If you’re unfamiliar with my work, you might be expecting a “how to” guide on how to use intuitive eating for weight loss. If that’s the case, I’m glad you’re here! I might not be able to give you the answer you want, but I promise to give you the understanding you need.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is an evidence based, self-care framework of eating including 10 key principles. It combines emotions, intuition, and rational thought and was created in 1995 by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. It’s weight inclusive and validated by over 100 studies and counting(1).
Intuitive eating is distinguished against dieting by honoring cravings, hunger and fullness cues, and having unconditional permission to eat.
Read more about intuitive eating on my blog.
Intuitive Eating for Weight Loss
Right off the bat, the phrase “intuitive eating for weight loss” is an oxymoron. Here’s why:
Intuitive eating is defined as a framework of eating based on how you feel, or interoceptive awareness. Interoceptive awareness is the ability to notice the physical sensations that arise in the body. This includes hunger and fullness cues, and even emotions which have a physical sensation. The overarching intention of intuitive eating is to connect with your body and respect it.
Now consider weight loss and dieting efforts. When dieting, you ignore physical sensations and restrict for the sole purpose of making your body smaller. Dieting encourages you to ignore hunger, avoid cravings, and exchange interoceptive awareness for external rules. Dieting takes you further away from connection with your body.
You can’t intentionally restrict your food intake AND listen to your body and respect its cues. It’s one or the other.
Intentional vs Unintentional Weight Loss
Sometimes, the intuitive eating message is misinterpreted as an anti-weight loss message, and that’s not really true.
Intuitive eating dietitians aren’t anti-weight loss, we oppose intentional weight loss. This means making weight loss a goal, or even the sole focus, of behavior change. We oppose this because intentional weight loss is unsustainable, not health promoting, and takes you further out of connection with your body.
Unintentional weight loss might occur through intuitive eating if your starting weight is above your set point weight. This could be due to previous dieting efforts, emotional eating, or simply eating more than your body needs.
If weight loss occurs through intuitive eating it’s because you’ve removed the blocks that prevented you from listening to your body.
“But I have to lose weight for health reasons”
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t HAVE to lose weight to improve your health. Weight doesn’t actually have anything to do with health.
Let’s say you go to a doctor’s appointment and they say, “you need to lose weight. I recommend diet and exercise.” Right there we’re identifying that weight itself is not a behavior. Weight isn’t just magically lost, it requires behavior change (but weight is more complicated than that).
Now here’s what they fail to mention: you can improve your health by improving health promoting behaviors, no matter what happens to your weight. If you improve behaviors surrounding nutrition, exercise, hydration, sleep, and stress, your health with improve. Your weight might change, or it might not! But that doesn’t define your health.
What To Do Next
The essences and definitions of intuitive eating and weight loss are completely contradictory and cannot be applied together. So, what do you do instead?
If a client comes to me and says they want to lose weight, I simply ask them “why?”
They might tell me they want to lose weight for health reasons, which means we don’t have to pursue weight loss at all.
If the weight loss goal is for aesthetic reasons, then we talk about body image and I ask if they’re willing to focus on how they feel versus how they look throughout our work together.
This is the moment that I ask you- what brought you to this article? Why do you want to lose weight? What do you think is waiting for you on the other side of weight loss? What would a smaller body bring you?
If you think an anti-diet approach might be right for you, consider working with a registered dietitian! We can help you heal your relationship with food and improve your health promoting behaviors. Get started here, we’ll check your insurance benefits for nutrition coverage.
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About The Author
Chelsea Shafer, RD, LD, RYT graduated from Purdue University in 2020 and completed the Wellness Workdays Dietetic Internship in 2022 where she specialized in sports nutrition and entrepreneurship. Chelsea is a proud Registered Dietitian who has helped over 300 clients live healthier, happier lives and accept their bodies. Currently, Chelsea is pursuing blogging, working as a registered dietitian at Happy Strong Healthy and teaching yoga at a local studio in Atlantic Beach, Florida.
