Intuitive Eating is Listening to Your Body
Intuitive eating comes down to paying attention to your body, whether you feel sated, says explains Tracy L. Tylka, professor of psychology at Ohio State University who has extensively studied intuitive eating. Through her Intuitive Eating Scale, she notes four main characteristics of the approach:
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- Labeling no foods as forbidden.
- Avoiding emotional eating.
- Trusting the body’s hunger and satiety cues to guide food choices.
- Choosing foods that both make the person feel good in his or her body and taste good.
“At times, intuitive eaters may eat for reasons other than hunger, such as to try a certain food or go beyond a comfortable state of satiety when eating a tasty meal,” Tylka says. “However, these individuals typically do not stress about these minor deviations or feel the need to ‘compensate’ by restricting food intake elsewhere.”