What Are The 10 Main Intuitive Eating Principles?

Juliet Kuehnle, MS, NCC, LPC

What Are The 10 Main Intuitive Eating Principles?

The 10 main intuitive eating principles are:

1. Reject the diet mentality. This idea that there’s got to be some diet that will work for you – often with lots of unreasonable rule.

2. Honor your health.

3. Honor your hunger. Keeping your body biologically fed with an adequate intake.

4. Make peace with food. The goal is for food (just like the scale or mirror) to not have power over you – there are no “shoulds or shouldn’ts”.

5. Challenge the food police. Food is not hierarchical. It’s not good or bad and neither are you for what you eat or don’t eat.

6. Respect your fullness. Checking in with yourself intentionally for your body’s physical cues.

7. Discover the pleasure factor of eating and food. Eating mindfully helps with this.

8. Honor your feelings without using food. Finding ways to comfort, nurture, and cope with emotions without using food.

9. Feel the difference in exercise. Shifting your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the caloric expenditure.

10. And finally, respect your body. Accepting yourself versus trying to manipulate your body or shame yourself.