Intuitive Eating: Tune In to Your Body's Hunger Signals

Hope Martine, a clinical dietitian who serves patients at OSF HealthCare, says we often view eating and weight loss in tangible terms. Calories consumed, pounds lost, different types of diets, good food and bad food.

An alternative: through intuitive eating, you can pay more attention to how your body feels.

“Intuitive eating is all about reconnecting to your body’s internal cues and signals about food,” Martine says. “Our bodies are naturally programmed to ignore those and focus on emotions about food or what we may believe is the truth about food or eating at a specific time.”

For example, we may think of noon as the cue to eat a full meal for lunch. Instead, notice when your stomach is grumbling, and eat until your body feels satisfied. Another cue is salivating when you think about or see food.

“Think about what our body is needing in that moment. That might be a full meal or just a snack,” Martine says.

“Learning your hunger and scaling it – putting a number to it – is a huge part of learning how to intuitively eat,” she adds. “We recommend never to let yourself get to that empty tank, that zero. But also, never let yourself get to that 10 where you’re uncomfortably full. It’s all about staying in that range, let’s say four to eight. You always feel energized, but you can also notice those signals from your body when you are getting hungry or full.”

Martine says this is a marathon, not a sprint. It may take a long time to get comfortable with eating based on your body’s cues. Intuitive eaters usually have less binge episodes. They may eat one cookie now instead of the whole bag later. Intuitive eating has also led to better body image, Martine says.

“Noticing the signals our body gives us about hunger helps us to value that aspect of our body. It helps erase feelings of shame or guilt about what our body looks like. We learn to respect and nourish our body rather than deprive it,” Martine says.

Martine notes the intuitive eating concept is still catching on in the medical community. So, talk to a dietitian or your primary care provider about how to eat and which foods are right for you based on their nutrients. A mental health professional can provide help related to the emotions of eating, like cravings or eating to cope with depression. Find healthy recipes on the OSF HealthCare website.

Any type of eating should be paired with exercise. Martine says the tenets of intuitive eating can apply there, too. She says exercise is another area that our bodies have changed for the worse due to the influence of media and culture. Rather, exercise is a naturally positive thing.

“We can shift focus during exercise to ‘How do I feel? Do I feel energized after this? Do I feel tired?’ Rather than ‘How many calories am I burning? Am I working hard enough?’ What that tends to do is lead people to want to exercise more,” Martine says.

More like this: