What are your thoughts on intuitive eating?

I think intuitive eating can certainly work but the likelihood is, if you had a weight problem in the past, mindful eating is probably a better starting point if you do not wish to progress with calorie counting. Although mindful eating and intuitive eating do have many similarities they are not strictly the same.

Mindful eating is where you do not count calories as such or weigh food etc but are conscious and purposeful the decisions you make when you come to food, portion control and so on. Once these habits become subconsciously ingrained you can transition to intuitive eating where you don't have to think about it any more and you can naturally maintain your weight.

I feel positively about both mindful and intuitive eating in the right context. Incidentally if you have athletic goals based around endurance events you could check out something like "Racing Weight" by Matt Fitzgerald to achieve your goals without the need for calorie counting.

I guess I am still confused on what intuitive eating is....

I eat without logging....intuitively.

I'm guessing you're not the only one:

Intuitive eating is an approach that teaches you how to create a healthy relationship with your food, mind, and body--where you ultimately become the expert of your own body. You learn how to distinguish between physical and emotional feelings, and gain a sense of body wisdom. It's also a process of making peace with food---so that you no longer have constant "food worry" thoughts. It's knowing that your health and your worth as a person do not change, because you ate a food that you had labeled as "bad" or "fattening”. 



The underlying premise of Intuitive Eating is that you will learn to respond to your inner body cues, because you were born with all the wisdom you need for eating intuitively. On the surface, this may sound simplistic, but it is rather complex. This inner wisdom is often clouded by years of dieting and food myths that abound in the culture. For example, “Eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full” may sound like basic common sense, but when you have a history of chronic dieting or of following rigid “healthy” rules about eating, it can be quite difficult. To be able to ultimately return to your inborn Intuitive Eater, a number of things need to be in place—most importantly, the ability to trust yourself!

From here: http://www.intuitiveeating.com/content/what-intuitive-eating

It is an alternative strategy to weight loss / maintenance which teaches a person to realign themselves with the body's natural feedback loop in the event that this has been overridden by other learned habits / behaviours.

Obviously it's not just eating without logging calories...

And to me, when I read all that, it sounds like eating without logging and a whole lot of other fluff thrown in.

I agree with those that said it, intuitive eating was what got me fat in the first place.

I would be having a whole bag of toasted coconut covered marshmallows for dinner tonight if I was eating intuitively. At this point I'm not so much concerned with too many calories, but I don't want to eat a meal that doesn't help me meet my macro goals. "Is there enough protein in my breakfast?" is something I ask myself every day. If I wasn't planning, logging and measuring I wouldn't be sure.

I agree with those that said it, intuitive eating was what got me fat in the first place.

I would be having a whole bag of toasted coconut covered marshmallows for dinner tonight if I was eating intuitively. At this point I'm not so much concerned with too many calories, but I don't want to eat a meal that doesn't help me meet my macro goals. "Is there enough protein in my breakfast?" is something I ask myself every day. If I wasn't planning, logging and measuring I wouldn't be sure.

If your body is asking for marshmallows for dinner, you're probably listening to the wrong part.

You should be able to learn to use intuition and intelligence at the same time. Not that eating marshmallows is stupid, but you don't have to throw out knowledge to use intuition.

That's why it needs to be controlled intuition. Oftentimes I see some kind of a high calorie snack in the kitchen and intuitively I would just pick it up and eat it before I was considering weight loss. Now when I do I ask myself "do I really want this? Is it worth the cut from my calorie budget?" and if the answer is yes I just pick it up and eat it, and I often do, but on many other occasions I surprise myself with the realization "nah.. I don't even like it that much". The desire and the craving goes away. So basically it wasn't intuition, it was a force of habit.

I think a lot of people are confusing intuitive eating with emotional eating or overeating out of boredom. Intuitive eating involves learning true hunger signals. Many people mistake boredom or emotional hunger signals for true hunger signals, and therein lies the problem.

Skinny people have two things going for them: physiology and habits.

Physiologically, their bodies are very good at telling them when they're full and when they're hungry. They know when they're full and stop eating. Eating too much makes them uncomfortable.

As far as habits go, they only eat one slice of pizza instead of the entire pizza because that's what they've always eaten. They don't upsize their fries because they've always ordered a small.


My hunger-fullness cues are broken. I can never get too full and as a result can just keep on eating. Habits I can change. I now know it's perfectly fine to have a slice of pizza. I also know it's dumb to eat the entire pizza. In my weight loss journey I've focussed on making long lasting habits that eventually became second nature. I don't count calories but I am cognizant of the calories in various foods and also can visualize what a decent portion size is. This can work, but you have to be really honest with yourself.

Wow talk about a bunch of ridiculous generalisations about thin people... Personally I am never full and could continue to eat but I don't because I know I will get fat. I never eat only one slice of pizza and could easily eat a whole pizza (and have) but I don't because I don't want to get fat. Eating never makes me uncomfortable. People of all sizes have the same issues it is just a matter of how they deal with them.

I never did say I wasn't generalizing though. I'm talking about skinny people who never have to diet or watch what they eat yet remain skinny. From my observations skinny people eat less because their bodies are good at telling them when to stop and they also have good habits whether they know it or not. My body is not good at telling me when to stop and as a result I can keep on eating.

They may not diet per say but that doesn't mean they aren't actively watching what they eat. Maybe they eat less because they are actually doing it on purpose not because of some bodily response? This type of generalisation fosters the attitude that most thin people are just lucky and it has nothing to do with how they actively manage themselves and I am sure most do. I have the same impulses as most and could eat for days but I don't and that is an active mental choice nothing to do with what my body is telling me as it is usually screaming "MOARRR!!!". People don't like it when others generalise about overweight people being lazy so why is ok to do the same about those that are thin minimising the effort (that you might not be aware of) that they maybe putting in?

I see intuitive eating as an artform. The process, as laid out by certain proponents, is not an approach that I can adopt fully, but it has a lot of merit anyway, and it has brought mental peace to thousands of people (many of whom weren't losing weight with tracking anyway), so it is most certainly a priceless contribution. For me, I don't believe in the HAES idea. My body feels good in a certain weight range, and I prefer to be in that range. But I stopped logging a long time ago and have lost more and improved my body composition since then. I dislike logging for many reasons, chief among them being that it is a serious pain to try to do well when you home cook everything (I basically end up underestimating as Nia Shanks points out).

That being said, if you define intuitive eating as eating whatever you want, whenever you want, then no, it's not a good approach and you most likely will not lose weight. I incorporate intuitive eating as learning to love the foods that love me back. Foods that love me back are foods that promote lean satiety, the experience of enduring fullness without energy crashes on relatively few calories. These foods also tend to make me feel better in general. If I just eat rapid-release carbs all the time, I will get hungry frequently. Within IE, they would tell me that's okay, go ahead and eat the white bread. This is where my path differs because I have genuinely come to feel like I don't want to eat foods that will physiologically make me feel hungry again in just two or three hours. And those foods just generally don't make me feel well overall anyway. This is has been a revelation for me, so much better than the constantly compressed feeling that I had when I was logging. I have learned to choose what leads to a lower weight, not because I 'should' or I need to stay within my quotas, simply because I genuinely feel better.

I should also mention that a family member of mine has maintained a 30+ lbs loss for ten years with IE.

At the end of the day, it is simply a math equation, if you do not know the number you are either gaining weight that day or losing weight. I eat with a purpose, to either get leaner, or build muscle (depending on if I am cutting or bulking), you cannot intuitively cut or bulk, you will simply spin wheels unless you go to the extreme and just over eat on your bulk. As far as maintaining goes, I do not intend to maintain, I need progress or I will find complacency and get fat as hell again. I do not want to be ok with where I am, I want to be better everyday.... so the numbers are critical to me, to those with other goals in life where fitness is secondary or lesser, it won't matter.