Intuitive Eating is an approach to food that encourages you to listen to your body and what it’s saying. Basically, this is it in a nutshell:

Enjoy eating food. Not too much - not too little. Mostly what satisfies you.

Easy to remember, but quite difficult to do, especially with our current culture’s hyper-focus on image, perfect nutrition, and physical appearance. Though it might take more effort at first, it is possible to learn to eat intuitively.

Intuitive eating involves learning and applying 10 Principles. You learn to eat with attunement, rejecting a diet mentality and not using food as a way of coping. You pay attention to bodily hunger and satiety cues, letting your body signal you when you need nourishment. You learn to honor the body at any size as beautiful creations of God, instead of rooting your identity in an impossible body ideal. You can stop following food rules as if you were living in Old Testament days restricted by Levitical laws. You can make peace with food by allowing yourself to eat healthfully within realistic and sustainable guidelines and enjoy God’s gift of food instead of being enslaved by food rules.

In my practice, I use the Intuitive Eating Assessment in the toolkit below with clients to help them clarify their relationship with food and with their bodies. It is a useful tool to introduce people to Intuitive Eating and assess what to focus on in counseling.

If people in your care come to you with food issues, let them know Intuitive Eating exists as an alternative paradigm to dieting. If you suspect someone has a full-blown eating disorder, please refer him or her to a professional who is appropriately trained (i.e., physician, registered dietician, nutritionist, or mental health provider) who has experience working with eating disorders.