The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating, Explained

This guide to the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating (IE) is your starting point if you’re done with diets. Learn about each of the intuitive eating principles, plus practical tips to take the first step towards a better relationship with food.

We live in a diet-obsessed world. When it seems like everyone is chasing weight loss through risky, unsustainable fad diets, it seems completely counterintuitive to ditch the food rules. Some consider an anti-diet approach to be revolutionary…or even unhealthy.

Is it really ok to eat donuts and ice cream whenever you want?

What if I told you that you could break free from the burdensome dieting mindset and not only achieve a healthier relationship with food but liberate yourself from the destructive diet-induced yo-yo cycle…and actually BE healthier, mentally and physically?

The good news is that I’m not making false claims or promises here. As a registered dietitian who has been on her own intuitive eating journey, I’m so glad to have found this alternative to dieting and even more excited to share it with you. 

In this blog post, I’ll take you on a tour of the ten principles of Intuitive Eating as well as provide you with some helpful resources to keep your journey moving. 

What is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive Eating is not a diet plan— there’s no need to weigh, measure, count calories, or track macronutrients. Instead, it provides a framework that fosters a harmonious approach to eating which nourishes both your body and your mind.

The original Intuitive Eating book was published in the 1990s, written by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Although the first edition referenced weight loss, it was never positioned as a diet and instead offered a stark contrast to the other trendy, restrictive diets of the day.

Becoming an intuitive eater takes time and practice to unlearn all of the diet-y practices that we have that currently seem like second nature. And ironically, it probably won’t feel “intuitive” at the beginning. 

But I can tell you this: once you get comfortable with this new, non-diet way of eating, your life may just feel happier and more abundant. This blog post is a great overview of what Intuitive Eating is (and isn’t), but I’ll also suggest checking out my round-up of books that will offer more depth to your understanding of Intuitive Eating: Best Anti-Diet Books for a Better Relationship with Food.

Intuitive Eating – which can be abbreviated IE – is based on ten principles that work together to help you have a constructive relationship with food, your body, and with eating, and is actually healthier than following restrictive diet plans (even those that claim to be a “lifestyle” and not a diet).

Let’s begin with principle 1, reject diet mentality. 

#1: Reject the Diet Mentality

The premise of intuitive eating is straightforward; it starts with rejecting the diet mentality. 

This means throwing out diet culture’s dogma, those one-size-fits-all meal plans, and a reliance on external cues to dictate what and when we eat. Ditch the scale, delete the calorie-counting or macro tracking apps, and unfollow the toxic social media accounts that propagate diet culture.

Diet culture is more than the act of dieting; it’s a mindset that categorizes food as “good” and “bad” and infuses guilt and worth with the foods we consume. This approach gives certain foods power that they inherently do not possess. And it places a disproportionate focus on body size as a marker for health, implying weight loss is the key to achieving and maintaining good health.

Shifting away from the dieting mentality is the initial step toward unpacking and repurposing your relationship with food. 

This begs the question: What if you’re not using points or an app to guide what you eat and when? That’s where the rest of the IE principles come into play. While you don’t need to move through them in order, or check them off your to-do list, it’s important to start with this first principle before gradually turning your focus to the others.

Let’s move on to principle #2, honoring your hunger. 

#2: Honor Your Hunger

Did you know that restrictive dieting is a predictor of weight gain, not weight loss? What we understand so much better than ever before is that trying to hijack your own body’s hunger and fullness cues is NOT a recipe for sustainable weight loss.

Principle two is all about tuning into your body’s cues. When physical hunger strikes, it’s a signal from your body that it requires nourishment. From food, as energy and nutrition. Not a glass of water or a walk to distract yourself or ignore your body cues. 

Diets sabotage our ability to listen to our body; they tell us that we are supposed to follow arbitrary food rules instead of listening to what our own body actually needs. If you feel like you haven’t felt true hunger, or aren’t sure what hunger feels like in your body, that’s OK! You’re not alone, and it can take time to reconnect with the way your body tries to communicate with you.

Check out this post for more details about how to know when you’re hungry: How Do I Know If I’m Hungry? Hunger Fullness Scale for Intuitive Eating

Ignoring your internal cues can lead to excessive hunger, which often triggers your body’s survival mechanism, leading to overeating and potentially choosing foods that might not satisfy our long-term needs.

The goal of honoring your hunger is to become attuned to your internal signals and to structure your eating patterns around them. Eating regularly and adequately is not just pivotal for physical health; it’s also important for mental well-being and to dispel the fear of scarcity that many diets impart.

This means that it is actually healthy (and 100% okay) to eat any and all foods. This brings us to principle #3: make peace with food. 

#3: Make Peace with Food

Perhaps the most liberating principle of intuitive eating is making peace with food. IE Principle #3 is also known as the “unconditional permission to eat” principle.

It’s about letting go of any food rules we may have accumulated over time and giving yourself permission to enjoy all types of foods. When you banish the word “diet” from your vocabulary, the power you might have given to particular foods disappears.

There are no “good” or “bad” foods in intuitive eating; only the recognition that all foods serve a purpose and that all foods can be part of a balanced eating pattern. By granting yourself this freedom, you remove the allure of “forbidden” foods and reduce the likelihood of binging or overindulging when they’re around.

This might just be the most misunderstood principle of Intuitive Eating: all foods are allowed.

Which means the donuts and ice cream mentioned earlier are morally neutral, as are fresh fruits and vegetables, or a balanced meal with whole grains and lean protein. Yes, they are nutritionally different (we’ll talk more about nutrition in a bit) but eating the former doesn’t make you a “bad” person just like eating the latter won’t make you a “good” person.

For your dietitian-stamped permission slip to eat the foods that you enjoy – all of them – bookmark this post for later: Is It OK to Eat Comfort Food? Yes, It Is, And You Probably Should.

#4: Challenge the Food Police

Have you ever found yourself feeling guilty or judging your worth based on something you ate or wanted to eat? This principle encourages you to challenge and ultimately silence the internal “Food Police.” Those negative thoughts you may have about certain foods are a result of diet culture’s influence and do not serve your best interests. 

Intuitive Eating helps you cultivate self-compassion and kindness towards yourself and the food choices you make.

Do you have certain foods that you don’t keep in the house for fear of overeating or simply not feeling in control around them? What is likely happening is that you have a rule or restriction around them…and that rule makes them so much more appealing than if they were an always-available option. As you make peace with food and reject the arbitrary rules that diet culture says about certain foods, the food police won’t have such a grip on your viewpoints of food.

This takes practice to relearn, but it is work that is worth doing. 

#5: Discover the Satisfaction Factor

This is probably my favorite intuitive eating principle. I’m always so excited to finally start talking about taste preferences and how satisfying food can be!

Food is more than just fuel for our bodies; it is more than the calories and nutrients in each bite and in each meal. Food can also be a source of pleasure, connection, and satisfaction if you let it. 

Diet culture often teaches us to ignore these aspects of eating in favor of rigid rules and restrictions. Intuitive Eating encourages you to reconnect with the joy of eating by discovering what truly brings you satisfaction and pleasure.

This principle teaches us that it is 100% okay to enjoy our favorite foods. But it also teaches us that we don’t need to force ourselves to eat anything we don’t enjoy. Likewise, we don’t have to eat out of obligation. Which can be especially tricky as you try to establish (or re-establish) boundaries with family, friends, or people at work.

This principle teaches us to explore our personal taste preferences and hone in on exactly what is most satisfying to us. Here’s an easy example: what do you reach for when you’re craving something sweet? Something chocolatey, or caramel-y and candy-like? What about cooking method, serving temperature, and cuisine style? Do you like it when your food is all mixed together, or separated so you can enjoy unique aspects on their own?

 The point is, by honoring our unique preferences and tastes, we can find a balance between nourishment and enjoyment in our eating habits more often. We also relinquish the pressure to eat “perfectly” all the time, along with other unrealistic expectations.

#6: Feel Your Fullness

Just as it’s essential to listen to your body’s hunger signals (IE Principle #2), it’s just as important to pay attention to when you feel full. This principle focuses on becoming aware of your body’s cues for fullness and learning to stop eating when you’re satisfied.

Often, we eat past the point of feeling full due to external factors such as social pressure or the idea that we must finish everything on our plates. Perhaps you were distracted, eating very quickly, or wanted to numb out or avoid another feeling. Or, when we have been ignoring our hunger cues, when we do finally allow ourselves to eat, we are so hangry and ravenous that it’s impossible to listen to our stomach’s cues that we’ve had enough. 

Does this rollercoaster of restricting and then overeating and feeling heaps of guilt sound familiar? It isn’t an issue about your own willpower; the urge to eat past comfortable fullness will gradually decline as you offer your body enough fuel. 

#7: Cope with Your Emotions

Food can easily be used as a coping mechanism for uncomfortable, negative feelings, leading to emotional eating. Food can offer a place that feels safe, predictable, or at the very least, it’s something we can control. But just like drinking alcohol, doom scrolling on social media, or other maladaptive coping mechanisms, it doesn’t get at the root of the emotion or serve you well in the long run. 

This principle acknowledges the relationship between food and emotions and encourages you to expand your toolbox for dealing with these feelings instead of only turning to food. To be clear; it is always okay to eat for comfort. It’s called “comfort food” for a reason! But this principle encourages you to find additional ways to deal with and work through big feelings vs. only numbing them with food.

This might look like going to therapy, journaling, having better boundaries, calling a close friend, having a movement routine that feels good, and so on. Your mental health matters as much as your physical health, so this principle pays homage to that by making sure you have other coping tools in your proverbial toolbox. 

#8: Respect Your Body

This principle of Intuitive Eating is also one that gets misunderstood. The name of the principle is to respect your body…but that doesn’t mean you have to love and admire your body 24/7. 

Intuitive Eating focuses on body respect, not body acceptance or body positivity. This principle encourages individuals to appreciate their bodies for what they can DO rather than how they look. By rejecting unrealistic body standards and embracing all body shapes and sizes, we can cultivate a positive body image and improve our overall well-being.

This could manifest as a gratitude practice. Or, shifting your wardrobe to clothing that is comfortable to war and fits your right-here, right-now body.

This principle also makes room for respecting your health, medically speaking…something deeply intertwined with your body and how you inhabit it. I spend a lot of time on this principle when I work with folks with a chronic disease, injury or disability, or any health conditions that impact their nutrition needs.

Contrary to the myths, IE does give consideration to health and nutrition. But as you can probably tell by now, that’s not only thing that matters in this approach to eating.

#9: Movement – Feel the Difference

Intuitive eating also emphasizes movement, not exercise. The difference boils down to why you’re doing the activity in the first place. 

As a former college athlete, I must admit this principle is one that I really struggled to figure out for a long time. My “why” was because I had to!  If you’re in the same boat, or have used exercise to “earn” your right to eat in the past, it might take you a while to find your version of joyful movement, too. 

When you use the intuitive eating approach, the focus is on finding enjoyable ways to move your body rather than punishing it with intense workouts. By shifting the focus from weight loss and burning calories to feeling good and taking care of your body, you can create a healthier relationship with physical activity. You can even discover (or rediscover!) new forms of movement you might not have even considered in your dieting days. Joyful movement can be so much more than slogging away on a treadmill or spending hours inside a gym.

My relationship with movement has evolved over the years. In the past, working out felt like a dreaded chore, or something I had to force into my schedule. These days, it’s much more relaxed even though I make it a priority in my routine. I like finding local trails to prep for upcoming camping trips, weight lifting sessions to feel strong and empowered, or running outside when the weather is especially lovely. And I recently started rowing for a lower-impact workout that’s more gentle on my joints (check out this recent reel for a sneaky-peak into my garage gym). 

Is this giving you any ideas about how you might redefine your relationship with movement?

#10: Honor Your Health – Gentle Nutrition

The final principle of intuitive eating is honoring your health through gentle nutrition. 

Yes, finally! We’ve made it to the part where we talk about nutrition. As the last principle, this one gets overlooked as people assume IE discounts or discredits the role of nutrition.

Gentle nutrition means making food choices that honor both your physical and mental well-being without the restriction or rigidity of a diet. This IE principle acknowledges that our bodies need carbs, protein, fat, fiber, all of the vitamins and minerals, and water, but it also acknowledges that there are so many ways to meet your body’s needs. 

Gentle nutrition is the last step because for many people with a long history of restriction and dieting, we have to unlearn the rules that kept us in the cycle of dieting. If you don’t take the time to patiently work through some of the other IE principles first, it can be a slippery slope back into dieting behaviors or old habits of restriction and binge eating. With a fresh perspective, we are able to consider the why behind our decisions more clearly. 

Intuitive eating encourages everyone to focus on nourishing their bodies with nutritious foods while also allowing for flexibility and balance. By prioritizing overall health rather than weight, body shape, or appearance, we can form a more sustainable and positive relationship with food.

Is Intuitive Eating the same thing as mindful eating?

No, they’re not the same thing. 

Mindful eating is a practice that taps into all your senses, consciously eating in a more present, less distracted state. It’s basically the opposite of eating at your desk, in the car, or in front of the TV while you’re multitasking with a million other things. 

It’s fair to say that IE includes some aspects of mindful eating, but they are not interchangeable. Partly because many diets, including those for weight loss, also include aspects of mindful eating or use it as a sneaky way to encourage restriction. 

For more info about IE vs. Mindful Eating, check out this post: Is Intuitive Eating the Same As Mindful Eating?

Is Intuitive Eating for everyone?

In this dietitian’s opinion, Intuitive Eating can be for everyone. Perhaps that feels like a bold claim, but I explain my viewpoint here: Wondering if Intuitive Eating is for Everyone? Read 3 Reasons Why. 

And at the same time, IE isn’t for everyone. To be blunt, it takes a lot of privilege to be able to engage with the principles as they’re written. Think about how much free time or money it takes. Unfortunately, not everyone has those luxuries to invest in a more healed relationship with food.

This is one of the biggest criticisms I have about IE, and I’m not alone. Many anti-diet dietitians, especially dietitians of color, are very vocal about how this approach to eating isn’t inclusive enough. Keep this in mind as you’re learning about IE since many self-proclaimed “experts” in the topic fail to acknowledge this important point. 

I need help – where do I start?

It is incredibly brave to seek support for your health and wellness. It’s not easy to admit we can’t do it alone! We are in a culture that prioritizes thinness more than health, and sells the idea that if you just try hard enough or make the “right” choices, you’ll get there on your own. These messages are toxic and harmful, but it’s encouraging that more and more people are rejecting this narrow, limited definition of wellness.

For support and information about Intuitive Eating, here are my top three suggestions. 

Tip 1: Pick up a copy of the original Intuitive Eating book that started it all. The most recent 4th edition has the latest research, and updated language, and is a good starting point for a self-paced exploration of IE while you look for someone to work with. 

Tip 2: Decide if you’d rather work virtually or in person. In-person can be challenging if there are no providers in your area, but if you’re willing to work virtually you can learn who’s licensed in your state and may be able to bill your insurance. The database can be a starting point.

Tip 3: Just like any other provider, you’ll have to do some vetting. Don’t base it solely on branding, price, location, or how big their social media following is (or isn’t). If they offer a discovery call to see if it’s a good fit, take them up on that offer! It’s a good way to ask your questions before committing.

Closing Thoughts

Intuitive Eating is so much more than permission to eat “whatever you want, whenever you want”. It can be a critical step in rejecting diets, reclaiming your autonomy with food choices, and ultimately working towards a better relationship with food.

By implementing these principles, you can break free from diet culture’s harmful influence and create a healthy and balanced approach to eating that honors both your physical AND mental well-being. 

Remember, intuitive eating is a process. It takes time to unlearn and relearn our attitudes and beliefs toward food.

Keep these principles in mind as you continue on your intuitive eating journey, and remember to always listen to your body and honor its wisdom. Trust the process, yourself, and your body because you are the expert on what feels good for you and you are the best advocate for what you need. 

And most importantly, be kind and compassionate towards yourself throughout this process – you deserve it. Wishing you happy and fearless eating!  

PS: Are you and I friends on Instagram? Give me a follow for anti-diet tips, tricks and recipes that you’ll love…and the occasional kitty cameo.