Intuitive Eating Counseling

What is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive Eating is a framework of 10 guiding principles created by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S, and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S, FAND. As dietitians, Evelyn and Elyse saw firsthand what the research supports: diets don’t work longterm. In fact, the traditional system of weights and measurements can further entrench disordered thoughts and behaviors around how you relate to food and your body. Seeing that these methods were causing harm, rather than helping, they created an evidence-based approach, based on decades of studies, to help their clients heal their relationships with food and their bodies.

In order to understand what Intuitive Eating is, you have to be clear on what it is not. If you spend a lot of time on social media, you’ve probably heard some misinformation about Intuitive Eating.

Intuitive Eating is not:

designed to be a method of weight loss.
the fuck-it-diet, where all self-care goes out the window and you eat nothing but sweets and cheeseburgers for the rest of your life.
simply eating whatever you want, whenever you want it.

Intuitive Eating is:

a way of relearning your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues. If you have been restricting or eating past the point of fullness (or alternating between the two) for months, years, or decades, your ability to “hear” your body telling you what it needs has been hindered, but this can be reversed.
a rediscovery of self-worth beyond numbers. You are so much more than a number on a scale, the calories in your lunch, the miles you’ve run, or the size of clothing you wear.
a way of standing up to, and quieting, the inner critic.
a method of learning to set healthy boundaries around outside influences on how you relate to food and your body.
learning to weave together physical and emotional self-care and looking after your health in a way that is not punitive, judgmental, or austere.

Is Intuitive Eating Right For You?

Intuitive Eating can help all kinds of people from all walks of life. Intuitive Eating may be right for you if:

You are graduating from an eating disorder program. You have reached your weight restoration goals (as decided by your mental health care and medical team), and you desire support in the ongoing improvement of your relationships with food and your body.
You have been in recovery from an ED for a significant amount of time, and now you’re ready to take your healing to the next level.
You don’t fit the criteria for an eating disorder, but you know, or suspect, that you engage in some disordered eating patterns or thought processes around food and your body.
You have a hard time feeling your hunger until it is “late stage,” and you are cranky, shaky, and miserable.
You have a hard time feeling your fullness until you are “stuffed,” and your stomach hurts.
Your inner critic has a lot to say about how you look in your clothes, what you choose to eat, or how much you choose to eat, and it’s harsh.
When you eat sweets or chips, you say that you’ve been “bad.”
You feel like you have to earn your food through exercise.
Your parents or caregivers put you on diets or restricted your access to food when you were a child.
You’ve been on lots of diets.
You have lost and regained weight many times.
You prefer to eat alone.
Sometimes you lie about what you have or haven’t eaten.
Sometimes you eat before going out for a meal with other people so they’ll think you’re eating less than you are.
You’re exhausted by the food noise in your head.
You think about food, eating, how you look, and your weight all day long. Those thoughts take up a lot of space, and you’d like to make room for other things.
You experienced food insecurity in the past, and it is impacting your relationship to food in the present.
You want to be kinder and gentler to yourself regarding food.
You struggle with perfectionism in other areas of your life.