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5 Myths About Intuitive Eating a Dietitian Is Sick of Hearing - Well and Good
Back in 1995, dietitians Evelyn Tribole, RDN, and Elyse Resch, RDN, disrupted diet culture with a simple, yet revolutionary idea for fueling your body: intuitive eating. The nutrition lifestyle—which recommends tuning into your instincts, emotions, and thoughts in order to decide what to eat—sparked a bestselling book, as well as workbooks for both teens and adults. The goal was to get people (particularly those recovering from eating disorders) to re-approach how they eat and live in a way that doesn’t focus on weight or body image.
The idea flies in the face of traditional “diets,” which typically encourage restriction of some kind (whether that’s eating less food, fewer carbs, or zero of a specific food group) and following specific, inalienable rules in order to lose weight and maintain health. As such, myths abound about intuitive eating even 25 years after its formal creation.
Intuitive eating-focused dietitian Taylor Wolfram, RDN, believes that the confusion around the lifestyle stems from people misunderstanding its very definition. “One really succinct way of describing it that the creators use—at least in how they present it to clinicians—is that intuitive eating is a dynamic interplay between instinct, emotion, and thought,” says Wolfram. But even that can feel very vague and confusing, especially when we as a society are used to having to follow rules and guidelines around nutrition.
Back in 1995, dietitians Evelyn Tribole, RDN, and Elyse Resch, RDN, disrupted diet culture with a simple, yet revolutionary idea for fueling your body: intuitive eating. The nutrition lifestyle—which recommends tuning into your instincts, emotions, and thoughts in order to decide what to eat—sparked a bestselling book, as well as workbooks for both teens and adults. The goal was to get people (particularly those recovering from eating disorders) to re-approach how they eat and live in a way that doesn’t focus on weight or body image.
The idea flies in the face of traditional “diets,” which typically encourage restriction of some kind (whether that’s eating less food, fewer carbs, or zero of a specific food group) and following specific, inalienable rules in order to lose weight and maintain health. As such, myths abound about intuitive eating even 25 years after its formal creation.
Intuitive eating-focused dietitian Taylor Wolfram, RDN, believes that the confusion around the lifestyle stems from people misunderstanding its very definition. “One really succinct way of describing it that the creators use—at least in how they present it to clinicians—is that intuitive eating is a dynamic interplay between instinct, emotion, and thought,” says Wolfram. But even that can feel very vague and confusing, especially when we as a society are used to having to follow rules and guidelines around nutrition.