Oh and while you’re here, I help women free themselves of the agonizing cycle of dieting and food restriction and help them start fueling themselves properly to look and feel their best. If you’re new here, I invite you to start my free 5 day clean eating challenge. In the challenge you get a meal plan with recipes, a grocery list, cooking tips, and daily health tips to keep you motivated. 

What is intuitive eating 

Intuitive eating is really just being mindful of what you’re eating and what you’re putting in your body and listening to the physical and mental cues that you get for hunger and fullness. 

Why is intuitive eating important?

With intuitive eating, you can trust yourself to eat not only food that’s good for you, but the right amount of food, which is easily the most difficult part.  

When you are trying to lose weight or stay within a certain body composition, tracking calories or macros is a great way to know what you are putting in your body and how much you are truly eating.  I actually recommend it for people just starting out on a weight loss journey.  

That being said, those who track their calories or macros know… that stuff can take a lot of time and energy.  Some might find it really difficult over time to maintain doing so.  As an alternative, being able to eat intuitively (and still achieve your health and fitness goals) will alleviate the agony and annoyance of tracking your food daily.  

It’s freeing honestly, to eat intuitively.  It feels like, “OK I can just trust that my body and mind know what’s good for me, what and when I need to eat, as well as when I don’t.” And that just feels really empowering.  For many, it’s the ultimate goal.

Who is intuitive eating for?

If you are a complete beginner, start here. This challenge will help you develop your baseline knowledge. Then, bookmark and come back to this post.

If you want the fast track to results – nutrition coaching is the way to get your there. (Even I once had a coach and it made a world of difference).

Intuitive eating is not for people who are complete beginners to nutrition. I do believe it requires a baseline knowledge of how and when to eat, as well as the ability to spot your triggers or patterns that can lead you off your plan.

For example, I know that I need a good amount of protein every day because of how I train and how active I am and I also need complex carbohydrates every day in order to feel energized. I know keto would not work for me because I don’t get enough carbohydrates in with how active I am. These little nuances of knowledge and nutrition knowledge really are very valuable when it comes to being successful with intuitive eating. 

If you don’t have that baseline, I recommend working with a coach.  It’s the fastest way to learn what you need to know to get to a place of food freedom with intuitive eating.

How do you start intuitive eating?

Say you want to lose 5 lbs in the next month without worrying about counting calories, macros, or going sugar-free for X amount of days (which can lead feelings of deprivation). How do you lose that weight through intuitive eating?  I’m here to help guide you to start intuitive eating, let’s dive in. 

5 Ways to Start Intuitive Eating for Complete Beginners

Step 1: Track what you are eating today. 

First you need to know if you are under or over eating. You might think just because you need to lose weight you are automatically overeating but that’s not always the case. I actually do recommend tracking your intake of food for about three days and that should do it, just to give you a baseline of where you’re at. 

The reason I recommend this is because we typically don’t accurately guess how many calories we truly consume.  

The easiest way to do this is to use an app.  Download MyFitnessPal or MyNetDiary (this is what I use) and it is super easy to just type in the food that you’re eating and how much.  If you can weigh your food for more accuracy that’s great, if you can’t just do your best. 

Step 2:  Add in more lean protein, fresh veggies, and some fruit each day. 

You probably know this one already but here are some great resources if you aren’t sure what to eat.  

Macro Food List For Meal Prep

What Does a Healthy Meal Look Like Anyway?

How to Eat Clean for Beginners Losing Weight

Step 3: Eat slowly

Remember those physical and mental cues I mentioned?  Things like the hunger pangs, tiredness, irritability, or feeling stuffed are all cues you can pay attention to when you eat intuitively.  Of course, once you’re full, that’s when you stop.  

When you eat slowly, you are able to follow your cues from hunger to satiety more closely.  So slow down, chew your food, and savor the flavor. 

Step 4: Pause eating at 80% full 

If you can’t seem to find your sweet spot with step 3, try pausing once you notice you’re about 80% full.  This is something I did when I was first starting which helped a lot.  

With practice this gets easier and you will start to notice that 80% full creeping up as you eat.  Take a moment to put your fork down and see how you feel. If you still need to eat, go ahead, but if you think you can stop there, put the rest away and eat it later.  

Step 5:  Eat at regular intervals

Has this happened to you? You walk into the break room, take one whiff of the lunch your coworker is heating up and all the sudden realize your starving.  This means you went too long between meals.  Once you hit the point of no return, your decision making severely declines.  If you see a cookie, you eat a cookie.  Right?  Right.  

For anyone with strong hunger (hangriness), I recommend eating on a regular schedule.  Try to avoid delaying your meals longer than 4 hours.  Once you get into the 4+ hour territory, you might start to really feel the hunger.  When that happens it can be sneaky so make sure to plan ahead and eat 5-6 smaller meals a day. 

A great place to start your intuitive eating journey is by joining my clean eating challenge.  This challenge is jam-packed full of valuable tips you can apply immediately, even if you don’t finish the full 5 days.  I promise you’ll get a ton of value even if you just follow along.