Given that the ironic result of most weight-loss diets is weight gain, it made sense for someone to come up with a new and achievable approach to eating that prioritized health. That someone was actually two ‘someones’ – Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
The two American dieticians and nutritionists first collaborated on the 1995 best-seller Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program that Works. Now in its fourth printing and having sold over 700,000 copies, it sparked a… well, perhaps not a revolution, but certainly a remarkable shift in wellness culture specifically, and the culture at large. That shift encouraged people to stop counting calories and to instead be more accepting of their body and more mindful of what, why, and, yes, how much they eat. It also, unfortunately, inspired a number of imitators to hijack Tribole and Resch’s work in order to – you guessed it – sell it back to people as dieting advice. Talk about irony.
What Is Intuitive Eating?
The New York Times dubbed it “the cornerstone of the modern anti-diet movement” in an article published last fall. At its heart, intuitive eating (IE) is about rethinking our relationship with food and exercise. There’s no fasting, no counting of calories, and no killing yourself at the gym. Simply put, you can eat what you want, when you want, and how much you want. But you have to enjoy what you’re putting in your mouth and you have to listen to your body’s signals to stop when you’re full. Easier said than done, granted. The idea is that giving yourself permission to eat foods that you love and crave gives them less power over you and makes you less likely to binge on them. Incorporating regular movement into your daily routine is also part of the plan.
What It Isn’t
Intuitive eating is not a strategy for weight loss. That may come, if the 10 principles Tribole and Resch lay out in their book are actually practiced, but the end result is even more important: a healthier relationship with food and your body, as well as better mental health. Multiple studies have also shown a generally lower body mass index among intuitive eating practitioners (although BMI is now seen as a flawed measure of health).
Who Are the Imitators?
Tribole and Resch’s book struck a nerve at a time when low-fat eating was seen as the key to both healthy eating and healthy book sales. So it made sense that health professionals and coaches would co-opt their message to sell their own weight loss schemes. That’s why the duo started a program in 2007 to train ‘Certified Intuitive Eating Counselors’ to spread their message intact and not pervert it.
The intuitive fasting movement’s ongoing notoriety (the NYT article cited 1.4 billion mentions of it on TikTok) continues to ‘inspire’ writers like functional medicine expert Dr. Will Cole, whose 2021 book Intuitive Fasting had a foreword by actressturned-wellness-ambassador Gwyneth Paltrow.
What Are the Concerns?
The upsides of intuitive eating seem to greatly outweigh any major concerns. The latter do exist, but these primarily occur when Tribole and Resch’s principles are misinterpreted or misused. For instance, some people continue to mistake intuitive eating as a weight loss program, despite the authors’ insistence that it isn’t. So, just as expectations are premeditated resentments, practitioners who expect to drop a few dress or pant sizes by eating intuitively may be disappointed. Likewise, IE is not a license to eat as much as you want, whenever you want, without consequences. Remember, garbage in, garbage out.
Why It Remains So Popular
The pressure to get thin and/or not gain weight is near constant in Western culture. Even before social media, talk shows regularly programmed weight loss ‘experts’ touting easy-to-follow diets; movies featured the young and fi t and cast anyone who wasn’t as a slob or comic foil; and celebrity culture in the form of magazines, red carpets, and supermarket tabloids presented aspirational figures, especially actors and athletes, whose beautiful bodies were the results of deprivation and near maniacal self-absorption. Now, with social media, diet culture has become toxic, with TikTok perpetuating bad health messaging to the vulnerable, especially teens and young adults.
Intuitive eating rejects diet ‘rules’ and offers people the freedom to actually enjoy eating. No longer do you have to worry that every forkful will drive you further from your ideal body because there is no ideal body; there is only your body. And, yes, you are responsible for what you put in it and for listening to its needs (like giving it nutritious foods and putting down the fork when you are full). But, for once, you won’t be blamed for breaking the rules that other people are trying to sell you. And that lesson is not necessarily intuitive.
Sean Plummer | Contributing Writer
