What is Intuitive Eating?
- Cristina Luibil, MS, RD, LDN
- Aug 22, 2025
- 5 min read
How the Intuitive Eating Principles can help you build body trust and achieve food freedom.
Written by Sabrina Stadelman, Emily Edling, & Cristina Luibil, MS, RD, LDN
Intuitive Eating involves rejecting diet culture, learning to listen to your hunger and fullness cues and your satisfaction level, and giving yourself the freedom to eat any food without guilt or shame.
You may be wondering, how does this work? How do we unlearn all of the food rules that diet culture has been teaching us for years? Maybe trusting and listening to your body feels impossible.
At Aterra Nutrition, we’re here to let you know that achieving body trust and food freedom is possible. Many of us have spent years learning to distrust our bodies and ignore our hunger and fullness cues. We've been taught rigid rules around what, when, and how much we’re allowed to eat. But just as we have learned these rules, we can unlearn them, too.
The Intuitive Eating Framework
Intuitive Eating is a self-care approach that helps you listen to your body’s needs and let go of dieting/eating rules. Based on ten principles, it supports both physical and mental health while honoring all bodies.
The ten principles of Intuitive Eating all build on each other, and are designed to address diet culture, our relationships with food, and how to build a healthier mindset. They teach how to reject diet culture, honor hunger and fullness cues, and engage in gentle movement and gentle nutrition. Intuitive eating teaches us to nourish our bodies from a place of self-care and appreciation, rather than restriction and judgment. This mindset shift doesn’t happen overnight, but these principles can serve as a guide as you work towards shifting your mindset.
So, what are the Intuitive Eating Principles?
The ten Intuitive Eating Principles were created by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. The principles are:
Reject Diet Culture
Honor Your Hunger
Make Peach with Food
Challenge the Food Police
Discover the Satisfaction Factor
Feel Your Fullness
Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness
Respect Your Body
Movement- Feel the Difference
Honor Your Health- Gentle Nutrition.
The idea behind these principles is to reject any rules and judgements towards food and the body. The principles challenge us to recognize the ways we might still be following diet rules, labeling foods as "good" and "bad," and trying to change our bodies. They ask us to recognize when we might be letting these rules drown out the messages that our bodies are trying to send us. They challenge us to, instead, listen to our bodies and make note of our feelings and needs without judgment. These principles are important because it is difficult to eat intuitively and trust our body’s signals if we are still trapped in a diet mentality or hanging onto these external rules.
What Can This Look Like?
When we begin to apply these principles, we may notice changes in our habits, routines, and choices. We may recognize that the patterns that we thought were “healthy” may be rooted in diet culture. We may begin to notice times when we deny our bodies what they were asking for, simply because external rules tell us that we need to do a certain type of exercise every day or that we need to wait until a certain time to eat, even if we’re hungry before that.
For example, maybe you decide to go to a workout class, but for the first time, you begin to ask yourself why you chose this form of exercise. Is it because you enjoy it? Or is it because you think it’s what you “should” be doing? Are you choosing to exercise because you’re excited about it or know that it will make you feel good at that moment? Or would you rather rest, but you think you have to ignore that feeling and work out anyway to “burn off” something you ate or shrink your body? (To clarify, we don’t believe in “working off” calories or as punishment for enjoying food).
Another example is that you ate breakfast, but you find yourself feeling hungry midmorning. Your first instinct might be to tell yourself, “I need to wait until lunchtime”. However, when following the Intuitive Eating principles, we can check that thought and realize that our bodies may need more food and nutrients on some days and others, and having a midmorning snack is completely normal. We can realize that hunger is not something to fear or be ashamed of. It is okay if we feel more or less hungry at different times. If you ignore your hunger cues, you might feel tired, distracted, or anxious until “lunch time”. Instead, when eating intuitively, we can honor our hunger cue by eating a snack, then have the energy to move on with the rest of our day.
It can be tough to recognize these thoughts at first, and even tougher to challenge them and make changes. Many of us have been living with the diet mindset for so long that it can feel uncomfortable and even scary to let go of these rigid rules. However, growing into this new mindset and learning to respect, accept, and trust our bodies is so rewarding and freeing. Like anything new, intuitive eating takes practice and small steps, so be gracious with yourself. You won’t get it perfect every time, but every time you challenge the diet mindset, you are taking a step towards regaining trust in yourself and your body.
At Aterra Nutrition, we are always happy to talk to you about any or all of the ten principles of Intuitive Eating. We would love to work with you on your intuitive eating journey and support you in breaking free from the diet mentality and finding peace and freedom with food.
If you want to learn more about the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating and how they can apply to your life, check out all the ways Aterra Nutrition can support you.
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Disclaimer: The information shared in this blog is for general educational and informational purposes only. It may not be tailored to your specific health needs as it is written here. This content is not intended to replace personalized medical advice, nutrition counseling, or medical nutrition therapy. Any recipes or suggestions provided are meant to inspire and should be used at your discretion. Always consult with your own registered dietitian, physician, or healthcare provider before making changes to your nutrition, lifestyle, or treatment plan. If you choose, Aterra Nutrition would be happy to help you in your own, individual nutrition and intuitive eating journey.