By MARGARET SALA
Published: 18 July 2014

In our society, the pursuit of finding the perfect diet (whether to achieve thinness or for health reasons) never seems to end. From low fat to paleo to gluten-free, there is no shortage of diets promising weight loss and health. Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, advocates rejecting the diet mentality in favor of intuitive eating.

The premise of Intuitive Eating is that instead of following the latest fad diet, you should learn to respect your body’s hunger cues, as your body knows what foods and how much food you need to maintain a healthy weight and optimal health. Intuitive eaters possess four key characteristics: they eat for physical rather than emotional reasons, they rely on hunger and satiety cues to determine when and how much to eat, they give themselves unconditional permission to eat when hungry and what food they desire, and they honor their health (Tylka & Kroon Van Diest, 2013). Research indicates that intuitive eaters have better psychological health and healthier body weights (Van Dyke & Drinkwater, 2013).

Years of dieting can erode natural hunger and satiety cues and make it difficult to become an intuitive eater, so the book presents ten principles to help readers break free from dieting and reshape their eating habits. With principles such as giving yourself permission to eat when hungry, allowing yourself to eat the food you want, eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, relying on hunger and satiety cues, and forgoing militant exercise in favor of exercise you enjoy, Intuitive Eating aims to help readers put weight loss on the backburner in favor of focusing on becoming an intuitive eater. Using these principles, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch hope to help readers rebuild a healthy body image and make peace with food.

If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend checking it out. I suggest grabbing a more recent edition of the book, as it also addresses the science behind intuitive eating and how to raise an intuitive eater.

References:

Tylka, Tracy L, & Kroon Van Diest, Ashley M. (2013). The Intuitive Eating Scale–2: Item refinement and psychometric evaluation with college women and men. Journal of counseling psychology, 60(1), 137.

Van Dyke, N., & Drinkwater, E. J. (2013). Review Article Relationships between intuitive eating and health indicators: literature review. Public Health Nutr, 1-10. doi: 10.1017/s1368980013002139

photo credit: Kevin Raybon via Creative Commons