2024 - The 10 principles of intuitive eating

Because diets work little and get angry with our body, intuitive eating suggests a healthy relationship with food. At stake ? Good health, a healthy weight and boosted self-esteem!

Born in 1995 from the pen of two American nutritionists, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, intuitive eating has been the subject of a book that has already been edited three times, titled Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionnary Programm That Works, which can be translated into French as “Eat according to your intuition”. But what does that mean exactly?
Eat according to your intuition, it is quite simply to listen to your hunger, your body and its satiety, and to find a spontaneous behavior towards food, rather than complicated. With intuitive eating, we no longer count calories and pounds, we no longer ban certain foods on the pretext that they are too fatty or too sweet, but we rediscover the pleasure of eating according to his needs and desires.

Today, intuitive eating is gaining ground. Praised by many nutrition experts and adopted by many individuals, it appeals to all those who want to reconnect with their body and a healthy diet, without the fuss. In a society that keeps telling us what to eat and what not to eat (and it must be said that we have a hard time following), intuitive eating is therefore all good. In addition, unlike diets that work at the start – but especially deprivation – intuitive eating does not cause any damage. You eat your fill, when you want.

No risk of developing an adversarial relationship with your body or falling into eating disorders. However, for people with eating disorders, it is recommended to consult a nutritionist doctor and find a balanced diet before discovering intuitive eating, a principle which may, in a second step, allow the work to continue. .

The 10 principles of intuitive eating

To better understand intuitive eating (and get started!), Let’s go through the 10 principles established by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. These 10 principles tell you how to eat according to your intuition, not your emotions. Applied, they will help you regain self-confidence and feel much better in your body. They also encourage, on a daily basis, to change point of view and to look at one’s body as a precious ally for live better with yourself !

On the same subject

Quit diets

Nothing is more true: if the regimes are effective for a moment, it never lasts! The lost pounds are quickly regained, enough to flirt with a feeling of failure and discouragement. Intuitive eating is not a diet, it is rather a very natural way of life, which is based on listening to oneself and removes from one’s vocabulary and values the notions of control, restriction, calories and goals!

Honor your hunger … when you are hungry

When we want to lose weight and eat better, we tend to castigate our hunger, as if it were guilty. But no, lfeeling hungry is natural, a sign that our body is in good shape. Thus, in intuitive eating, when we are hungry, we welcome our hunger and we wonder what we want. It’s much more interesting than throwing yourself on a banana or an almond out of habit, or because it’s the snack of the moment. Intuitive eating does not offer recipes, it’s up to you to direct yourself to your desire by listening to your intuition.

Make peace with food

Often, we take food as a flu, as if it was responsible for all our ailments. Yet she wants us well. Intuitive eating invites us to consider all foods, absolutely all foods, as friends and sources of pleasure. To eat well, you have to eat everything a little and A little bit of everything. This is the food balance.

Stop classifying foods as “good” or “bad”

With time and our demands, we ended up labeling certain foods as “taboo foods”. However, our brain is well aware of this, and the more it feels the deprivation, the more it pushes us to throw ourselves on taboo foods and to belittle foods. healthy and delicious. The idea, with intuitive eating, is therefore to allow yourself to eat, and it is sometimes more difficult than to forbid yourself!

Respect satiety signals

In the same way that intuitive eating requires listening to your hunger, it offers to listen to your satiety. When you are no longer hungry, the body sends signals to the brain. In order for these signals to be as clear as possible, we take the time to eat and connect with our body and its sensations. Often times, meals on the go, or in front of the TV or laptop screen prevent us from hearing messages from our body, because our mind is absorbed in something else.

Rediscover the pleasure of eating

Intuitive eating is synonymous with pleasure. If we regain the pleasure of eating, then we feel good after the meal. This satisfaction, which is opposed to the guilt that we sometimes feel after having tasted a good dessert, allows us to reconcile ourselves with food in the long term, and therefore to approach the kitchen with serenity. The notion of pleasure is therefore essential, and making sure you take pleasure is a way of developing your intuition when it comes to eating.

Appease his emotional hunger

In the book, the two authors, Evelyn Trible and Elyse Resch, also explain that the emotional hunger often drives our diet. In other words, our emotions (sadness, stress, fear…) push us to take refuge in “cuddly” foods. Intuitive eating suggests really questioning your needs and looking for other avenues of appeasement – without necessarily excluding the trail of a comfort food, because the idea is not to be rigid. We can therefore ask ourselves: go for a walk, listen to music, take a bath, what do I want to do myself good?

Be kind to your body

The more you blame your body for being “too fat” or “too thin”, the more you “punish” it by eating anything and everything. Conversely, if we love his body, if we take care of it and if we trust it, then we enter a positive dimension. Being kind to your body helps you eat better and listen to your hunger, since at that point you are teaming up with your body.

To exercise

Intuitive eating advocates physical activity, but not to lose weight and burn three thousand calories per hour. Its objective is rather to practice sport to clear the mind and also to move your body and reconnect with him. Because this is an advantage of exercise: you feel good in your body, you connect to it, which then allows you to better listen to your hunger and satiety, and to eat mindfully.

Take care of your health

Intuitive Eating encourages you to take care of your overall health. This does not mean that you should eat just to take care of your health, but that this healthy view is more interesting than the “diet and weight loss” view. Indeed, if you eat to take care of yourself, to give your body the energy and pleasure it needs, you will feel in good shape and feel good about yourself, much more than counting calories… and failures!

The bibliography of intuitive eating

These different works brilliantly take up the different elements approached by Evelyn Tribole. Clear, uninhibited content dedicated to better understanding intuitive eating on a daily basis.