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My journey towards intuitive eating started when a past therapist of mine suggested I may have OCD. A compulsion of mine has always been body-checking for sensations (especially nausea) and compulsively avoiding foods out of fear they’d make me sick or feel like they weren’t “healthy enough.” Like many people, I was taught that certain foods were “good” and some were “bad.” My OCD latched onto this, and it became an obsession to only eat “good” foods. This meant when I ate “bad” foods, I shamed myself.

I also have a chronic illness that led me down the path of working with a hormone coach. I believed my chronic illness stemmed from—and could be “cured” with—holistic practices and food eliminations. More things for my OCD to latch onto.

After a few months of intense food restrictions, disordered eating, and feeling much worse, my therapist suggested I stop working with this coach and instead, introduced me to the book, Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating. My life changed. 

 What Is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating is a practice where we honor, listen to, and trust our body to tell us what it needs. It is a practice of learning to notice our body's physical sensations and believe that we are the expert in our own needs, wants, and abilities. Some may mistake this practice as just another diet, but it’s inherently anti-diet.

Diet Culture Has Co-opted Intuitive Eating, But It’s Not a Diet at All

Many diets ask us to go against our natural body sensations and hyper-focus on goals, weight, and external validation. Intuitive eating asks us to trust our gut. Your body is telling you everything that you need to know about hunger—the problem is that so many of those cues have been overridden by these external sources of diet culture and unrealistic body standards. 

I fell out of the habit of intuitively eating over the last few months and decided to recommit to it for seven full days. After my experience with a hormone coach that ended up being fairly traumatic and made me second-guess my body’s sensations, I’ve been spending the last few years unlearning what diet culture says about food and how it demonizes certain foods, especially if you have a chronic illness.

I was told that all I needed to do was stop eating certain foods and my autoimmune disease would be cured. I was told I needed to exercise a certain way. I hated it and it didn’t feel good for my body, and I started to despise my body completely because I felt as if I could no longer trust what it was trying to tell me. So, I challenged myself to try to consciously practice intuitive eating for a week to get back to a healthier relationship with food and my body.

How Do I Intuitively Eat?

According to Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, authors of Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach, there are 10 principles of intuitive eating:

• Reject the Diet Mentality

• Honor Your Hunger

• Make Peace with Food

• Challenge the Food Police

• Discover the Satisfaction Factor

• Feel Your Fullness

• Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

• Respect Your Body

• Movement—Feel the Difference

• Honor Your Health—Gentle Nutrition

The root of these principles, more than anything, feels like radical self-compassion. So much about diet culture has taught us to be scared of our bodies, so much so that we can’t trust them. With my autoimmune disorder, I am constantly scared of my body and worried that it will flare up at any moment. When it comes to my OCD, I have to actively work so hard to disengage with thoughts about how food could be “bad” for me or make me feel sick. These are all narratives I’ve internalized from media and diet culture. Intuitive eating rebels against the systems that make us dislike our bodies or think that they are broken. My body is not broken, it just needs care, and intuitive eating is teaching me how to give it the care it asks for.

There Is No Such Thing As a Good or Bad Food

A common argument that I hear when I start talking about intuitive eating is that if they are “left to their own devices,” so to speak, they may eat nothing but junk food. First, intuitive eating tells us that there is nothing wrong with eating junk food—even the term “junk food” itself unnecessarily demonizes food. But secondly, eating intuitively will guide us towards the foods that make our bodies feel good and satisfied. Some days that may look like eating chips and candy guilt-free because they taste good and give us serotonin! On other days, that may look like eating fruits and vegetables because our bodies are telling us that they are craving different vitamins and minerals that aren’t found in other foods the same way. Our bodies like variety, and we can honor that through eating intuitively.

How Do I Start Practicing Intuitive Eating?

A lot of intuitive eating is about mindfulness. One of the best things I ever did to begin practicing the skill of listening to my body is to eat mindfully. This means that when I’m eating a meal, I’m not scrolling on my phone, watching television, or distracting myself in some other way; I allow myself to eat with nothing to divide my attention. Doing this allowed me to fully experience the food I was eating, notice what I enjoyed about it, chew more effectively (which also helps your digestive system), and notice when I was full. This mindful experience helped me listen to my body's natural cues.

The truth is, for some of us, certain foods can make us feel physically ill. For example, if you have celiac disease, you may notice that your body experiences a lot of pain and discomfort when you eat gluten. Eating intuitively means listening to that sensation and not eating the foods that make you experience discomfort and, instead, exploring other foods that make your body feel better. This doesn’t mean that we demonize gluten or say that it’s “bad” for us, it simply means that we shift the narrative to saying that there may be a food that our body may like better.

What If I Have a History of an Eating Disorder?

While I am not a registered dietitian or medical professional, I do have my own experiences with disordered eating, especially with my emetophobia. While I cannot give any individual advice, I have found that relying only on hunger cues and body sensations can be unreliable when you have a history of disordered eating. The good news is that we can turn to other principles of intuitive eating, such as movement, kindness, or satisfaction. Instead of focusing on hunger cues, turn to some of the other principles that may feel more accessible to you in your healing journey.

The Main Takeaways From Intuitive Eating

The thing about intuitive eating is that it allows for so much flexibility. There are no rules that you can break. We do not have to deprive ourselves of foods we love. There is no room for shame, and when we do feel shame, we invite self-compassion in. The bottom line is that many of us are unpracticed in learning to trust our bodies and listen to their cues. But with just a little bit of mindfulness and patience, we can tune into what our bodies have always known.

After a week of intuitive eating, I’m reminded that food doesn’t have to be a place of stress for me, but rather a place of play. It can be fun to figure out what my body likes, what feels exciting to cook, and how I can experience my food more intentionally. Intuitive eating reminds me that I do not need to exercise or change my body for anyone and that I am okay feeling neutral about my body. Above all, it reminds me that I can trust myself to care for myself—exactly how my body needs.