Rules around dieting can be confusing. Is fat good, or bad? Are carbs? Youll find some people promoting diets only as a way to discover if you have a food intolerance. Others advocate for dieting as a means to achieve some sort of mental clarity or tap into more energy to get through the workday. Still others say to avoid dieting altogether, cautioning that diets are often temporary fixes. You get results because youre cutting out things, as registered dietitian Wesley McWhorter has told GQ. But diets are dichotomous: We lose weight in the short-term and gain weight in the long-term.
Yet for all the seeming confusion over how to diet, or whether to go on a diet at all, American adults continue to try following one specific eating regimen or another. According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, about one-half of all adults in the U.S. try to lose weight every year.
But there is another way to go when it comes to changing up what youre eating in order to be, and feel, healthierone that doesnt require tapping into diet culture, constantly counting macros, measuring grams of protein, or checking your food against its score on the glycemic index. Its called intuitive eating.
Its OK To Be Hungry
As a term, intuitive eating comes from the title of a book published in 1995 by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Its most basic tenet is this: Eat when youre hungry, and stop when youre full. Following a diet can sometimes lead people to stop trusting their bodys natural cues. Intuitive eating is intended as a counterbalance to that feeling.
The goal is to break free from cycles of chronic binging and deprivation, as well as the emotional consequences of those behaviors, and heal your relationship with food, as Ali Francis, an editor at Bon Appetit, wrote earlier this year.
Predicated on following your bodys biological intuition, rather than focusing on militant adherence to a strict diet, the intuitive approach is meant more as a long-term solution to how you eat, and why, instead of a regimen whose end goal is weight loss. And it seems to be on the rise among younger people: A survey from 2019 published by the nonprofit International Food Information Council showed that 49% of 18-to-34-year-olds already knew about intuitive eating.
Forget the Rules
All intuitive eating begins with a set of 10 principles, starting with Reject the Diet Mentality. At first glance these seem like the typical rules one might expect from a certain diet, although Tribole and Resch maintain these principles should be viewed more as general guidelines. The point is for people to read through them and pick out a few principles that might help them the most.
Its no surprise that the very first guideline counsels you to reject diet culture. Undoubtedly youve seen or heard foods labeled as either good for you or bad for you. (Of course, no one who practices intuitive eating is saying go load up a shopping cart full of processed foods.) Intuitive eating looks to flip the script. Diet culture might tell you a slice of pizza is only allowed on a cheat day; eating intuitively means that a slice of pizza isnt a cheat or a failure. There is some research out there, including one paper from 2015 that Francis cited, demonstrating that intuitive eating leads to lower psychological distress among people who try it out instead of going on a diet.
Should You Try It?
Other data that out there seems to show that eating this way can also lead to lower body mass index, as well as weight maintenance and possibly improved physical health indicators other than BMI, including improved blood pressure and eating behaviors. Still, research on intuitive eatings overall benefits compared to various diets is pending.
And, no doubt, for people with certain medical conditions, eating more strictly might be the way you have to go. For example, for those with diabetes, checking foods against the glycemic index can help keep your blood sugar under control.
But the other guidelines of intuitive eating that are included ought to sound familiar to readers of this columnand, indeed, come across as good, general ways to approach your meals. The second guideline tells you to honor your hunger: Eat when youre hungry, and eat until youre sated; by doing so, youll eat much more conscientiously and wont feel the need to binge. As Tribole and Resch write: Its what you eat consistently over time that matters.
Read more:
Intuitive Eating Is Not a Dietand Here's How to Do It - GQ
