Are rigid diet rules and guilt around “good” and “bad” foods stressing you out? If you’re sick of dieting, diet culture, and your own too-harsh judgments about your body and eating habits, intuitive eating might be the solution.
The diet industry is a lot like the fashion industry. Today, you’re chic if you have a side part and high-waisted skinny jeans. Tomorrow, you’re only cool if you’re center-parting and donning boyfriend jeans.
“One minute, [we] are being sold to believe juice cleanses are the way to go, and the next, we're surrounded by a culture that demonizes carbohydrates at all costs,” Sara Kashlan, RDN, a certified eating disorders registered dietitian in Los Angeles, tells DailyOM. “It’s a trend or the ‘flavor of the month’ that will fizzle out and be replaced with yet another diet disguised as a ‘lifestyle change.’”
All of the restrictions are impossible to stick with, which means we slip up, gain back any weight we lost, and declare, “I’m a failure.” As a result, dieting can be one of the worst things for our mental and physical well-being, Kashlan adds.
“The diet industry is profiting off of people’s body image insecurities,” she says. “We are expected to have teeny-tiny waists, curves in all the ‘right’ spots, while being free from cellulite or stretch marks — all unrealistic goals given that not all bodies are created equally.”
Changing the Focus by Eating Intuitively
“The reality is that diets are designed to fail, so consumers keep coming back,” Kashlan says, and they keep spending more on diet books, special foods, detox plans, supplements, or other products. (The diet industry has grown to be worth $58 billion, per March 2022 estimates included in The U.S. Weight Loss Market: 2022 Status Report & Forecast.) “Diets are marketed as quick fixes, which is what draws people toward them in the first place,” says Kashlan, but eating in a way that’s best for your body isn’t a quick fix.
Proponents of intuitive eating — billed as the anti-diet — believe it’s a happier, healthier way to eat (and live). In case you missed it, here’s a complete primer on intuitive eating, a way of eating that approaches nutrition from a place of self-care as opposed to restrictive rules. Nothing is off limits; instead, you fill up on what and how much your body is asking you for at this moment by tuning in to your body’s signals.
So, wait, is intuitive eating a diet? Nope, and that’s exactly what makes it so good for your brain and body, according to many dietitians. Ahead, discover the differences between intuitive eating and dieting, and why you might want to give intuitive eating a try — especially if you’ve been riding the diet roller coaster.
Intuitive eating teaches you how to focus on the internal signals and tap into your intuition to make decisions while rejecting the external diet messaging that can disrupt our connections with our bodies.
Why Typical “Diets” Can Be Harmful
Dieting has many definitions, depending on whom you ask, but if it’s Kara Lydon, RD, LDN, a Boston-based registered dietitian nutritionist, certified intuitive eating counselor, and owner of Kara Lydon Nutrition, a diet is anything that involves “micromanaging your food intake in an effort to shrink your body. This robs people of their time, energy, and money,” she tells DailyOM.
Kashlan explains, “While weight loss might indeed happen initially when dieting, studies show that most people gain the weight back over time and [this] can worsen how someone perceives their body.” Lydon agrees that the majority of individuals who diet wind up gaining back the weight they initially lost and then some. This yo-yo pattern of losing weight and regaining it is referred to as “weight cycling,” which may increase morbidity and mortality and be worse for your health than staying at a higher weight — the scientific jury is still out.
Restrictive dieting is hard because, from an evolutionary standpoint, our bodies are designed to fight famine and starvation in an attempt to help keep us alive. Since our physiology can’t tell the difference between an actual famine and the trendy diet of the week, restrictions on calories (whether through calorie counting or a plan that limits a wide range of food groups so you don’t eat as much) activates certain physiological mechanisms to help us survive. Lydon explains that when short on fuel, our bodies often react by:
- Increasing the hunger hormone, ghrelin, and decreasing the fullness hormone, leptin
- Releasing a chemical called neuropeptide Y, which makes you think about food (specifically carbohydrates)
- Conserving energy, which might manifest in losing your menstrual cycle, feeling cold all the time, and/or your body holding onto extra fat stores as a protective measure
- Triggering cravings and preoccupation with food
- Increasing risk for binging, eating disorders, osteoporosis, chronic stress, depression, and anxiety
- Decreasing self-esteem
The Mental Benefits of Intuitive Eating vs. Dieting
Instead of the hard-set rules and structure of a diet, “intuitive eating is based on several general principles which help guide you in listening to your body,” says Alissa Rumsey, RD, author of Unapologetic Eating and owner of Alissa Rumsey Nutrition and Wellness, a virtual nutrition counseling practice. These principles include honoring your hunger, making peace with all foods, and finding the pleasure in eating and feeling satisfied.
Intuitive eating is not a “quick fix” because people do not need “fixing,” Rumsey tells DailyOM. Our relationship with food is dynamic and changes over time due to both internal and external influences. Intuitive eating teaches you how to focus on the internal signals and tap into your intuition to make decisions while rejecting the external diet messaging that can disrupt our connections with our bodies.
As part of a January 2019 study in the journal Health Psychology Open, subjects shared their feelings about intuitive eating versus dieting. One admitted: “I always felt like food was an enemy, [intuitive eating] has normalized my view of food, which I have found really helpful. I don’t obsess over eating bad foods as much, which I think was my biggest problem.” Another added that leaning into intuitive eating practices is “kind of recovering something you’ve lost rather than learning something that’s new.”
Intuitive eating is a trait all humans are born with, Lydon says. As babies and toddlers, we didn’t weigh or measure our food or look around the table and compare how much and what we’re eating to those around us. Somewhere along the way, it became tempting to soak up the messages from diet culture and believe we should be following one program or another.
You can make another choice, though, says Courtney Vickery, RD, LD, a registered dietitian and certified intuitive eating counselor at Vickery Wellness in Athens, Georgia. “It takes time to truly unlearn all of the things diet culture has taught us, which is that everything is so black and white,” she says. “With intuitive eating, everything is very much 'gray.'”
The Physical Benefits of Intuitive Eating vs. Dieting
According to a May 2021 study in the journal Appetite involving males and females, intuitive eating was correlated with not only less engagement in dieting and binge eating and fewer unhealthy weight control behaviors, but also with lower weight at a five-year follow-up compared to non-intuitive eaters.
Although it might be easy to assume that since all foods — in whatever quantities satisfy — are “allowed” as part of an intuitive eating “diet,” that doesn’t mean intuitive eaters consume only brownies, bread, and cheese.
Women and men with the most intuitive eating practices consumed about half of an extra serving of fruit and vegetables per day compared to their less-intuitive peers, per a March 2021 study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
Instead of eating what you “should” based on external factors, like calories or your weight, intuitive eating offers the freedom to eat foods that are nourishing and satisfying for you. It can also help inspire you to move in a way that feels sustainable and enjoyable — not like punishment, but to tap into the joy of movement for its own sake.
How to Start Intuitive Eating if You Have a History with Dieting
For anyone who has suffered from diet culture, yo-yo dieting, or disordered eating (which is most of us, since 73 percent of women involved in a March 2019 American Heart Association study confirm that they have yo-yo dieted at least once and up to 20 times), intuitive eating can be life-changing. That doesn’t mean it is always easy.
“Before you dive into attempting to reconnect with your internal body cues, you must eat enough food to support your body,” Rumsey says. “If you’re not eating enough, then your hunger and fullness cues are not going to be reliable indicators of when, what, and how much your body needs.” This is especially true in people with anorexia and those with other eating disorders, but this is also often the case with chronic dieters.
Intuitive eating’s emphasis on letting go of diet rules and regaining a connection with food-related emotions and body cues can be a very valuable part of recovering from disordered eating or dieting. However, keep in mind that personalized counseling and medical care will be important parts of the recovery process, too, as will patience.
“I tell clients who are shifting from dieting to intuitive eating to give it time and take it slow,” Vickery says.
Watch for any all-or-nothing thoughts, Rumsey warns. For example, “Only eat when you’re hungry, and always stop when you’re full.” There may be times when you have to eat when you’re not really hungry, or times when you eat past the point of comfortable fullness — “and that’s okay!” Rumsey says. “It’s part of being human. If you notice any guilt or shame come up because you think you aren’t doing intuitive eating ‘perfectly,’ this can also be a sign that you might be trying to turn it into something more rigid.”
At the end of the day, intuitive eating is not a list of steps to be followed perfectly. Some days you might find certain parts of it helpful and other days you may not. The goal is to find a way of eating that is flexible and compassionate, works with you and your life, and helps you discover a sustainable method of eating without a side of guilt or shame.
The Bottom Line
Anyone who has hopped from diet to diet deserves to heal their relationship with food and their body, Vickery says, and to finally be free from disordered thoughts and behaviors around food. “From working with hundreds of clients on their intuitive eating journeys, [I see] it can really transform people’s lives,” Lydon says. “With no longer being under the reign of diet culture, and free from food preoccupation, people have access to more brain space and energy to engage in the things they truly love. When people start eating more intuitively, they start living more intuitively — trusting themselves to take up more space and go after what they want.”
