating is an empowering long-term move away from following diets and the narrow pursuit of weight-control. Instead of dependence on external ‘rules’, it’s about learning to eat mindfully, flexibly and in accordance with your body’s natural appetite and physiological cues. Essentially, it’s the opposite of dieting.
But Intuitive Eating is not just a philosophy, it is a distinct science-backed methodology and set of clinical tools devised in 1995 by two dieticians in the US. It teaches you that you, and only you, are the best person to make choices about what you eat. And it also helps you tend to your broader self-care, including finding joy in physical activity.
Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch who developed the approach have laid-out the ten basic principles, below:
Intuitive Eating is rapidly gaining popularity as evidence mounts for its physical and mental health benefits, and as society is starting to acknowledge that dieting is unsustainable, rarely leading to the results promised, and that diet culture is more harmful than healthful.
Are you an Intuitive Eater?
BODY NEUTRALITY
Hand-in-hand with Intuitive Eating comes the concept of body neutrality which is the practice of cultivating a peaceful acceptance and respect for your body how it is today.
As diet culture is ubiquitous this is relevant to everyone, but is particularly important if you struggle with body dissatisfaction and a long-term battle with your body has already lead you down the path of dieting and unsustainable exercise regimes.
INTUITIVE EATING COACHING
AT GUT REACTION
A Certified Intuitive Eating Counsellor, my own philosophy and approach is greatly informed by Intuitive Eating and the latest in body image research, which is integrated into my work with clients to varying degrees, informed by the individual client’s need.
Intuitive Eating coaching pairs really well with my collaborative and non-judgemental approach to nutrition that aims to help clients make informed choices that feel nourishing and sustainable while respecting their body’s unique needs and preferences, promoting health alongside satisfaction and taste, encouraging dietary variety and achieving a healthy balance over time.
I want my clients to not only gain nutritional knowledge - I want them to learn how to be more attuned to their body’s needs, know how to trust themselves around food, and feel confident that they can meet their own needs for nourishment.
Ready to reduce stress around food, reset your eating habits, and reclaim your vitality?
My Food and Body Confidence Programmes are based on Intuitive Eating:
What about weight?
As an Intuitive Eating Counsellor I won’t sell you a promise of weight loss (I will leave that to the diet industry), but I do believe that through the practice of Intuitive Eating you can create the right environment for you and your body to thrive in the long-run, and as a side-effect discover the natural healthy weight range for you.
In the health and wellness world, nutrition support is typically delivered from a weight-centred model based on the premise that body weight is a (if not, the) key indicator of health. However, evidence is surfacing that the importance of weight in health has been overemphasised in our medical systems. And the weight-centred approach which relies on prescriptive diet rules and restriction does not improve health for the majority of individuals across the weight continuum. And, as you’ve just read, may cause more physical and emotional harm to individuals in the long term.
In contrast, at Gut Reaction you receive holistic, weight-neutral support which means we don’t use body weight as the focal point of nutritional therapy or coaching. Instead, we may work with non–weight-based markers of health and wellbeing, such as improving gut health, balancing blood sugar levels, enhancing energy, supporting mental clarity, and fostering emotional regulation. These markers are indicators of overall wellbeing and long-term vitality, rather than relying on weight as a measure of success.
This doesn’t mean you won’t lose weight following this approach - some people do as they improve their relationship with food and their body finds its natural balance. But the difference is that weight loss is a side-effect, not the purpose.