If you’re looking to develop a healthier relationship with food and your body, then Intuitive Eating is central to helping you achieve these goals. It is especially a good fit for people who have “tried every diet out there” or who hide from the camera at family reunions because they can’t stand how their body looks.

Working through Intuitive Eating by yourself can be daunting. It is currently a popular dieting catchphrase on social media and is surrounded by misinformation. Getting results from Intuitive Eating occurs more frequently when the patient is working with a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN) who is also a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor (CIEC).

In this article, you’ll learn more about Intuitive Eating and what it means to work with an RDN and CIEC to create a positive relationship with food and your body.

What Is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive Eating is a non-diet approach to eating that focuses on your body’s hunger and satiety cues. It teaches you how to eat, honor your body, and never have to diet again. Many people call this “Food Freedom.”

What Are the Principles of Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive Eating has 10 principles that guide you to becoming an intuitive eater. Becoming an Intuitive Eater involves a deep understanding and knowledge of each principle and how they make a difference in your everyday life. Working with an RDN and CIEC gives you the benefit of a reliable support system to make the change and become an Intuitive Eater. Below, we’ll provide a brief overview of what is included in a few of these principles.

Reject the Diet Mentality

One of the foundations of Intuitive Eating is that diets don’t work. Many people are chronic dieters, which makes changing the diet mindset a challenge. However, giving up dieting and diet culture is the first step to becoming an intuitive eater.

Honor Your Hunger

It’s common for people to become disconnected from their body’s cues, such as hunger signals. This disconnect makes it difficult to know when their body is hungry. “Honor Your Hunger” is a principle that teaches you how to reconnect with your body’s hunger signals so you know when to eat.

Make Peace With Food

Making peace means understanding that there is no “good” or “bad” food. Giving yourself access to foods you enjoy and permitting yourself to enjoy them helps to build trust with yourself, knowing you don’t have to restrict or stay away from certain foods to remain in control of what you eat. This principle can be frightening, especially when you’re used to strict food rules from chronic dieting. However, once you truly make peace with food, it loses its power over you.

Discover the Satisfaction Factor

The next principle focuses on finding satisfaction in the food you eat and the eating experience, including mindful eating. Discovering what makes a meal satisfying for you is one area of focus when addressing this principle.

Honor Your Feelings Without Food

This principle focuses on learning to honor feelings and emotions without food. When someone eats to dampen their feelings, often called emotional eating, the emotions are bound to return later, along with a dose of guilt for the food that was eaten.

Respect Your Body

The body does all the work your mind asks, from waking up to chasing children, preparing meals, and working out. This principle looks for ways to respect your body by acknowledging all it does for you while taking care of it and helping improve your body image.

What Is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor?

A Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor (CIEC) is a health professional who has completed the training to become a CIEC, including working through a self-study course, completing the Intuitive Eating PRO Teleseminar course, and completing group supervision. This training is based on content created by Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDS-S, Fiaedp, FADA, FAND – the founders of Intuitive Eating.

The training a CIEC receives enables them to guide clients in their area of practice (nutrition, counseling, etc.) through the lens of intuitive eating. A CIEC guides your intuitive eating journey from beginning to end.

Done properly, the entire journey is an extremely natural, sustainable change in eating patterns.

How Can a Dietitian Help With Disordered Eating?

Dietitians are critical in helping those with disordered eating, which involves behaviors and beliefs around food and exercise that negatively impact someone’s health. The behaviors and beliefs do not entirely compromise a person’s ability to function. Disordered eating behaviors are less rigid than those of someone with an eating disorder.

Dietitians help those with disordered eating by supporting them in liberalizing the foods they eat and normalizing their exercise routines. They provide education about how bodies use food to create energy and how foods are critical to health. Dietitians also counter beliefs about foods being “good” or “bad” and help clients increase their variety of foods and balance their eating.

How Does Intuitive Eating Help People With Eating Disorders?

The American Psychiatric Association defines an eating disorder as “behavioral conditions characterized by severe and persistent disturbance in eating behaviors and associated distressing thoughts and emotions. They can seriously affect physical, psychological, and social function.” Eating disorders take over someone’s life and dictate what, how, how much, and when they eat and exercise.

Intuitive Eating helps someone with an eating disorder by giving them the tools to reestablish a healthy relationship with food and their bodies. It can be especially helpful for people who suffer from binge eating. Additionally, an RDN who is also a CIEC and has advanced training in working with eating disorders helps patients dismantle their beliefs about dieting and diet culture and helps with their eating disorder recovery.

Should I Work With an Intuitive Eating Dietitian?

Many people work through Intuitive Eating on their own. However, having someone you trust to answer questions, provide support, and help you through the learning process means you’ll have a deeper understanding of the principles and how they apply to your life and specific circumstances. That’s why we recommend working with an RDN who is also a CIEC.

What Are the Benefits of Working With an Intuitive Eating Dietitian for Eating Disorders?

Working with an Intuitive Eating Dietitian specializing in working with those with eating disorders means working with a professional who takes a comprehensive mind and body approach. Using an Intuitive Eating approach can help those with anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating.

A few of the benefits you’ll gain when working with an RDN, CIEC include:

Improves Your Self-Esteem

Self-esteem improves when you let go of dieting and learn to overcome the associated guilt, anxiety, self-blame, and shame around food.

Improves Your Overall Quality of Life

You’ll no longer have to plan your day around your food and workouts. You’ll be able to eat out with your friends without worry. This improves your quality of life as you establish everyday eating habits.

Food is no longer “good” or “bad,” and you are not “good” or “bad” when eating previously restricted foods. Food is just food. As an intuitive eater, you eat the foods you want without guilt or shame.

Improves Body Image Healing and Body Appreciation

As you learn to respect your body, your body image heals, and you learn to appreciate all your body does for you.

Embarking on the Intuitive Eating journey while having an RDN and CIEC as your guide can make the journey smoother. Your RDN helps you understand and apply the principles to your life, answers questions, and helps you dig for deeper understanding.