Explained: Intuitive Eating
Intuitive eating is the final boss of nutrition. It’s where everyone wants to be, regardless of their lifestyle or their diet.
And it’s exactly how it sounds: you’re eating based on how you feel and you’re able to make educated decisions that support a healthy lifestyle. And all without ever needing to track your food.
Sounds pretty sweet, right??
Well buckle up, cause in this article, I’m gonna become Mr. Meany Pants and slightly tear down that fantasy.
INTUITIVE EATING
Intuitive eating is a real thing, there’s no questioning the fact that you CAN get to the point in nutrition literacy where you don’t need to track your calories, macros, etc. But it’s a little more complicated than just “loving yourself and listening to your body”.
You see, most people already “intuitively eat”, their eating habits are directly based on their emotions within the given moment. When someone’s stressed, they order doordash or resort to a quick microwavable meal. And when someone’s depressed, they turn to sweets like chocolate or ice cream. Sometimes, we don’t even need to have any particular emotion to warrant the want for calories - how many people blindly graze through their cupboards or the snack station at work when they’re bored and lookin to kill time?
Intuitive eating is marketed as a way to “break away from diet culture”. Which, I do agree… to some extent. “Toxic” diet culture really sucks, where food restriction is at its highest and self esteem is at its lowest. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve done carnivore, keto, and even veganism, and I did them each at their extremes. But the thing about intuitive eating is that most people don’t possess the skillset required to properly intuitively eat.
Yes… I said “skillset”.
How can you eat based on how you feel and sustain a healthy lifestyle if you’ve 1) never learned about nutrition and 2) never tracked your calories?
The reason why those are important is because when you’ve spent enough time tracking and learning which foods contain which type of nutrients, which foods have this many calories, and how to fit those foods into your diet, then you’ll be able to properly shift away to a “how I feel” based approach. You’ll know how to fit certain foods into your diet. If you’re planning on going out to eat later in the day, you’ll know how to swap in lower calorie foods for your breakfast and/or lunch so that you’ll have more calories saved for dinner. You’ll also know which foods make you feel good, which foods make you feel full, which foods help with your cravings, and you’ll know which foods give you the most energy.
If I took the average person off the street and asked them to intuitively eat, nearly everyone would just continue with their current habits. And that’s not a bad thing per say, but at least in America, our obesity rate is only growing, despite all the information on health and fitness and nutrition being widely available. Most people today are emotionally tied to their food, which is a whole other topic I’ll save for another day.
But the point is, education vs application are two different things. Sure, you can learn about nutrition, but unless you’ve actually applied what you’ve learned, you’re not going to see any results. You may have read that you need x amount of protein to retain/build muscle, but unless you’ve tracked your food and consistently hit your macros, you’ll realize hitting your protein on a consistent basis isn’t as easy as it sounds.
You’ll know what portion sizes contain x amount of protein. You’ll know which foods contain the most fiber. And you’ll know which foods are highest and lowest in calories.
But Randy, I’ve seen people who’ve never tracked a day in their life! Why does it work for them?
There’s a couple of reasons for that.
1. Some people are born into a household where good nutritional habits are instilled early on. Perhaps their parents were health conscious and taught their kids to never stress about the food they eat or that it’s not necessary to stuff yourself. I know a lot of us grew up with the famous rule of finishing everything on your plate, regardless of how full you already are. This commonly leads to, as we see all the time, when a kid grows up, he/she can become conditioned to think that regardless of their fullness, if there’s food on their plate, they have to finish it - another reason why eating based on “how you feel” doesn’t always work.
2. Some people just have less of an appetite than others. For some, they don’t feel as hungry throughout the day, and they don’t really get cravings. I remember I once had a coworker who told me that if they could just skip eating altogether, and take a pill instead that contained everything she needed, she’d take it. Genetics can play a role in hunger too, and some people are predisposed to be hungrier than others, but your overall environment and habits will have the largest involvement.
Okay, so then how do I intuitively eat the right way?
Before I give you that answer, and lay out a plan you can follow, I want to state that there isn’t a set amount of time required to become nutritionally literate. It can take one person a lot longer than another, which is why I don’t want you to think of tracking as a pitatihtdetidwtdi (PainInTheAssThingIHaveToDoEvenThoughIDon’tWantToDoIt). Tracking is meant to be used solely as a tool, and I want you to use that tool to really educate yourself on the subjects we covered earlier.
So with that said, now I’m gonna give you a thoroughly laid out plan designed to get you to nutritional literacy. Here we go!
Step #1 - Track everything you consume
I want you to download a tracking app. Whether it’s myfitnesspal, cronometer, or myfatsecret, that’s up to you, but I want you to log everything you eat - down to every morsel.
Note that when you create an account, the app will give you calorie targets, these are typically inaccurate. Feel free to reference my calories & macros article for determining what your targets should be!
The goal here is two parts. 1) to familiarize yourself with food logging and 2) to learn about your habits. A lot of us unconsciously consume food throughout the day and if the goal is weight management, unknowingly consuming 500 calories from crackers and almonds from the break room certainly won't make your efforts any easier.
But when you’re tracking, at first, don’t worry about what your calories say. If you go over your listed targets, that’s fine. The point here is to get yourself familiar with the process of tracking. So, I want you to log in your meals, create recipes, and get into the habit of pre-logging your days in advance. And while you're tracking, use this time as an opportunity to educate yourself on which foods fill you up more and which foods contain more volume.
And by volume, I’m referring to the foods that you can eat more of for less calories. 1 large avocado that weighs 7oz will have around 320 calories whereas 16oz of strawberries is only 150 calories. Both foods are highly nutritious btw, but one contains way more calories than the other. This is what we call “caloric density” where a food item may contain a high number of calories, but not a lot of actual volume. A single Big mac has 550 calories - and I can eat that in probably three bites.
So when it comes to managing hunger, prioritizing high volume foods such as berries, leafy greens, peppers, broccoli, potatoes, and apples to name a few, in conjunction with a high protein intake, can make the whole process way easier.
Step #2 - Adjust your diet accordingly
We want to make sure you’re actually enjoying the foods you’re consuming. You ain’t gotta eat chicken breast and tilapia to build muscle and you don’t have to only eat boiled broccoli to lose weight.
I mean, you can I guess, but for me personally, that’s a big a** no.
Open yourself to different foods and recipes. One thing I highly recommend is sitting down and writing out at least 7 go-to meals that easily fit into your macros - this means they fit into your total calories and can make hitting your macronutrient targets easier. The reason I want you to have a select group of curated meals is because having some level of consistency in your diet will make staying within your calories ten times easier than just having everyday be different. This is especially true when you eventually move away from tracking; Going back to how some people can manage a healthy bodyweight without tracking, the fact is, a lot of them eat the same foods on a pretty regular basis. When you make every day different, it makes not only hitting your macros way harder than it has to be, but staying in your calories harder as well.
Now I’m not telling you to eat the same things every day, but I want you to try to make a list of meals that you can cycle through. It also doesn’t have to be every meal that you do this - start with maybe just breakfast, or lunch. Create 7 breakfasts or 7 lunches that you can cycle through. The other benefit to this is that creating these meals will further teach you about how different foods can offer more volume than others, so you can learn how to increase a meal's portion sizes while controlling the calories.
Step #3 - Continue tracking and collect biofeedback
Biofeedback is basically the “how you feel” portion of this. This is where you’re monitoring your hunger, energy, cravings, sleep, digestion, and workout performance. The importance of biofeedback is that it’ll tell you when you’re doing something right, as in you have great everything, and when you’re doing something wrong, as in everything kinda sucks.
If your hunger for example, is a constant 8-9/10 and you can’t stop thinking about food, then that may mean that 1) maybe your portion sizes are too small and you could stand to increase them 2) perhaps you’re not eating as frequently as you should (are you fasting?) 3) maybe you’ve set your calories too low and could stand to increase them.
If your sleep quality is ehh, 1) are you eating a large meal before bed 2) are you consuming alcohol not long before bed 3) do you snack during the night and 4) did you drink a ton of water before bed?
If your workout performance (endurance, power output, energy) is lacking, a couple questions you could ask yourself is 1) am I consuming enough carbs beforehand 2) did I consume a large heavy meal before the workout which could be slowing me down 3) am I properly hydrated 4) did I get enough sleep last night 5) did I consume something either really fatty or something high in fiber (both slow digestion and could impact workout performance).
Here, you’re using tracking to collect personal data. You’re fine-tuning your diet/lifestyle to eventually create a plan that doesn't really feel like a plan. Eventually, you’ll know which foods provide you with the most fullness and which foods help curb your cravings. You’ll also start to pick up on which practices and habits lead to you feeling your best. For example, maybe prioritizing getting to bed a little earlier helps with your sleep, and consuming a small source of carbohydrates really helps with your workout performance. Maybe you’ve discovered that pairing a sweet of your choice with a protein or fiber source both helps with your cravings, but also creates a sense of balance.
So for this process, here are the metrics I want you to focus on
Sleep Quality
Hunger / Fullness
Daily Energy
Cravings
Workout Performance
You’re going to rate each of these based on a numerical score out of 10, so as an example, if your hunger is an 8/10, that means you’re really effing hungry and could stand to adjust your eating habits. We don’t want to be hungry all the time, we don’t want to have poor sleep, and we certainly don’t want every workout to feel like a drag. Now some hunger, especially during a calorie deficit, is expected. But if your hunger is hijacking your focus, that’s a sign a change needs to be made.
If you can eventually create a plan to where everything falls more into a 4-5/10, that’s a good sign you’re doing everything right.
Step #4 - Moving away from tracking
By this point, you’ve spent a ton of time not only tracking your calories, but educating yourself on the foods you eat, how to manipulate your diet to curb cravings and promote good energy, and what foods offer which nutrients, both macro and micro.
And btw, this whole process isn’t done in a week or a month. This whole process should take at the very least, a full year. To get a full clear understanding on how to structure your diet so that you don’t end up regaining weight and/or knowing which foods in which quantities allow you to hit your protein/fiber goals, takes a lot of time. So don’t think that just because you’ve loosely tracked for a month, that you’re now ready to move on from tracking.
Intuitive eating is a skill, remember.
Everyone intuitively eats, everyone eats based on how they’re feeling. The problem is, most people don’t have the habits down or the appropriate environment to warrant good health. That’s why you’re going on this journey - to instill new habits that will warrant good health.
And I’m not gonna end this by just telling you to stop tracking cold turkey, though you do technically have that choice. Once you’re 100% confident in your knowledge and ability to make/sustain good choices, sure, you can quit.
But even in this final stage, I personally do think that keeping tracking as an occasional tool is a good idea. For example, let’s say 2-3 years down the line, you want to lean out for a vacation; get back into tracking for a couple weeks just to fine tune your nutrition. Or let’s say at some point, you’ve taken an interest in a sport; maybe use tracking to shape your nutrition to best suit that endeavor?
At this stage, some people never touch tracking again, but some do keep their apps installed, even if they only open them once per year. If you never track again, no problem! That’s all up to you.
But hopefully by this point, your knowledge on nutrition should be far more advanced than the average individual. You now know how to get 100g of protein, how to get 30g of fiber, which foods fill you up the most, which foods you should limit due to their high calorie content, which foods are easy to overeat, which foods are harder to overeat, which foods give you the best digestion and which don’t, and how to increase the portion size of your meal without adding a lot of extra calories.
So while you CAN go the rest of your life without ever tracking again, I do hope your relationship to tracking has changed as well. Because I want not only you, but everyone who goes through this journey to think of tracking as nothing more than a tool, just like how a hammer’s a tool. It’s not a lifestyle, it’s not indicative of your self worth, and it certainly shouldn’t make you feel poorly about yourself. Tracking is an optional tool, that’s it.
You can use it to fine tune certain details, but that’s it.
Hope this article helps! Talk soon,
-R
