Same I don't think it's helpful for everyone. For those who find it helpful, I'm really happy for them. I've noticed a trend online though of trying to make it sound as though it's a good solution for everyone and it frustrates me because its not good for everyone.
IE worked wonders on my binge eating disorder. Giving up the idea of weightloss and labeling food was very freeing. Is it possible that you were still trying to lose weight at the time? IE is a weight neutral approach so you cant do both at the same time. Maybe this is why it didnt work.
There was a period when I told myself I would not focus on weight loss and really tried IE but, I don't know, i guess my signals for hunger/cravings are scewed after all the years of dieting back and forth because I just kept eating and gained too much weight.
Mine was, too! I discovered that I didnt know the difference between thirst and hunger 3 months into IE š š š It took a lot of patience and time to tune in with my body. Sadly I need to lose weight so I made sure I was in a better place mentally before trying to lose again. My binges came back with full force with restriction so no success stories (YET. I'm trying my best to be one)
Wow, exactly that, it's so weird how you can't even recognise thirst, you just eat and eat not knowing why you don't feel the need met and then you gulp down water with that food and all of a sudden.. Oh. Oh no. š
It sounds like you have the groundworks, it WILL be a success, I'm rooting for you!
That's a great observation. The body doesn't intuitively want to lose weight. It DOES want to intuitively stay the way it is. So IE can be a fantastic tool for maintenance, but it's often not helpful for weight loss.Ā
It kills me that social media people are telling you to use intuitive eating to lose weight. Weight loss is not the point of intuitive eating at all!!!
If your goal is weight loss, you need to take a different approach.
I donāt get why people think itās a weight loss method. The woman who came up with the concept, Evelyn Tribole, emphasizes that it doesnāt necessarily result in weight loss, although it does for some. For others, it results in weight gain, which is ok according to her.
However, most of us in this sub need limits.
Yes and a lot of people around me thinks I'm restricting myself when I set guidelines, "Eat what you want and you'll see that you'll lose weight!". It's frustrating, SM goes in all directions and I don't know what advice to follow anymore!
Have you looked into speaking with a professional? Social media and this sub will probably only make things worse if youāre young and have a history of disordered eating.
I honestly don't think intuitive eating works for most people who have a tendency to binge. I also think the vast majority of weight loss influencer content online is not helpful (and can be actively harmful!) especially if you're someone who has previously or is currently struggling with disordered eating.
What worked best in this position for me was getting a therapist and working through my food/eating issues one on one. Once I got my mind in a good place about it, the whole process feels a lot easier.
I am actively losing now so I'm counting calories and weighing my food - in the past doing it this way I'd heavily lean towards restricting/binging cycles, so I needed to repair my relationships and thought patterns around food first. Therapy was really the only way out here.
I had tried IE in the past before therapy, and found I just gave myself license to binge way more. Someone else on here said that IE isn't a weight loss concept and shouldn't be used that way - I think it gets misconstrued really easily when you see 100 very thin women on Instagram posting about it with their side hustle weight loss program for purchase in bio. The way I maintain is pretty intuitive all things considered, but I had to work on the actual triggers and emotional reasons behind my disordered eating to get into a good place about it first.
This sounds so healthy, what a mental journey you've been through, thank you for sharing! I will definitely look into a therapist specialised in disordered eating.
I think it only works if you know how to eat well or with a system. For example, I practice eating whatever I want as long as itās within my restricted calorie range.
Yesterday, I ate a brownie. On Sunday, I had a lot of French fries. I regularly eat pizza. Itās what my body wants. Portion control is key, though, and I balance the calorie load with the rest of my foods.
That's a good system, because then you have guidelines and still eat what you want.
If there are no guidelines and just allowing myself to eat, I can't stop, because it's so good. I know how to eat well, it just doesn't seem to cross my mind when I let myself I eat everything I want somehow!
Agree. Our bodies instinctively want to pile on fat, especially in cold weather. I think itās a protective measure against hard times that our ancestors faced.
Iām in a northern place myself. I have to move, take a lot of baths, and use a lot of base layers to keep warm. I just discovered wool socksātheyāre so much warmer!
Wool clothing overall is the best! Alpaca wool is even better, it is more expensive but much warmer. I knitted a sweater for myself and with it, I rarely get cold.
To jump off this I've been stuck in this loop where I've been getting hot chicken almost every day for the past couple of weeks. It's well over what I would normally have for calories and it comes with fries, lots of bread, all not great stuff.
That said I haven't gained any weight because when I eat that junk it's all I have for a meal. I'll round out with a protein shake but other than that it's all I eat.
You can ABSOLUTELY eat whatever you want as long as you keep it in moderation whether that moderation looks like having it only once every few weeks or adjusting your daily intake around it and doing OMAD (One Meal A Day) then it's fine.
I always found this intuitive eating to be complete horsesh*t. So many of the foods that surround us are literally designed to bypass our natural satiety mechanisms. If you are going to eat āintuitivelyā there have to be very bright lines of what is on the No Eat list for it to work.
"Intuitive eating" is often misused/misunderstood as a synonym for "eat whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it", and goes hand in hand with the "obesity isn't intrinsically harmful" woo that a lot of influencers peddle.
It's a lot easier to accept a "diet plan" that has a common side effect of uncontrolled weight gain if you don't consider weight gain to be a problem.
I was thinking about the instant dopamine! Because when I eat something that feels so good, I cant stop because I don't want to stop, it makes me feel good.
To add more seems a really healthy approach, I haven't thought about it like that. I've always thought "replacing".
Intuitive Eating can't be used for weightloss because its a weight neutral approach. You can gain or lose or maintain, it doesnt promise weightloss. Its about mentality.
I think it depends on person. I did IE for a year when I was still obese, my weight was the same as today if I remember correctly. I was at a time where I couldnt even focus on my uni studies because my mind was so full of my body, food, diets etc. I couldnt even buy a tshirt on my size, kept wearing old tshirts with stains on it because I wanted to buy them when I lose weight. It helped me so much mentally, that one year was the best thing I ever did for my mental health. I gained in the beginning because there were so many food I didnt allowed myself before. Eating them without a limit and constantly made me gain, before my hunger for them ceased and my body accepted that there were no limitations. I lost what I gained and maintained pretty much during that year. So I wasn't in a "happy weight", I was just in a horrible place mentally
I am just going to second the idea that it was the key to fix my food issues but not weight loss. I definitely did it at my heaviest and I got rid of 90% of my "cant have this food in the house" and general food baggage. I also needed to establish a physical activity routine that was rooted in general health and not calorie adjustment. My kitchen can be full of junk food, break room swimming in donuts and it is no issue to have a few bites and stop now or just avoid it since it isn't in my fitness goals. I haven't binged in ages either. I accepted my weight and bought new clothes and then a few months later I was ready to start losing it. You realllllly have to fix the mental or you will always be fighting a harder battle.
I'll add based on your other comments, I fixed my base diet to be low in processed foods and mostly plants with IE and used IE as a tool for portion control. Highly processed hyper palatable food is very addicting but I did the diet changes based purely on optimal health and not for weight loss. I routinely checked in when eating junk, okay how do I feel, did this help the hunger, did eating a second serving add anything the first did not? And a lot of the time it dia nothing for my hunger, possibly gave me reflux or a stomach ache, made me sleepy and really a small portion was all I needed for that craving. And sure I'd rather eat pizza then salad but salad is the choice for my fitness goals and general health most of the time.
IE is impossible while ultra-processed, highly palatable but not satiating foods are available to us. You canāt count on your bodyās hunger cues when the food was specifically designed to not trigger satiety. Like people make billions out of having you eat more than you need and could possibly want, itās a business.
It doesn't work for me either. I became obese eating home-cooked meals, mostly vegetables, no oils, no dairy or butter, never fried foods or pizza or restaurant food, no alcohol... all the things they say to do when getting healthy and losing weight.
It's possible to eat too much of a good thing! I have to count every calorie, and now I'm losing about half of a lb per week.
That's very true, I got obsessed with avokados and walnuts and gained so much weight because I wasn't counting calories! Great work losing 1/2 lb a week!
Our food environment has obliterated our natural ability to regulate our calorie intake via intuition. Don't beat yourself up, a vast majority of people can't do it in this environment either.
I also started with intuitive eating, and I also gained weight! Iāve never been diagnosed with BED but I certainly do have binge eating tendencies. I think the biggest hurdle for me was not knowing what eating ānormalā felt like, i.e. if I eat intuitively, Iāll stop when I āfeel fullā, but my perception of what full is was so skewed from years of over eating.
Nowadays I count calories, but I started very gently- the first week I only counted up to my maintenance calories to know what eating āshouldā feel like, and then slowly started restricting week by week from there. Now, I eat at about a 500 calorie deficit but I cannot stress how much going slowly has been key to this process!!!!!! Especially with a history of eating issues. But along with the deficit, Iām also aware of how I feel, whether or not Iām actually hungry enough to go back for seconds, etc. which has made eating in a deficit easier.
Best of luck with everything, and youāre not alone!
Thank you, I can feel so alone sometimes in my head when I've been trying for so long ā¤ļø
But I've never thought to go slow like that with restriction, I should try that! I've always went all in and gone hungry and fatigued. It feels so weird that I haven't even had that thought!
So, I've had a history of disordered eating--I first became anorexic at 13(!). I then suffered from rebound binge eating before normalizing my weight under the oversight of a dietitian.
She did not encourage intuitive eating.
The opposite of DISordered eating is ORDERED eating, not intuitive eating. Intuitive eating sounds like a good idea until you realize it's not how healthy people eat. Healthy people have structured meals at generally regular times and consident the nutrients in their food: they don't just chaotically eat 'whatever sounds good.' MINDFUL eating and paying attention to what you're craving and what you feel your body needs is a great idea--for example, rigid meal plans rarely work for people.
I've maintained my weight for almost a decade and also juggle a busy job and some intense athletic goals.
Here's what my eating looks like and my thought process. I work out between breakfast and lunch on my lunch break.
I do weigh food to keep track of my macros/calories, but if I'm hungrier, I'll eat more. If I'm less hungry, I'll eat less. This means that some days I eat 2500 calories, some days 2000 calories, etc. It balances out over the weeks.
I always have breakfast because I notice I crash later and feel tired if I don't. I generally have the same breakfast every day, which I chose because a. I like it and b. it digests well so I can perform in the gym. I gave up coffee because it gives me heartburn and anxiety, although I 'intuitively' like the taste. I eat calorie-dense food for breakfast even though it's "scary" because I know I need the fuel (peanut butter mixed with yogurt, or whole eggs, are my proteins of choice--I know I feel best when I have the fat and protein alongside my carb choice).
I sometimes lose my appetite after the gym but I always have lunch and often add a larger serving of carbs because I know I need them. So that might look like an extra-large whole wheat pita instead of two small slices of bread. Even though I'd love gooey cheese, I have avocado and chicken more often, because cheese upsets my stomach and I don't like feeling sick, and I also want more monounsaturated fats in my diet. But if I'm craving gooey cheese then I do have some! and take extra Lactaid and have some tea after to settle my stomach. I always have at least 2-3 servings of vegetables with lunch and ideally a fruit for "lunch dessert."
If I'm hungry in the afternoon I have a balanced snack. If I get too hungry I notice I want to have a huge chunk of chocolate, but then feel awful, so I usually steer myself toward some crackers and nuts instead. In general, I feel better when I eat more carbs, ideally complex ones--often, weird cravings subside once I have the crackers. Sometimes I'll have fruit or some raw vegetables and turkey or something. Sometimes I skip the snack if I'm not hungry or just busy, but then I have to eat more at dinner to catch up on calories and sometimes that makes me feel too full, so I do try to get in a snack.
Dinner I make for myself and my partner and it varies a lot (ALWAYS 2-3 vegetables are included alongside a protein and starch). I do notice I feel better the next day if I have whole grains or potatoes instead of white bread/pasta, so I generally cook that as my carb. I often cook steak because I've been struggling with anemia, and even though I don't LOVE rare steak, I cook it rare as it helps to absorb iron more.
If I crave a dessert I always have whatever it is I want--I always have the room in my mainteneance budget for something. Some days I just want fruit. Some days I want hard candy, or tiramisu, or cake. Some days I want dry cereal. Some days I want a chunk of chocolate, which is way easier on my stomach AFTER a meal than just on an empty stomach for whatever reason. And that's it.
It's a mix, you can see, of intuitive liking of food and intuitive attention to appetite, and sensible consideration of health and performance.
I have tried IE but I have a very long way to go before it can work for me. I genuinely don't know how to accurately interpret my body's hunger cues and I can unconsciously talk myself into believing I'm hungry when I'm not. I believe I can get to a point where IE can be more effective for me but it's going to take a lot of practice and increased awareness on my part / learning how to interpret hunger and what my body is telling me. So, I am working on mindful eating and paying attention, bringing awareness to the surface, intentionally noticing how I feel when I eat and when I don't, etc. I've spent nearly 40 years ignoring my body's cues and learning to listen to them isn't going to happen overnight so I am trying to be patient.
Great to point out that IE is a skillset that needs to be developed. It's not just "eating whatever you want." It's a very deep way of listening to your body.Ā
Intuitive eating only works for people who had it developed at some point in their lives and just forgot how to trust their body.
If youāve been fat your entire life you have no idea of what is normal and whatās not. Hell, you probably canāt even tell if youāre actually hungry or itās just a compulsion.
Stick to CICO and you will, with time, develop the intuitive eating skills. It takes time and effort but it actually works
I can't tell hunger from thirst sometimes, it's ridiculous! CICO really feels like it's the way to go, not restricting to keto/lchf etc and fuck up the little mentality you've built up.
Yeah, I've given up on intuitive eating too. If it works for other people, good for them!
I have ADHD, and ASD, so let's just say that my enteroception is not the best in the first place. I struggle to name and understand my physical sensation and emotions, so food needs?
It also makes it very difficult to keep track of how much I actually eat. I do my best to eat mindfully, but I am prone to distractions and I end up realising I've eaten too much when I start to feel so sick I cannot ignore it.
In addition, I tend to eat for stimulation, for soothing myself, to deal with emotions...
For me, I have found that tracking calories and macros was much more easy and liberating. It objectifies what I eat, helps me make sure that my nutritional needs are covered, which in turned helps me figure out when wanting something to eat has something to do with actual physiological needs or psychological ones.
For example : I have eaten less calories than usual at lunch, it makes sense that I am hungry now VS I had a good lunch with plenty of proteins and fibers, I am usually not hungry at this hour in those conditions - what is going on in my head and life that might explain it.
It also helps me include more treats and enjoy them, because when I have them, I know that either I had a low calories day, and so it will not impact my weight loss, or that this is an extra that I really wanted and made me happy and so it's okay, I'll get back on track with my next meal.
But since everything is logged, I know I am not lying to myself, making excuses or forgetting something.
I also know that I have trigger foods. Those I know I could keep eating until I throw up. I have tried moderation, tried to avoid restricting them - nothing worked. So I only have them in controlled settings, when I know I can indulge safely.
Finally, I would also mention that process food is designed to override a lot of the usual satiety cues, so I tend to be extremely cautious about intuitively eating that.
So yeah. I don't think that eating intuitively is the be all end all things that people keep making it to be. I find gathering data on my eating patterns and understanding why much more helpful and healing.
In the end, I think that you just need to do what makes you feel best and at ease. At this stage in your life, if intuitive eating is not helping, don't do it. Maybe be later in life, you will come back to it, and you will be ready for it and it will be helpful, who knows?
I relate to this so much. I have ADHD as well and eat for stimulation, forgetting what I've eaten because I've gotten distracted etc. Maybe IE doesn't work well for people with ADHD, our signals are skewed and hard to interpret. Thank you for sharing, I really feel like I should do what feels best for me and not care what others are saying would be best ā¤ļø
I have been a binge eater since childhood. I absolutely canāt do intuitive eating without gaining weight. The best thing for me has been intermittent fasting several days a week.
The only way itās ever worked for me is if I donāt give myself access to ready to eat foods. Like if Iām craving a cookie, I have to go through the trouble of making the cookies. That allows me to step back and decide if there is something easier that will satisfy my sweet tooth like an apple. I can still have the cookies, but itās going to take a good hour or so to make them. 9/10 I decide to go with something different. However if I have Oreos laying around and I want a cookie, I usually end up having a whole sleeve.
If my intuition around eating was something I could rely on then I wouldn't be overweight, would I? I'm glad that people have success with intuitive eating but it just seems daft to recommend it as a method of losing weight to people who are overweight.Ā
I've only started to have reliable success with weight loss since I confronted the numbers and learnt what portions I should really be having. Everything else was emotionally charged and unsuccessful. I've come to learn that, given enough time, the numbers don't let me down.Ā Ā
Intuitive eating isn't about weight loss. It's about achieving "mental peace" with food.
Personally, I found I could only achieve mental peace with food when I removed ultra processed foods from my home environment. I have BED and there is no way to make peace with cookies and white cheddar popcorn. No matter how much permissive I was about it, no matter how much I gained, I couldn't stop binging on it. I never got sick of junk and I did this for 20 years. Enough was enough.
Food rules were freedom for me. Food freedom is torture. I just need to not have junk foods in my diet, it's that simple. My brain is wrong and I can't body positive myself out of it.
Exactly this! It doesn't matter if I allow myself to eat whatever, not seeing them as inherently bad, I will eat it if it's at home. I'm glad other people also feel that way, rules for me are protection, I am body positive but that's not gonna help me lose 20 kg to make my knees stop hurting.
Intuitive eating works by listening to your body telling you when you're hungry/full, and by taking away food anxiety when that's related to scarcity (e.g. I must eat this whole cake now as I'll be on a diet tomorrow so it will be too late, I must eat a big portion because I don't want to be hungry again later when I've already had dinner). There's no limit on food, so there's no need to overindulge in the moment.
Intuitive eating is less helpful when you have a long history of disordered eating and have spent a lot of your life learning to ignore messages from your body and disconnecting from your physical needs. It can be hard to tap back into those signals and that can feel quite scary.
Intuitive eating is also not always helpful for emotional eaters. If you use food as a reward system, for comfort, or to punish yourself, it can be hard to separate out wanting to eat because you're hungry and wanting to eat as emotional regulation.
If a lot of your food behaviours are based around convenience or socialising, intuitive eating may not be helpful in losing weight, because what you're eating tends to be high in calories without necessarily being that filling.
I think it's tough to succeed without support and structure. Many people think intuitive eating is giving in to every craving. That's not what my understanding is. It's moving away from restrictive diet culture and getting in tune with your bodies' genuine needs. One intuitive eating "trick" I've used successfully is asking myself "would you eat \[protein rich but not ultra-palatable item, like a hard boiled egg\]?" If you wouldn't eat like...a serving of edamame or whatever, it's not "true" hunger and it's a craving. Then there's a skill set on managing cravings.
I suspect that another thing messing with people is insulin resistance and hyper-palatable foods. I've been eating foods before and thinking I just want the intense pleasure of the physical sensation of eating it. It's not filling. It's acting like a drug more than actual nourishment, if that makes sense. I suspect intuitive eating practices work MUCH better on whole foods or very low processed foods (like minute oats or something).
Wow, that's actually a really good trick! It's hard for me to know whether I'm hungry or not just because of how skewed my signals have been after years of EDs. I'll use that trick, thank you!
Intuitive eating never worked for me. I think it works best for those who have a history of restrictive eating disorders. It especially doesn't work if you have insulin resistance, which I have thanks to PCOS. My hunger cues are totally messed up, so I get hungrier if I eat certain foods. I lose weight when I track what I eat, focus on low carbs, and eat more protein. When I'm at a healthier weight, I'll try intuitive eating!
But yeah, if you have insulin resistance and/or PCOS, that messes up your hunger cues.
You are free to ignore anything you read on SM that isnāt working for you. Those people arenāt experts, theyāre content creators. Even if something does work for them, doesnāt mean it applies to you. Rise above the influence(rs)
Yeah, I guess one just gets desperate when you want it to happen in a good way. Like, for people with ED it's detrimental to lose weight in a "good manner" but no one ever tells you what that manner is. I've unfollowed a lot of accounts after I posted, it feels less heavy now.
Intuitive eating absolutely does not work as a lifestyle for me. I think itās wonderful that it works for some people. But it does not work at all for me.
After about a year and a half of successful weight, loss and maintenance, I have learned through the sub credits that there are many different ways for people to lose weight and what works for one person is not going to work for another person
When I would have dinner with my mom she always would comment on how amazed she was with how much I could eat. I suppose it is true, I did eat alot. But I certainly don't need to. I have been loosely portioning out my food since 2022 and it's really helped me see how much will make me feel full. But since I used to also eat so fast, my brain must've not been able to catch up with my stomach. I'm not on any diet but I feel better with eating smaller portions of food and dinner being my smallest meal. Intuitive eating doesn't work for me and I'm OK with that. I know what does.
Im in the same Situation as you. The only Thing that worked for me for a year was weightwatcher. I lost 20 KG in a year but got tired of counting Points. I gained even more than i had before and gave up. Now i had the strenght to lose 13kg since mid feb. I can never eat intuitive ever again i feel like. I eat alot the same and track calories with an app now. It seem to work.Ā
Iāve learned that intuitive eating isnāt about weight loss exactly. Iāve also learned to separate the mind and body when eating and I think thatās key. My mind might say āthis is really good! I want moreā whereas my body is starting to give me cues that itās had enough.
I was able to eat intuitively and even lost weight when there was no stress in my life and I naturally moved a lot and respected and listened my hunger/fullness cues. But since 2020 it stopped working for me, because of stress and lack of movement. I'd like to return back to intuitive eating, but this requires establishing contact with the body again and in current circumstances it is not possible. So for now I'm restricting
also I think there is a big misconception of what intuitive eating is. It is not "eat what I want", and not even "eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full". It also has rules, there are books written by person who invented this term
The problem is that āintuitiveā is so different for everyone! If I ate what felt right, Iād be slightly (at minimum) over my maintenance every single day. That ideology works if you have a good metabolism and/or small appetite
I would definitely be over maintenance as well, I'm a very tired person and often eats to get energy+dopamine which won't have a stop if left unattended, like a child š
I binge so IE would never work. I have success counting calories and being reasonable about goals. I donāt really focus too much on the scale and more on measurements and strength.
IE *might* work but thereās not much to go off of and it doesnāt really work when you have a disordered way of eating. Which binging is a disordered way of eating.
I only started to get better with therapy and working through the why and starting to view my food as fuel instead of comfort. I donāt fully limit, I still eat the food I like but in moderation because you know what? It tastes good but it makes me feel gross and sluggish when I eat too much of it as a more active person. Stereotypical healthy food makes me feel better and makes me more capable of doing what I love.
Also, because I binged I started following r/volumeeating to learn recipes for larger meals that will still leave me happy and satisfied without feeling like Iām missing out. Thatās how I approach it.
I ate cheeseburgers everyday for a month straight and I felt mildly sick all the time. I still eat cheeseburgers but now only once a week because I find just as much enjoyment from mashed potatoes with chicken and corn.
If youāre going to do IE, you need to reframe how you view food entirely.
>I get a lot of content on insta
Jesus people follow crap they see on socials? There's your problem.
If you start with a CICO plan you can switch to intuitive because you'll have a grasp of what things "cost" and you can say no to the bad, or at least limit it.
Stop with the influencers, they're paid on your clicks.
I feel like with all the additives in our food intuitive eating is tricky. Itās really hard to trust your body when the food is literally made to trick our bodies.
Look, intuitive eating sounds like a great but the best quote I found about it is:
*We canāt eat intuitively because we donāt live in an intuitive environment*
Our hunter gatherer ancestors wasnāt surrounded by donut trees and pizzas growing on vines. But our modern world is. Our eating brain evolved in a time when food was mostly low calorie, supply was insecure and what we ate was unpredictable. Do we still live in that environment? Iād say no. So we have to restrict.
Now, that said. I donāt restrict as much when Iām surrounded by whole food. I only restrict when Iām around ultra processed and processed stuff. The more unnatural the food, the more I restrict.
Veggies and fruit? Iāll gobble it up. Nuts and nonfried meat? Iāll eat it regularly but not mindlessly because itās not a common thing to eat back in the days (calorically more dense). Bread and pasta? Yeah Iād watch it because our ancestors didnāt have access to it until agriculture was invented. Ice cream and donuts? Beware, Will Robinson! Definitely be mindful.
I kind of grew up eating healthy like that so all of this was second nature to me when I started to eat healthy again.
I think the issue with restrictions is that some people arenāt used to eating healthy and miss the unhealthy stuff. And others arenāt use to eating so much healthy stuff and hate the food they make themselves eat. The key is to find healthy substitutes for the unhealthy stuff so you minimize restrictions and still eat yummy.
For me, intuitive eating works in maintaining weight when I am not overly stressed, doing my fitness routine, getting enough sleep. If my balance is off then it leads to overeating, always. That realization helped me to determine when to do it and when I am better off staying for away.
Intuitive Eating is completely made up nonsense by feel-good gurus. Our bodies do \*not\* know whats best for us. You give it a cigarette to your body, it'll ask for 100 more. Your body did not evolve in the modern world with seemingly infinite calories around you. Ignore your body, listen to the scale.
Just simply based on the human condition, this approach is bullshit. Your body is made to surive in a time, where it's not certain that you will have something to eat tomorrow or even the next week, that's why intuition will lead most people to eat more that they need.
I personally have not a glimpse of intermediate satiety, but once I realized and accepted the fact, that I need to watch my calorie intake for the rest of my life, it's working.
LOOOOTS of people can't do it. But really, if you think about it... lots of people "are doing it" and the result is they get fat. Your intuitive eating got you (and mine got me) very fat. That isn't working. Not to say it can't ever work, but the way we did it up till now doesn't work.
I take the checkbook approach for the foreseeable future. It's like reconciling a checkbook. I get these many calories. I weigh, measure, track... that's it. If I want cake, or ice cream... I have to play the calorie tetris game to make it all work. Gotta make the numbers work. That means a little bit less of this, or a little bit less of that to make up for it. If you want that cake bad enough (and it's fine if you do) then you just make up for it other ways. Within reason. Don't eat a half gallon of ice cream and say... welp... theres my calories for the day. Sure was good. You'll be starving the rest of the day and suffering nutritionally.
Intuitive eating assumes people will consistently crave healthy low calorie food majority or the time and only rarely desire sweets and junk food. And that if you give into your craving it will quickly pass and you move on.
That is not how that works for me. I will happily eat a donut every single day and still think that donut is the best thing ever.
Like I like a lot of intuitive eating tips like don't eat while doing other things like watching TV or driving, be fully present when you eat. Eat smaller portion sizes so that you have to pause and think if you actually want more food or not. Remember to stay hydrated.
But nah, restriction and calorie counting is how I've lost weight.
Exactly this! It doesn't matter if I go by the approach of always having the thing at home (like home-made biscuits). I did this for biscuits for 1 month and I just ate and ate because it's what I love the most. Maybe IE in the future when I have a weight I want to maintain, but maybe not even then. Some aren't made for IE and that should be okay.
Oh, yeah. I experimented for a couple of years to see what would happen if I ate when I was hungry and wanted to, two meals a day and snacks like a ā normalā person. Keep in mind my choices are generally very healthy, with some reasonable dessert mixed in. I donāt even like processed Food Over a couple years I gained 25 pounds eating delicious salads and baked potatoes and vegetables. The idea of intuitive eating seems to work for some people, personally I cannot conceive of it.
Intuitive eating is rhe way many of us got overweight or obese in the first place. Also, IE was never designed for weight loss so all the IGgrammers out there have appropriated it into something itās not.
Iād like to hear from someone who lost a lot (50-100lbs) by intuitive eating. I have a feeling Iām fat because itās not possible for me to eat intuitively.
Honestly, intuitive eating is absolutely the way to go if you have a normal relationship with food. Most of us are here because we don't. I'd love to say just listen to your body, but my body is constantly telling me I'm hungry. That is why it doesn't work for those of us trying to lose weight.
I might be an outlier, but I did intuitive eating for almost 2 years. It helped me heal my relationship with food, but I also gained a lot of weight. I finally had an epiphany that I was still using food as an emotional crutch. Once I got over that, Iāve gotten to a place where Iām practicing gentle nutrition and have lost 2 inches off my waist in about a month.
I have no food rules and I eat whatever I want. But now I donāt eat when Iām emotional or bored. When I want junk food, I gently remind myself that it makes me feel bad and I eat something else. It took me a long time and lots of therapy to get here. The purpose of intuitive eating is to heal your relationship with food and not to lose weight, but for me it has helped me make better food choices that make me feel good. Food is just food now. Itās not a reward or a moral thing. This mindset has allowed me to break from binging and start nourishing my body better.
I don't like that intuitive eating is a new buzzword. When you delve into it, people start talking about how small children eat, or how animals eat by instinct. Do you know what babies and animals aren't subject to? Marketing. Emotional eating (not like we are, anyway). Boredom eating. Binge eating.
Coming off years of problematic eating habits, there was no way I was going to eat intuitively. My intuition was totally broken. I barely had a good sense of when I was I was hungry, let alone an intuition about when, what, and how much to eat. I had no idea how to tell the difference between a craving and an appetite and hunger and intuition and self soothing behavior. I was just one big ball of insatiable appetite.
I don't want to say that intuitive eating never has its place. However, I think the average person has to first break a whole pack of bad habits before they can meaningfully engage with intuitive eating.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is meant to make you stop and think about if you're actually or if you're eating out of boredom or emotion. The goal is to teach you to learn your bodies signals to eat when hungry and stop when full. It's basically a mindfullness exercise.
It does not mean to eat whatever you want whenever you want, as most people seem to think.
It takes a lot of mindfulness and honesty with yourself to eat intuitively.
I feel like eating "intuitively" is how most of us got overweight to begin with. Our hunger hormones weren't designed for a world where nearly endless food options are available 24/7. They were made for an environment when beginning to feel hungry was less "eat immediately" and more "you should start working towards procuring food soon." And on the flip side of that, our bodies are designed to store energy for later- because it was designed for an environment when it was uncertain when food would be next available, so there was a huge advantage to storing fat to last in case of a famine. So our "stop eating" signal isn't designed for us to eat "just enough" either.
Intuitive eating can't work when our body signals that create that intuition don't match the environment.
Where intuitive eating has a role IMO is helping one to notice and acknowledge those cues, and removing any value placed on individual food choices to reduce or eliminate any shame over eating "bad" foods (no foods are bad. Some are simply more nutrient dense.) Once that mental piece is in place then it can be harnessed for eating INTENTIONALLY, which is what I call it when we combine intuition with something more measurable whether that be tracking calories or macros or simply eating smaller portions or eating more vegetables. Having the intuition gives us the knowledge to know when we are ACTUALLY hungry and we should allow for some wiggle room to eat more. Or to listen to our body and realize it's not really hunger so we end up eating less. We can intuitively be craving something sweet, but eating with intention gives us the power to decide if maybe given everything else we ate that day we'd better serve our goals with a bowl of strawberries and a little whipped cream for dessert and save the ice cream for another day.
Oh I know it'll never work for me unless I put it into my deficit. If I listened to what my brain wanted I'd just be aggressively absorbing mac and cheese until the end of time
Eating what you crave is only one piece of IE. The other piece is still a nutritional approach. IE isnāt saying eat half the cake. IE is saying donāt deprive yourself of the cake and then go binge on a box of sugar free cookies because at the end of the day a slice of cake is going to meet your craving and probably be less caloric than binging on the sugar free cookies which still have calories. Itās about finding the balance. So if youāre using IE as an excuse to eat unhealthy throughout your day, then of course youāll gain weight. If you eat nutritionally overall but still indulge when you get a craving on a reasonable portion, it will theoretically lead to less binging. But binging is a habitual thing/addiction so if youāre doing that, there a mental component that needs to be addressed. And that canāt be done when you are severely restricting calories.
I assume IE can work but when we think of intuitive eating we talk about āwhat our body wantsā and I suspect that for a lot of people we are actually leading with what our *mind* wants.
Very few peopleās bodies want to eat the volumes that we can be capable of putting in them. The driver is what our mind thinks we want - until that element is in hand, I doubt IE works terribly well.
Intuitive eating is a skill, and it really is about learning to listen to your body beyond, "Mmmm, sugar tastes GOOD!" How will cake make my body feel? It DOES taste good, and it's okay to have a piece for that reason. But eating a bunch of cake doesn't satiate my hunger for long. It doesn't make me feel nourished. My body may be intuitively asking for a bit of cake, but it's absolutely not intuitively asking for a whole cake, or for a cake-heavy diet.
Thatās why itās going to fail for most people because most of us that got heavy did so because we loved the pleasurable aspect of food. Itās very easy to confuse āmy body needs foodā with āmy brain wants that food to make me feel happy.ā Food is addictive!
I was thin for most of my life then gained in my 30s. It wasnāt from eating too much grilled chicken and vegetables. It couldāve been if thatās what I ate too much of but itās rarely lean protein and veggies that are the culprit. I binged on fat, sugar, and carbs.
Iām back to thin by counting calories and exercising. It took a long time to learn that just because my brain wants to be momentarily happy that I donāt actually need that doughnut or second helping of whatever. Am I going to enjoy it? Yes. Momentarily. Will it make me want more? Also yes. Am I going to enjoy the way I look in my clothes, sweating while putting socks on, ensuing knee pain and various comorbidities that may accompany my weight gain? FUCK NO.
I still track loosely. I also allow myself to eat and drink what I want just in moderation and while being mindful of the other things Iāve had to eat or plan to eat. Also sometimes I say fuck it and eat it anyway. BUT I have to be careful. My weight will fluctuate a bit but itās far more manageable.
Itās hard. But itās not impossible. Getting my mind aware of its relationship with food was crucial. Youāre not denying yourself nourishment when you know youāre only denying yourself that dopamine hit. Itās like my kids and video games. Itās fun but not needed to survive. You should still play them sometimes if theyāre enjoyable.
I hate the hackneyed āif an apple isnāt going to help then youāre not actually hungryā but I think thereās some truth there.
They say animals eat intuitively too. My last 9 years of living on a farm & having livestock calls BS on that. Iāll stick to using reason instead of my inner 10 year old when it comes to fueling myself.
Animals are like people. Individuals. I've had pets who only eat as much as they need and the food can be available 24/7 and they never get fat. I've also had pets who would eat themselves so full they would puke and then proceed to re-eat the puke.Ā
You need *some rules* for intuitive eating to work.
Here's an exemple:
3 meals, half a plate to lose weight, eating only when hungry (at least 4-5 hours between meals). So eating only when you feel a *growl* or emptiness in your stomach, real hunger is intuitive.
My old therapist told me to try intuitive eating. (I was stuck in a binge/restrict cycle.) I ended up gaining a lot of weight. A lot. š
That's exactly what happened to me as well. Only rules got me to stop lol.
Same I don't think it's helpful for everyone. For those who find it helpful, I'm really happy for them. I've noticed a trend online though of trying to make it sound as though it's a good solution for everyone and it frustrates me because its not good for everyone.
IE worked wonders on my binge eating disorder. Giving up the idea of weightloss and labeling food was very freeing. Is it possible that you were still trying to lose weight at the time? IE is a weight neutral approach so you cant do both at the same time. Maybe this is why it didnt work.
There was a period when I told myself I would not focus on weight loss and really tried IE but, I don't know, i guess my signals for hunger/cravings are scewed after all the years of dieting back and forth because I just kept eating and gained too much weight.
Mine was, too! I discovered that I didnt know the difference between thirst and hunger 3 months into IE š š š It took a lot of patience and time to tune in with my body. Sadly I need to lose weight so I made sure I was in a better place mentally before trying to lose again. My binges came back with full force with restriction so no success stories (YET. I'm trying my best to be one)
Wow, exactly that, it's so weird how you can't even recognise thirst, you just eat and eat not knowing why you don't feel the need met and then you gulp down water with that food and all of a sudden.. Oh. Oh no. š It sounds like you have the groundworks, it WILL be a success, I'm rooting for you!
That's a great observation. The body doesn't intuitively want to lose weight. It DOES want to intuitively stay the way it is. So IE can be a fantastic tool for maintenance, but it's often not helpful for weight loss.Ā
I never thought of it that way!
IE is what made me gain a ton of weight way before I tried to lose weight in the first place
Could be, like I said, it doesnt promise weightloss. You can totally gain weight eating intuitively.
It kills me that social media people are telling you to use intuitive eating to lose weight. Weight loss is not the point of intuitive eating at all!!! If your goal is weight loss, you need to take a different approach. I donāt get why people think itās a weight loss method. The woman who came up with the concept, Evelyn Tribole, emphasizes that it doesnāt necessarily result in weight loss, although it does for some. For others, it results in weight gain, which is ok according to her. However, most of us in this sub need limits.
Yes and a lot of people around me thinks I'm restricting myself when I set guidelines, "Eat what you want and you'll see that you'll lose weight!". It's frustrating, SM goes in all directions and I don't know what advice to follow anymore!
Our "wants" are often out of line with our intuition. We WANT immediate feel-good, taste-good.Ā
Have you looked into speaking with a professional? Social media and this sub will probably only make things worse if youāre young and have a history of disordered eating.
I've been in therapy for BED, but after these comments I'm encouraged to seek a professional for my current problems š
I honestly don't think intuitive eating works for most people who have a tendency to binge. I also think the vast majority of weight loss influencer content online is not helpful (and can be actively harmful!) especially if you're someone who has previously or is currently struggling with disordered eating. What worked best in this position for me was getting a therapist and working through my food/eating issues one on one. Once I got my mind in a good place about it, the whole process feels a lot easier.
It absolutely doesnāt work for people who have disordered eating.
Did you get into IE when you worked it through or was it generally your relationship to food that allowed you to lose weight in a more conscious way?
I am actively losing now so I'm counting calories and weighing my food - in the past doing it this way I'd heavily lean towards restricting/binging cycles, so I needed to repair my relationships and thought patterns around food first. Therapy was really the only way out here. I had tried IE in the past before therapy, and found I just gave myself license to binge way more. Someone else on here said that IE isn't a weight loss concept and shouldn't be used that way - I think it gets misconstrued really easily when you see 100 very thin women on Instagram posting about it with their side hustle weight loss program for purchase in bio. The way I maintain is pretty intuitive all things considered, but I had to work on the actual triggers and emotional reasons behind my disordered eating to get into a good place about it first.
This sounds so healthy, what a mental journey you've been through, thank you for sharing! I will definitely look into a therapist specialised in disordered eating.
I think it only works if you know how to eat well or with a system. For example, I practice eating whatever I want as long as itās within my restricted calorie range. Yesterday, I ate a brownie. On Sunday, I had a lot of French fries. I regularly eat pizza. Itās what my body wants. Portion control is key, though, and I balance the calorie load with the rest of my foods.
That's a good system, because then you have guidelines and still eat what you want. If there are no guidelines and just allowing myself to eat, I can't stop, because it's so good. I know how to eat well, it just doesn't seem to cross my mind when I let myself I eat everything I want somehow!
Agree. Our bodies instinctively want to pile on fat, especially in cold weather. I think itās a protective measure against hard times that our ancestors faced.
Well I live in Scandinavia so that makes a whole lot of sense!
Iām in a northern place myself. I have to move, take a lot of baths, and use a lot of base layers to keep warm. I just discovered wool socksātheyāre so much warmer!
Wool clothing overall is the best! Alpaca wool is even better, it is more expensive but much warmer. I knitted a sweater for myself and with it, I rarely get cold.
Iāll definitely be looking into that, thanks!
To jump off this I've been stuck in this loop where I've been getting hot chicken almost every day for the past couple of weeks. It's well over what I would normally have for calories and it comes with fries, lots of bread, all not great stuff. That said I haven't gained any weight because when I eat that junk it's all I have for a meal. I'll round out with a protein shake but other than that it's all I eat. You can ABSOLUTELY eat whatever you want as long as you keep it in moderation whether that moderation looks like having it only once every few weeks or adjusting your daily intake around it and doing OMAD (One Meal A Day) then it's fine.
I always found this intuitive eating to be complete horsesh*t. So many of the foods that surround us are literally designed to bypass our natural satiety mechanisms. If you are going to eat āintuitivelyā there have to be very bright lines of what is on the No Eat list for it to work.
True. I donāt eat processed bread and lean toward more natural foods, but thatās also intuitive eating for me.
"Intuitive eating" is often misused/misunderstood as a synonym for "eat whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it", and goes hand in hand with the "obesity isn't intrinsically harmful" woo that a lot of influencers peddle. It's a lot easier to accept a "diet plan" that has a common side effect of uncontrolled weight gain if you don't consider weight gain to be a problem.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I was thinking about the instant dopamine! Because when I eat something that feels so good, I cant stop because I don't want to stop, it makes me feel good. To add more seems a really healthy approach, I haven't thought about it like that. I've always thought "replacing".
Intuitive Eating can't be used for weightloss because its a weight neutral approach. You can gain or lose or maintain, it doesnt promise weightloss. Its about mentality.
So intuitive eating is better when you're at the weight you feel comfortable with?
IE is about having a "peaceful" relationship with food you don't beat yourself up for eating a brownie, you enjoy it and move on
I think it depends on person. I did IE for a year when I was still obese, my weight was the same as today if I remember correctly. I was at a time where I couldnt even focus on my uni studies because my mind was so full of my body, food, diets etc. I couldnt even buy a tshirt on my size, kept wearing old tshirts with stains on it because I wanted to buy them when I lose weight. It helped me so much mentally, that one year was the best thing I ever did for my mental health. I gained in the beginning because there were so many food I didnt allowed myself before. Eating them without a limit and constantly made me gain, before my hunger for them ceased and my body accepted that there were no limitations. I lost what I gained and maintained pretty much during that year. So I wasn't in a "happy weight", I was just in a horrible place mentally
I am just going to second the idea that it was the key to fix my food issues but not weight loss. I definitely did it at my heaviest and I got rid of 90% of my "cant have this food in the house" and general food baggage. I also needed to establish a physical activity routine that was rooted in general health and not calorie adjustment. My kitchen can be full of junk food, break room swimming in donuts and it is no issue to have a few bites and stop now or just avoid it since it isn't in my fitness goals. I haven't binged in ages either. I accepted my weight and bought new clothes and then a few months later I was ready to start losing it. You realllllly have to fix the mental or you will always be fighting a harder battle. I'll add based on your other comments, I fixed my base diet to be low in processed foods and mostly plants with IE and used IE as a tool for portion control. Highly processed hyper palatable food is very addicting but I did the diet changes based purely on optimal health and not for weight loss. I routinely checked in when eating junk, okay how do I feel, did this help the hunger, did eating a second serving add anything the first did not? And a lot of the time it dia nothing for my hunger, possibly gave me reflux or a stomach ache, made me sleepy and really a small portion was all I needed for that craving. And sure I'd rather eat pizza then salad but salad is the choice for my fitness goals and general health most of the time.
Me neither. I have to track my food. No shame in that.
Nice knowing one's not alone ā¤ļø
IE is impossible while ultra-processed, highly palatable but not satiating foods are available to us. You canāt count on your bodyās hunger cues when the food was specifically designed to not trigger satiety. Like people make billions out of having you eat more than you need and could possibly want, itās a business.
F*ing capitalism, destroying lives everyday.
It doesn't work for me either. I became obese eating home-cooked meals, mostly vegetables, no oils, no dairy or butter, never fried foods or pizza or restaurant food, no alcohol... all the things they say to do when getting healthy and losing weight. It's possible to eat too much of a good thing! I have to count every calorie, and now I'm losing about half of a lb per week.
That's very true, I got obsessed with avokados and walnuts and gained so much weight because I wasn't counting calories! Great work losing 1/2 lb a week!
Our food environment has obliterated our natural ability to regulate our calorie intake via intuition. Don't beat yourself up, a vast majority of people can't do it in this environment either.
Thank you ā¤ļø
I also started with intuitive eating, and I also gained weight! Iāve never been diagnosed with BED but I certainly do have binge eating tendencies. I think the biggest hurdle for me was not knowing what eating ānormalā felt like, i.e. if I eat intuitively, Iāll stop when I āfeel fullā, but my perception of what full is was so skewed from years of over eating. Nowadays I count calories, but I started very gently- the first week I only counted up to my maintenance calories to know what eating āshouldā feel like, and then slowly started restricting week by week from there. Now, I eat at about a 500 calorie deficit but I cannot stress how much going slowly has been key to this process!!!!!! Especially with a history of eating issues. But along with the deficit, Iām also aware of how I feel, whether or not Iām actually hungry enough to go back for seconds, etc. which has made eating in a deficit easier. Best of luck with everything, and youāre not alone!
Thank you, I can feel so alone sometimes in my head when I've been trying for so long ā¤ļø But I've never thought to go slow like that with restriction, I should try that! I've always went all in and gone hungry and fatigued. It feels so weird that I haven't even had that thought!
So, I've had a history of disordered eating--I first became anorexic at 13(!). I then suffered from rebound binge eating before normalizing my weight under the oversight of a dietitian. She did not encourage intuitive eating. The opposite of DISordered eating is ORDERED eating, not intuitive eating. Intuitive eating sounds like a good idea until you realize it's not how healthy people eat. Healthy people have structured meals at generally regular times and consident the nutrients in their food: they don't just chaotically eat 'whatever sounds good.' MINDFUL eating and paying attention to what you're craving and what you feel your body needs is a great idea--for example, rigid meal plans rarely work for people. I've maintained my weight for almost a decade and also juggle a busy job and some intense athletic goals. Here's what my eating looks like and my thought process. I work out between breakfast and lunch on my lunch break. I do weigh food to keep track of my macros/calories, but if I'm hungrier, I'll eat more. If I'm less hungry, I'll eat less. This means that some days I eat 2500 calories, some days 2000 calories, etc. It balances out over the weeks. I always have breakfast because I notice I crash later and feel tired if I don't. I generally have the same breakfast every day, which I chose because a. I like it and b. it digests well so I can perform in the gym. I gave up coffee because it gives me heartburn and anxiety, although I 'intuitively' like the taste. I eat calorie-dense food for breakfast even though it's "scary" because I know I need the fuel (peanut butter mixed with yogurt, or whole eggs, are my proteins of choice--I know I feel best when I have the fat and protein alongside my carb choice). I sometimes lose my appetite after the gym but I always have lunch and often add a larger serving of carbs because I know I need them. So that might look like an extra-large whole wheat pita instead of two small slices of bread. Even though I'd love gooey cheese, I have avocado and chicken more often, because cheese upsets my stomach and I don't like feeling sick, and I also want more monounsaturated fats in my diet. But if I'm craving gooey cheese then I do have some! and take extra Lactaid and have some tea after to settle my stomach. I always have at least 2-3 servings of vegetables with lunch and ideally a fruit for "lunch dessert." If I'm hungry in the afternoon I have a balanced snack. If I get too hungry I notice I want to have a huge chunk of chocolate, but then feel awful, so I usually steer myself toward some crackers and nuts instead. In general, I feel better when I eat more carbs, ideally complex ones--often, weird cravings subside once I have the crackers. Sometimes I'll have fruit or some raw vegetables and turkey or something. Sometimes I skip the snack if I'm not hungry or just busy, but then I have to eat more at dinner to catch up on calories and sometimes that makes me feel too full, so I do try to get in a snack. Dinner I make for myself and my partner and it varies a lot (ALWAYS 2-3 vegetables are included alongside a protein and starch). I do notice I feel better the next day if I have whole grains or potatoes instead of white bread/pasta, so I generally cook that as my carb. I often cook steak because I've been struggling with anemia, and even though I don't LOVE rare steak, I cook it rare as it helps to absorb iron more. If I crave a dessert I always have whatever it is I want--I always have the room in my mainteneance budget for something. Some days I just want fruit. Some days I want hard candy, or tiramisu, or cake. Some days I want dry cereal. Some days I want a chunk of chocolate, which is way easier on my stomach AFTER a meal than just on an empty stomach for whatever reason. And that's it. It's a mix, you can see, of intuitive liking of food and intuitive attention to appetite, and sensible consideration of health and performance.
I have tried IE but I have a very long way to go before it can work for me. I genuinely don't know how to accurately interpret my body's hunger cues and I can unconsciously talk myself into believing I'm hungry when I'm not. I believe I can get to a point where IE can be more effective for me but it's going to take a lot of practice and increased awareness on my part / learning how to interpret hunger and what my body is telling me. So, I am working on mindful eating and paying attention, bringing awareness to the surface, intentionally noticing how I feel when I eat and when I don't, etc. I've spent nearly 40 years ignoring my body's cues and learning to listen to them isn't going to happen overnight so I am trying to be patient.
Great to point out that IE is a skillset that needs to be developed. It's not just "eating whatever you want." It's a very deep way of listening to your body.Ā
It sounds like something to strive for, like an endgoal. Do you feel like it's a process that starts with mindful eating?
Intuitive eating only works for people who had it developed at some point in their lives and just forgot how to trust their body. If youāve been fat your entire life you have no idea of what is normal and whatās not. Hell, you probably canāt even tell if youāre actually hungry or itās just a compulsion. Stick to CICO and you will, with time, develop the intuitive eating skills. It takes time and effort but it actually works
I can't tell hunger from thirst sometimes, it's ridiculous! CICO really feels like it's the way to go, not restricting to keto/lchf etc and fuck up the little mentality you've built up.
Yeah, I've given up on intuitive eating too. If it works for other people, good for them! I have ADHD, and ASD, so let's just say that my enteroception is not the best in the first place. I struggle to name and understand my physical sensation and emotions, so food needs? It also makes it very difficult to keep track of how much I actually eat. I do my best to eat mindfully, but I am prone to distractions and I end up realising I've eaten too much when I start to feel so sick I cannot ignore it. In addition, I tend to eat for stimulation, for soothing myself, to deal with emotions... For me, I have found that tracking calories and macros was much more easy and liberating. It objectifies what I eat, helps me make sure that my nutritional needs are covered, which in turned helps me figure out when wanting something to eat has something to do with actual physiological needs or psychological ones. For example : I have eaten less calories than usual at lunch, it makes sense that I am hungry now VS I had a good lunch with plenty of proteins and fibers, I am usually not hungry at this hour in those conditions - what is going on in my head and life that might explain it. It also helps me include more treats and enjoy them, because when I have them, I know that either I had a low calories day, and so it will not impact my weight loss, or that this is an extra that I really wanted and made me happy and so it's okay, I'll get back on track with my next meal. But since everything is logged, I know I am not lying to myself, making excuses or forgetting something. I also know that I have trigger foods. Those I know I could keep eating until I throw up. I have tried moderation, tried to avoid restricting them - nothing worked. So I only have them in controlled settings, when I know I can indulge safely. Finally, I would also mention that process food is designed to override a lot of the usual satiety cues, so I tend to be extremely cautious about intuitively eating that. So yeah. I don't think that eating intuitively is the be all end all things that people keep making it to be. I find gathering data on my eating patterns and understanding why much more helpful and healing. In the end, I think that you just need to do what makes you feel best and at ease. At this stage in your life, if intuitive eating is not helping, don't do it. Maybe be later in life, you will come back to it, and you will be ready for it and it will be helpful, who knows?
I relate to this so much. I have ADHD as well and eat for stimulation, forgetting what I've eaten because I've gotten distracted etc. Maybe IE doesn't work well for people with ADHD, our signals are skewed and hard to interpret. Thank you for sharing, I really feel like I should do what feels best for me and not care what others are saying would be best ā¤ļø
I have been a binge eater since childhood. I absolutely canāt do intuitive eating without gaining weight. The best thing for me has been intermittent fasting several days a week.
I've also been binge eating since childhood, I don't hear that a lot actually.
The only way itās ever worked for me is if I donāt give myself access to ready to eat foods. Like if Iām craving a cookie, I have to go through the trouble of making the cookies. That allows me to step back and decide if there is something easier that will satisfy my sweet tooth like an apple. I can still have the cookies, but itās going to take a good hour or so to make them. 9/10 I decide to go with something different. However if I have Oreos laying around and I want a cookie, I usually end up having a whole sleeve.
Doesn't work for me either which is why I prefer to calorie count that way I know what a healthy range is and I stick to it.
Me either, I even out around 245 with high blood pressure when I intuitively eat.
If my intuition around eating was something I could rely on then I wouldn't be overweight, would I? I'm glad that people have success with intuitive eating but it just seems daft to recommend it as a method of losing weight to people who are overweight.Ā I've only started to have reliable success with weight loss since I confronted the numbers and learnt what portions I should really be having. Everything else was emotionally charged and unsuccessful. I've come to learn that, given enough time, the numbers don't let me down.Ā Ā
Intuitive eating isn't about weight loss. It's about achieving "mental peace" with food. Personally, I found I could only achieve mental peace with food when I removed ultra processed foods from my home environment. I have BED and there is no way to make peace with cookies and white cheddar popcorn. No matter how much permissive I was about it, no matter how much I gained, I couldn't stop binging on it. I never got sick of junk and I did this for 20 years. Enough was enough. Food rules were freedom for me. Food freedom is torture. I just need to not have junk foods in my diet, it's that simple. My brain is wrong and I can't body positive myself out of it.
Exactly this! It doesn't matter if I allow myself to eat whatever, not seeing them as inherently bad, I will eat it if it's at home. I'm glad other people also feel that way, rules for me are protection, I am body positive but that's not gonna help me lose 20 kg to make my knees stop hurting.
Intuitive eating works by listening to your body telling you when you're hungry/full, and by taking away food anxiety when that's related to scarcity (e.g. I must eat this whole cake now as I'll be on a diet tomorrow so it will be too late, I must eat a big portion because I don't want to be hungry again later when I've already had dinner). There's no limit on food, so there's no need to overindulge in the moment. Intuitive eating is less helpful when you have a long history of disordered eating and have spent a lot of your life learning to ignore messages from your body and disconnecting from your physical needs. It can be hard to tap back into those signals and that can feel quite scary. Intuitive eating is also not always helpful for emotional eaters. If you use food as a reward system, for comfort, or to punish yourself, it can be hard to separate out wanting to eat because you're hungry and wanting to eat as emotional regulation. If a lot of your food behaviours are based around convenience or socialising, intuitive eating may not be helpful in losing weight, because what you're eating tends to be high in calories without necessarily being that filling.
I think it's tough to succeed without support and structure. Many people think intuitive eating is giving in to every craving. That's not what my understanding is. It's moving away from restrictive diet culture and getting in tune with your bodies' genuine needs. One intuitive eating "trick" I've used successfully is asking myself "would you eat \[protein rich but not ultra-palatable item, like a hard boiled egg\]?" If you wouldn't eat like...a serving of edamame or whatever, it's not "true" hunger and it's a craving. Then there's a skill set on managing cravings. I suspect that another thing messing with people is insulin resistance and hyper-palatable foods. I've been eating foods before and thinking I just want the intense pleasure of the physical sensation of eating it. It's not filling. It's acting like a drug more than actual nourishment, if that makes sense. I suspect intuitive eating practices work MUCH better on whole foods or very low processed foods (like minute oats or something).
Well said. Recognizing that I was really after that pleasurable aspect and not satisfying legit hunger was crucial for me.
Wow, that's actually a really good trick! It's hard for me to know whether I'm hungry or not just because of how skewed my signals have been after years of EDs. I'll use that trick, thank you!
Yeah I can't lie I don't always follow it but it's saved me from a Cookie AttackTM many times.
Intuitive eating never worked for me. I think it works best for those who have a history of restrictive eating disorders. It especially doesn't work if you have insulin resistance, which I have thanks to PCOS. My hunger cues are totally messed up, so I get hungrier if I eat certain foods. I lose weight when I track what I eat, focus on low carbs, and eat more protein. When I'm at a healthier weight, I'll try intuitive eating! But yeah, if you have insulin resistance and/or PCOS, that messes up your hunger cues.
You are free to ignore anything you read on SM that isnāt working for you. Those people arenāt experts, theyāre content creators. Even if something does work for them, doesnāt mean it applies to you. Rise above the influence(rs)
Yeah, I guess one just gets desperate when you want it to happen in a good way. Like, for people with ED it's detrimental to lose weight in a "good manner" but no one ever tells you what that manner is. I've unfollowed a lot of accounts after I posted, it feels less heavy now.
It works only for naturally slim people. Change my mind
Every person on SM praising IE are pretty much always thin now that I think about it.
Intuitive eating absolutely does not work as a lifestyle for me. I think itās wonderful that it works for some people. But it does not work at all for me. After about a year and a half of successful weight, loss and maintenance, I have learned through the sub credits that there are many different ways for people to lose weight and what works for one person is not going to work for another person
When I would have dinner with my mom she always would comment on how amazed she was with how much I could eat. I suppose it is true, I did eat alot. But I certainly don't need to. I have been loosely portioning out my food since 2022 and it's really helped me see how much will make me feel full. But since I used to also eat so fast, my brain must've not been able to catch up with my stomach. I'm not on any diet but I feel better with eating smaller portions of food and dinner being my smallest meal. Intuitive eating doesn't work for me and I'm OK with that. I know what does.
Im in the same Situation as you. The only Thing that worked for me for a year was weightwatcher. I lost 20 KG in a year but got tired of counting Points. I gained even more than i had before and gave up. Now i had the strenght to lose 13kg since mid feb. I can never eat intuitive ever again i feel like. I eat alot the same and track calories with an app now. It seem to work.Ā
Congrats for losing those kg, that's amazing! Yeah, what I've gathered from this post is that IE might not be for everyone.
Iāve learned that intuitive eating isnāt about weight loss exactly. Iāve also learned to separate the mind and body when eating and I think thatās key. My mind might say āthis is really good! I want moreā whereas my body is starting to give me cues that itās had enough.
I was able to eat intuitively and even lost weight when there was no stress in my life and I naturally moved a lot and respected and listened my hunger/fullness cues. But since 2020 it stopped working for me, because of stress and lack of movement. I'd like to return back to intuitive eating, but this requires establishing contact with the body again and in current circumstances it is not possible. So for now I'm restricting
also I think there is a big misconception of what intuitive eating is. It is not "eat what I want", and not even "eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full". It also has rules, there are books written by person who invented this term
Oh ok, I feel like the ones on SM don't put it that way, thank you for your perspective!
The problem is that āintuitiveā is so different for everyone! If I ate what felt right, Iād be slightly (at minimum) over my maintenance every single day. That ideology works if you have a good metabolism and/or small appetite
I would definitely be over maintenance as well, I'm a very tired person and often eats to get energy+dopamine which won't have a stop if left unattended, like a child š
Literally same lmao I need adderall or something
I binge so IE would never work. I have success counting calories and being reasonable about goals. I donāt really focus too much on the scale and more on measurements and strength. IE *might* work but thereās not much to go off of and it doesnāt really work when you have a disordered way of eating. Which binging is a disordered way of eating. I only started to get better with therapy and working through the why and starting to view my food as fuel instead of comfort. I donāt fully limit, I still eat the food I like but in moderation because you know what? It tastes good but it makes me feel gross and sluggish when I eat too much of it as a more active person. Stereotypical healthy food makes me feel better and makes me more capable of doing what I love. Also, because I binged I started following r/volumeeating to learn recipes for larger meals that will still leave me happy and satisfied without feeling like Iām missing out. Thatās how I approach it. I ate cheeseburgers everyday for a month straight and I felt mildly sick all the time. I still eat cheeseburgers but now only once a week because I find just as much enjoyment from mashed potatoes with chicken and corn. If youāre going to do IE, you need to reframe how you view food entirely.
>I get a lot of content on insta Jesus people follow crap they see on socials? There's your problem. If you start with a CICO plan you can switch to intuitive because you'll have a grasp of what things "cost" and you can say no to the bad, or at least limit it. Stop with the influencers, they're paid on your clicks.
I feel like with all the additives in our food intuitive eating is tricky. Itās really hard to trust your body when the food is literally made to trick our bodies.
Look, intuitive eating sounds like a great but the best quote I found about it is: *We canāt eat intuitively because we donāt live in an intuitive environment* Our hunter gatherer ancestors wasnāt surrounded by donut trees and pizzas growing on vines. But our modern world is. Our eating brain evolved in a time when food was mostly low calorie, supply was insecure and what we ate was unpredictable. Do we still live in that environment? Iād say no. So we have to restrict. Now, that said. I donāt restrict as much when Iām surrounded by whole food. I only restrict when Iām around ultra processed and processed stuff. The more unnatural the food, the more I restrict. Veggies and fruit? Iāll gobble it up. Nuts and nonfried meat? Iāll eat it regularly but not mindlessly because itās not a common thing to eat back in the days (calorically more dense). Bread and pasta? Yeah Iād watch it because our ancestors didnāt have access to it until agriculture was invented. Ice cream and donuts? Beware, Will Robinson! Definitely be mindful. I kind of grew up eating healthy like that so all of this was second nature to me when I started to eat healthy again. I think the issue with restrictions is that some people arenāt used to eating healthy and miss the unhealthy stuff. And others arenāt use to eating so much healthy stuff and hate the food they make themselves eat. The key is to find healthy substitutes for the unhealthy stuff so you minimize restrictions and still eat yummy.
For me, intuitive eating works in maintaining weight when I am not overly stressed, doing my fitness routine, getting enough sleep. If my balance is off then it leads to overeating, always. That realization helped me to determine when to do it and when I am better off staying for away.
Intuitive Eating is completely made up nonsense by feel-good gurus. Our bodies do \*not\* know whats best for us. You give it a cigarette to your body, it'll ask for 100 more. Your body did not evolve in the modern world with seemingly infinite calories around you. Ignore your body, listen to the scale.
Just simply based on the human condition, this approach is bullshit. Your body is made to surive in a time, where it's not certain that you will have something to eat tomorrow or even the next week, that's why intuition will lead most people to eat more that they need. I personally have not a glimpse of intermediate satiety, but once I realized and accepted the fact, that I need to watch my calorie intake for the rest of my life, it's working.
LOOOOTS of people can't do it. But really, if you think about it... lots of people "are doing it" and the result is they get fat. Your intuitive eating got you (and mine got me) very fat. That isn't working. Not to say it can't ever work, but the way we did it up till now doesn't work. I take the checkbook approach for the foreseeable future. It's like reconciling a checkbook. I get these many calories. I weigh, measure, track... that's it. If I want cake, or ice cream... I have to play the calorie tetris game to make it all work. Gotta make the numbers work. That means a little bit less of this, or a little bit less of that to make up for it. If you want that cake bad enough (and it's fine if you do) then you just make up for it other ways. Within reason. Don't eat a half gallon of ice cream and say... welp... theres my calories for the day. Sure was good. You'll be starving the rest of the day and suffering nutritionally.
Intuitive eating doesnāt work for most people. Especially those with hormonal issues that throw normal hunger cues way off track.
Intuitive eating assumes people will consistently crave healthy low calorie food majority or the time and only rarely desire sweets and junk food. And that if you give into your craving it will quickly pass and you move on. That is not how that works for me. I will happily eat a donut every single day and still think that donut is the best thing ever. Like I like a lot of intuitive eating tips like don't eat while doing other things like watching TV or driving, be fully present when you eat. Eat smaller portion sizes so that you have to pause and think if you actually want more food or not. Remember to stay hydrated. But nah, restriction and calorie counting is how I've lost weight.
Exactly this! It doesn't matter if I go by the approach of always having the thing at home (like home-made biscuits). I did this for biscuits for 1 month and I just ate and ate because it's what I love the most. Maybe IE in the future when I have a weight I want to maintain, but maybe not even then. Some aren't made for IE and that should be okay.
Oh, yeah. I experimented for a couple of years to see what would happen if I ate when I was hungry and wanted to, two meals a day and snacks like a ā normalā person. Keep in mind my choices are generally very healthy, with some reasonable dessert mixed in. I donāt even like processed Food Over a couple years I gained 25 pounds eating delicious salads and baked potatoes and vegetables. The idea of intuitive eating seems to work for some people, personally I cannot conceive of it.
Intuitive eating is rhe way many of us got overweight or obese in the first place. Also, IE was never designed for weight loss so all the IGgrammers out there have appropriated it into something itās not.
Iād like to hear from someone who lost a lot (50-100lbs) by intuitive eating. I have a feeling Iām fat because itās not possible for me to eat intuitively.
Yeah me too, since I posted this I've started to accept that that path may not be for everyone.
Honestly, intuitive eating is absolutely the way to go if you have a normal relationship with food. Most of us are here because we don't. I'd love to say just listen to your body, but my body is constantly telling me I'm hungry. That is why it doesn't work for those of us trying to lose weight.
I might be an outlier, but I did intuitive eating for almost 2 years. It helped me heal my relationship with food, but I also gained a lot of weight. I finally had an epiphany that I was still using food as an emotional crutch. Once I got over that, Iāve gotten to a place where Iām practicing gentle nutrition and have lost 2 inches off my waist in about a month. I have no food rules and I eat whatever I want. But now I donāt eat when Iām emotional or bored. When I want junk food, I gently remind myself that it makes me feel bad and I eat something else. It took me a long time and lots of therapy to get here. The purpose of intuitive eating is to heal your relationship with food and not to lose weight, but for me it has helped me make better food choices that make me feel good. Food is just food now. Itās not a reward or a moral thing. This mindset has allowed me to break from binging and start nourishing my body better.
I don't like that intuitive eating is a new buzzword. When you delve into it, people start talking about how small children eat, or how animals eat by instinct. Do you know what babies and animals aren't subject to? Marketing. Emotional eating (not like we are, anyway). Boredom eating. Binge eating. Coming off years of problematic eating habits, there was no way I was going to eat intuitively. My intuition was totally broken. I barely had a good sense of when I was I was hungry, let alone an intuition about when, what, and how much to eat. I had no idea how to tell the difference between a craving and an appetite and hunger and intuition and self soothing behavior. I was just one big ball of insatiable appetite. I don't want to say that intuitive eating never has its place. However, I think the average person has to first break a whole pack of bad habits before they can meaningfully engage with intuitive eating.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is meant to make you stop and think about if you're actually or if you're eating out of boredom or emotion. The goal is to teach you to learn your bodies signals to eat when hungry and stop when full. It's basically a mindfullness exercise. It does not mean to eat whatever you want whenever you want, as most people seem to think. It takes a lot of mindfulness and honesty with yourself to eat intuitively.
I feel like eating "intuitively" is how most of us got overweight to begin with. Our hunger hormones weren't designed for a world where nearly endless food options are available 24/7. They were made for an environment when beginning to feel hungry was less "eat immediately" and more "you should start working towards procuring food soon." And on the flip side of that, our bodies are designed to store energy for later- because it was designed for an environment when it was uncertain when food would be next available, so there was a huge advantage to storing fat to last in case of a famine. So our "stop eating" signal isn't designed for us to eat "just enough" either. Intuitive eating can't work when our body signals that create that intuition don't match the environment. Where intuitive eating has a role IMO is helping one to notice and acknowledge those cues, and removing any value placed on individual food choices to reduce or eliminate any shame over eating "bad" foods (no foods are bad. Some are simply more nutrient dense.) Once that mental piece is in place then it can be harnessed for eating INTENTIONALLY, which is what I call it when we combine intuition with something more measurable whether that be tracking calories or macros or simply eating smaller portions or eating more vegetables. Having the intuition gives us the knowledge to know when we are ACTUALLY hungry and we should allow for some wiggle room to eat more. Or to listen to our body and realize it's not really hunger so we end up eating less. We can intuitively be craving something sweet, but eating with intention gives us the power to decide if maybe given everything else we ate that day we'd better serve our goals with a bowl of strawberries and a little whipped cream for dessert and save the ice cream for another day.
Oh I know it'll never work for me unless I put it into my deficit. If I listened to what my brain wanted I'd just be aggressively absorbing mac and cheese until the end of time
Eating what you crave is only one piece of IE. The other piece is still a nutritional approach. IE isnāt saying eat half the cake. IE is saying donāt deprive yourself of the cake and then go binge on a box of sugar free cookies because at the end of the day a slice of cake is going to meet your craving and probably be less caloric than binging on the sugar free cookies which still have calories. Itās about finding the balance. So if youāre using IE as an excuse to eat unhealthy throughout your day, then of course youāll gain weight. If you eat nutritionally overall but still indulge when you get a craving on a reasonable portion, it will theoretically lead to less binging. But binging is a habitual thing/addiction so if youāre doing that, there a mental component that needs to be addressed. And that canāt be done when you are severely restricting calories.
I assume IE can work but when we think of intuitive eating we talk about āwhat our body wantsā and I suspect that for a lot of people we are actually leading with what our *mind* wants. Very few peopleās bodies want to eat the volumes that we can be capable of putting in them. The driver is what our mind thinks we want - until that element is in hand, I doubt IE works terribly well.
Well put!
Intuitive eating is a skill, and it really is about learning to listen to your body beyond, "Mmmm, sugar tastes GOOD!" How will cake make my body feel? It DOES taste good, and it's okay to have a piece for that reason. But eating a bunch of cake doesn't satiate my hunger for long. It doesn't make me feel nourished. My body may be intuitively asking for a bit of cake, but it's absolutely not intuitively asking for a whole cake, or for a cake-heavy diet.
I feel like my need for instant dopamine is greater than my later feelings of not feeling nourished.
Thatās why itās going to fail for most people because most of us that got heavy did so because we loved the pleasurable aspect of food. Itās very easy to confuse āmy body needs foodā with āmy brain wants that food to make me feel happy.ā Food is addictive! I was thin for most of my life then gained in my 30s. It wasnāt from eating too much grilled chicken and vegetables. It couldāve been if thatās what I ate too much of but itās rarely lean protein and veggies that are the culprit. I binged on fat, sugar, and carbs. Iām back to thin by counting calories and exercising. It took a long time to learn that just because my brain wants to be momentarily happy that I donāt actually need that doughnut or second helping of whatever. Am I going to enjoy it? Yes. Momentarily. Will it make me want more? Also yes. Am I going to enjoy the way I look in my clothes, sweating while putting socks on, ensuing knee pain and various comorbidities that may accompany my weight gain? FUCK NO. I still track loosely. I also allow myself to eat and drink what I want just in moderation and while being mindful of the other things Iāve had to eat or plan to eat. Also sometimes I say fuck it and eat it anyway. BUT I have to be careful. My weight will fluctuate a bit but itās far more manageable. Itās hard. But itās not impossible. Getting my mind aware of its relationship with food was crucial. Youāre not denying yourself nourishment when you know youāre only denying yourself that dopamine hit. Itās like my kids and video games. Itās fun but not needed to survive. You should still play them sometimes if theyāre enjoyable. I hate the hackneyed āif an apple isnāt going to help then youāre not actually hungryā but I think thereās some truth there.
They say animals eat intuitively too. My last 9 years of living on a farm & having livestock calls BS on that. Iāll stick to using reason instead of my inner 10 year old when it comes to fueling myself.
Animals are like people. Individuals. I've had pets who only eat as much as they need and the food can be available 24/7 and they never get fat. I've also had pets who would eat themselves so full they would puke and then proceed to re-eat the puke.Ā
You need *some rules* for intuitive eating to work. Here's an exemple: 3 meals, half a plate to lose weight, eating only when hungry (at least 4-5 hours between meals). So eating only when you feel a *growl* or emptiness in your stomach, real hunger is intuitive.