Intuitive eating to lose weight?????

I can't do it. Eating that way is how I gained the weight in the first place. Of course it works for some people. But I don't have very good portion control unless I am counting calories.

It’s still all about calories to lose weight...those people you’re watching are still in a calorie deficit.

It's still about calories. People who lose weight while eating intuitively do so because they intuitively eat less calories than they burn.

Intuitive eating works for some people because they end up naturally eating the right amount of calories. Some people overeat due to boredom eating, or just shoveling food in while working or watching tv or playing with their phone. Paying attention and listening to their hunger signals helps them eat the right amount. Intuitive eating doesn't work despite calories, it works (for some) because of them, like everything else.

I wasn't really a mindless eater, and I'm really not intuitively good at anything . I'm numbers oriented so counting is comforting to me, I like to see the data and make it work.

You have to figure out how your brain works, and what "system" will get you into a calorie deficit with the least amount of stress and effort. For some it's calorie counting, for some it's following a specific diet or macro distribution, for some it's intuitive or mindful eating.

intuitive eating relies on the premise that the body will naturally tend towards an equilibrium, in terms of weight, AND that this equilibrium is 'healthy by how we define it currently.'

This ignores reality. Because intuitively, the body acts in the ways that will keep you alive long enough to breed, and unfortunately, the body developed in a world where you had to gain weight to survive times when food wasn't so plentiful. So staying the same size all year round is NOT what the body is trying to help us achieve. Which is why intuitive eating isn't workable, for most - our intuition is not geared for what we're currently trying to achieve.

From what I've read...
1. The body tends to make people hungry to maintain a minimum level of weight...so if you are the perfect weight, not eating unless you're body seems hungry might work. If you are trying to lose weight, however, your body will make you hungry until you stop losing weight and get back to the weight you originally were, if it can. It's a good survival trait, but not so great when people have food readily available all year round.

2. And many things can alter when your body gives hunger impulses. Gut bacteria, for example, have been shown to influence when the body gives hunger signals, in ways that can make you lose or gain weight if you listen to them, and whether your body is urging you to lose or gain weight depends on which bacteria your gut has.

3. There is little survival benefit for the human body to try to restrict weight gain. Because typically, weight gained during part of the year was needed to survive lean times during the winter, you know? It's a GOOD survival trait to be able to gain weight quickly when needed - until you live in a civilization where you get food consistently, where you aren't HAVING any lean times to take that weight off. Then, not so helpful.

4. Human beings also have a lot of instinctive behaviors that increase the likelihood that you will gain weight unless you are aware of them and going AGAINST your instincts, or at least heading them off at the pass. Like, for example, people will tend to eat the food in front of them, so the more food there is, the more we tend to eat. This can make it tricky to eat out without a little weight gain, if portion sizes are large. People are drawn to sugars and fats instinctively, because we're built that way - theories as to why are simply because these two things indicate more calories, and for a species trying to eat enough to survive, it's good to be drawn to calories sources so you don't starve to death.


So basically - our instincts/intuition is built to keep us alive in times when we needed to be able to hold onto whatever calories we came across, so we could survive the times when there are few calories to be found. And that's not a set of instincts that are going to be as useful when we're not in that situation.