About 25 years ago, dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch developed an entirely different approach to nutrition, one that they found worked long-term for their clients: intuitive eating. Whether or not people’s weight changed, this approach helped people heal from disordered eating, feel better, stop obsessing over food, and generally live happier and more well-adjusted lives. Research now supports that this approach not only improves mental health but also reduces the risk of chronic disease, regardless of weight changes.
What we’ll cover:
After almost four decades of working with clients on eating and movement habits, Tribole and Resch began to notice a pattern: diets would produce temporary weight loss, but most people would regain the weight—and often more—within a few years studies showed the same pattern. Even after billions of dollars funneled into research and the diet industry, nothing seemed to stick long-term. 95% of people restricting or manipulating food intake (even if it wasn’t called a “diet”) regained all of the weight back after a few years, and two-thirds of people regained even more weight than they had lost. This led to frustration, guilt, and a cycle of weight loss and regain known as weight cycling, which studies show is more harmful to health than maintaining a higher, stable weight. More troubling, weight cycling is linked to higher risks of chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and mental health issues. The constant societal pressure to conform to thin ideals has contributed to an epidemic of lifestyle-related diseases—ironically, in part due to our obsession with dieting.
So let’s start with what the diet cycle is. This is a pattern that we often see with people who go on and off diets – you may have experienced this yourself or seen people go through this. It can start for various reasons: maybe someone wants to lose weight for the summer or an event (like a wedding), or sometimes people go on a diet because they just got a diagnosis like diabetes or high blood pressure. Whatever the reason is, there is a desire to gain control over food, exercise, and the body; and to lose weight.
First, the person starts the diet and restricts their food intake. This could look like calorie counting and reducing the amount of calories eaten in a day. It could also look like cutting out or greatly reducing the intake of a food group – usually carbs or fat. This could also be when someone overexercises and they aren’t eating adequately to meet their physical needs
When someone restricts certain foods/food groups, they might be able to sustain that for a while, but eventually, the body feels deprived. When someone restricts or limits certain foods or limits food intake, the body thinks it’s going into starvation so it turns on survival mode. Survival mode sets off several responses in our bodies:
These intense cravings will often cause people to ‘break the diet’ and eat foods that were off-limits while they were on the diet. This is what a lot of my clients call the ‘F-it’ moment: “I’ve already messed up the diet, so I might as well just eat everything I want, including everything I have been depriving myself of.” This often makes people feel ashamed and guilty. They feel like their eating has gotten out of control, which leads us to the beginning of the diet cycle.
Imagine two children in the same household with different body sizes. Raised by the same parents, in the same environment, one child may be in a larger body while the other is thinner. The prevailing narrative tells the larger child to restrict food and lose weight to resemble their thinner sibling.
What messages is that child getting? You and your body are not to be trusted. You are not worthy. You must change. Your sibling has “willpower” and you do not. This can lead to that child sneaking food, binge eating, restrictive eating, and ultimately a lifelong struggle with weight and self-worth. For a child whose genetics predispose them to being in a larger body, we are telling them to fight their genes and their body. Ultimately, this leads to weight cycling, a dysregulated metabolism, and long-term weight gain.
We have equated weight to health, but we are missing so much of the picture. Research shows that lifestyle – physical activity levels, eating patterns, sleep, and stress management – are much greater indicators of health status than body size. 30% of people in “normal weight” bodies are, in fact, in the highest risk category for chronic disease. People in the “overweight” category have the lowest mortality rates than any other group. It’s time that we stopped idealizing a particular body size and making assumptions about people’s behaviors based on their bodies. Instead, we must shift to a more holistic view, considering genetics, history, and individual needs.
Think about the times when you have been told that a food is “off-limits” or that you can only have a certain amount or only eat it on special occasions. What does your relationship to that food become? When we restrict certain food types or amounts, we trigger an innate response left over from our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
When we can’t have certain foods or enough food, our body thinks it is in a time of scarcity and is at risk of starvation. As a result, it will start seeking out and fixating on high calorie food to stock up for survival until there is regular access to food again. This is the scarcity mindset. Our metabolism slows and we reach a state of primal hunger.
For a while, restrictive eating might appear to be working. However, we reach a breaking point, and we fall into feeling totally out of control around food. We think about food constantly and end up binging.
This has nothing to do with willpower – it is simply a biological survival mechanism. In time, it becomes more and more powerful and leads us to breaking our diets or restriction, blaming ourselves for “failing,” gaining weight, and feeling like it’s harder than ever before to “control” our eating.
Enter intuitive eating, the antidote to the scarcity mindset. Intuitive eating encompasses 10 principles that ultimately help us develop a healthier relationship with food and our bodies. At its core, intuitive eating is about listening to our body’s natural cues for hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. By ditching restrictive diets and reintroducing forbidden foods, we remove the psychological power they hold over us. Over time, those once-tempting foods lose their appeal.
We were all born intuitive eaters. Babies instinctively know when they’re hungry and when they’ve had enough. But over time, societal pressures and diet culture condition us to ignore those internal signals in favor of external rules. Intuitive eating teaches us to trust our bodies again. It also helps to understand a bit of nutrition so that we can learn how to build satisfying and nourishing meals and snacks. This is why it can be really helpful to work with an intuitive eating dietitian or pick up a copy of the latest edition of Intuitive Eating or the workbook (or better yet, both).
This is simply not true. At first, it might feel like you want to eat all the foods you previously restricted. But as your body adapts to the availability of these foods, the urgency to consume them diminishes.
When we practice intuitive eating, we are getting in closer touch with how different foods make us feel, and we build the desire to nourish ourselves with foods that make us feel good long term. This is also a process, as many of us are disconnected from how different foods make us feel, and it takes time to reconnect with our physical and emotional responses. Ultimately, intuitive eating doesn’t mean just following impulses or urges with no consideration for our well-being. It is a self-care practice, which means our goal is to feel better and trust ourselves more.
We like to think of intuitive eating as responding rather than reacting. In certain moments, you might have certain urges to just quit. However, we should make decisions for our long-term wellbeing rather than by reacting to the short-term emotion. We pay attention to how our decisions will affect us, will make us feel in the future, and decide what to do based on that, rather than based on our immediate reaction.
Intuitive eating is the same way. Sometimes, we feel anxious or stressed and so we eat comfort foods. At the same time, we pay attention to how different foods make our bodies feel. We work to give ourselves coping mechanisms besides food so that we can feel better long-term – talking to friends, going on walks, meditating, seeing a therapist. Eventually, we don’t often eat when we are not hungry or past the point of comfortability because we are making decisions based on what feels best in our body. We are following our intuition rather than our impulse.
To fully practice intuitive eating, it’s crucial to let go of the belief that your body needs to look a certain way to be worthy. When we embrace intuitive eating, our bodies may change—they may shrink, expand, or stay the same. The goal is not to manipulate your body into an ideal shape, but to learn to trust and care for it, no matter its size.
Edited on October 14, 2024
Get one-on-one support through our online nutrition counseling. Schedule a free Connection Call with us to see if we’re the right fit for you!
For more in-depth reading, check out our resources page.
This article was written and reviewed by Jasmine Hormati, MS, RD, CDN, a registered dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She specializes in eating disorder recovery, healing from chronic dieting, and body image work using a weight-inclusive and intuitive eating approach. Jasmine earned her Bachelors of Science in Conservation and Resource Studies form University of California, Berkeley and her Master of Science in Nutrition and Public Health from Teachers College, Columbia University.
My team and I here to help you reconnect to your inner wisdom and feel more confident in your here-and-now body. Eating doesn’t have to be complicated or restrictive.
We’ll support you through your intuitive eating journey so you can make peace with food, movement, and your body so you can show up in your life as your most authentic self.
For more lessons and words of encouragement, sign up for my nutrition newsletter!
mendinground nutrition sits on the traditional and unceded lands of the Lenape people, now called New York, New York. We honor the people who originally stewarded the land and are committed to creating a more equitable world.
Copyright 2024 Mendinground Nutrition