1. Rejection of Diet Mentality: Intuitive eating begins with discarding the diet mentality. This means saying goodbye to the cycle of dieting, guilt, and restriction and instead focusing on the body’s natural hunger and satiety cues. Individuals can liberate themselves from the pressure and stress of dietary rules and regulations by rejecting the idea that there’s one “perfect” way to eat.

2. Honor Your Hunger: Honoring your hunger is a fundamental principle of intuitive eating. It involves recognizing and respecting your body’s biological signals for hunger. By eating when you’re genuinely hungry, you help maintain your body’s energy levels and prevent excessive hunger that can lead to overeating.

3. Make Peace with Food: Making peace with food is about giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. This principle asserts that when you stop categorizing foods as “good” or “bad”, you’ll naturally balance out your eating habits over time. It aims to eliminate feelings of deprivation, often leading to overeating or binging.

4. Respect Your Fullness: Intuitive eating encourages you to listen to your body’s signals that tell you when you are comfortably full. This means eating mindfully, savoring each bite, and noticing when your body has had enough food. You’ll foster a healthier relationship with food and your body by respecting your fullness.

5. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food: Intuitive eating acknowledges that food is often used to cope with emotions. This principle involves finding ways to comfort, nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. It’s about recognizing that emotional eating doesn’t ultimately solve emotional problems—it usually makes them worse.