The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

1. Reject the diet mentality.
   • Health and weight loss are not synonymous. Diets lead to weight cycling, decreased metabolism, and are not making us healthier, despite what diet culture would have us believe. Diets fail; people do not.
2. Honor your hunger.
   • Keep your body adequately fed. Do not allow yourself to enter into excessive hunger by restrictive practices. Listen to your body’s signals.
3. Make peace with food.
   • Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. Don’t feel guilt over what you eat.
4. Challenge the food police
   • Don’t get into the habit of calling certain foods “good” or “bad” or having some intrinsic moral value.
5. Discover the satisfaction factor
   • Understand how to take pleasure and meaning from the eating experience itself. Savor.
6. Feel your fullness
   • Listen for your body signals, which will tell you when you are full, what your current hunger level is. Learn your body’s satiety signals.
7. Cope with your emotions with kindness
   • Offer yourself self-love and compassion. Food won’t fix your feelings, but offers comfort in the short term.
8. Respect your body
   • Don’t try to contort yourself into an image you are not genetically made for. Your body was made for you and it deserves dignity.
9. Movement – Feel the difference
   • Focus on how it feels just to move your body just for movement’s sake, rather than the calorie-burning effect on exercise. Focus on how working out makes you feel, rather than the weight loss desire.
10. Honor your health with gentle nutrition
    • Make food choices that taste good and make you feel good. You don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy. Progress, not perfection.

references

1. Tribole, Evelyn. Intuitive Eating, 4th Edition: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach. St. Martin's Press, 2020.