What Is Intuitive Eating and the HAES Approach?

In eating disorder recovery, it’s highly recommended to work with a team that believes in and follows the practices of intuitive eating and the health at every size (HAES) approach.

Described as anti-diet and weight-inclusive, the intent is to restore your relationship with food and your body from a place of self-care while also understanding that dieting does not work and weight is not correlated with health. 

These two major perspectives are aligned, recognizing that our society’s focus on appearance and weight loss have only resulted in more physical and mental health issues. 

You can win the battle against dieting and poor body image by tuning into your own body, satisfying its mental and physical needs, and taking the focus off of your weight.  

What is the Definition of Intuitive Eating?

What exactly is intuitive eating? Developed by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, intuitive eating is an eating framework that combines instinct, emotion, and rational thought. 

With evidence and studies demonstrating the credibility of this eating model, intuitive eating is ultimately about integrating our body's inner wisdom with our mind’s knowledge.

We were all born with the skill to be competent eaters, each having the ability to rely on our internal cues like hunger, fullness, and satisfaction. The issue is that dieting gets in the way and that innate ability gets lost through dieting. 

Intuitive eating consists of 10 principles that work to help us restore our attunement with our body’s physical sensations AND remove any disruptors such as rules, beliefs, and thoughts we have about food that hamper our body attunement. 

Intuitive eating is a lifelong practice that focuses heavily on body awareness, so that we can honor both our biological and psychological needs by listening and responding to the information our bodies give us.

10 Principles of Intuitive Eating 

1. Reject the Diet Mentality: Let go of the belief that diets work and recognize they only offer a false hope. 

2. Honor Your Hunger: Remaining biologically fed sets the foundation for trusting your body and trusting yourself around food. 

3. Make Peace with Food: Give up the fight and allow yourself unconditional permission to eat. 

4. Challenge the Food Police: Respond with a loud “NO” to the thoughts that label food or behaviors as being “good” or “bad.”

5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor: Aim for a pleasurable eating experience by eating food that you want and truly feeling satisfied and content from it. 

6. Feel Your Fullness: By trusting that you have full permission to eat, you’re then able to honor your body’s fullness signals and become aware of when you’re comfortably full. 

7. Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness: Find ways to comfort and resolve your issues, difficult emotions, and feelings. Food may help short term, but it will not solve the problem.

8. Respect Your Body: Accept your natural body size and release unrealistic expectations or being overly critical about yourself. You are worthy and deserve respect regardless of your body size. 

9. Movement - Feel the Difference: Explore physical activity focusing on movement that makes you feel good, rather than militantly forcing yourself to exercise. 

10. Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition: You can eat foods that taste good while also honoring your health by including foods that make your body feel good. 

Intuitive Eating Is Not…

• A diet or food plan

• About counting calories, carbs, points, macros, or portions

• Used for the purpose of weight loss

• Based on pass or fail, rather it’s an empowerment tool for you to become the EXPERT of your own body

• ONLY eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. This is a common misconception and there’s so many more factors that play into eating. 

What Is the Health at Every Size Approach?

The health at every size approach is a movement that rejects the traditional weight-centered perspective, which typically uses weight, size, and BMI as determinants for health. The HAES approach offers an alternative, stating that a person’s weight or size is not indicative of their health status. 

In the book Health at Every Size the author Linda Bacon states that the “war on obesity” has resulted in “Food and body preoccupation, self-hatred, eating disorders, discrimination, and poor health.” 

HAES advocates for people of all sizes, working to end weight discrimination, improve access to health practices, and support better health behaviors with respect for body diversity.

Eating intuitively and physically moving your body in joyful ways are behaviors that positively impact overall health, regardless of weight. Weight is not a behavior.

HAES is a weight-inclusive approach to health AND it’s a social justice movement that acknowledges that social context has an influence on health behaviors. 

Recognizing health inequities helps reduce self-blame, considers life’s realistic circumstances, and sets the intention for finding compassionate ways to personally care for yourself. 

Health at Every Size Principles

1. Weight Inclusivity

2. Health Enhancement

3. Eating for Well-Being

4. Respectful Care

5. Life-Enhancing Movement

What can you do to participate in the HAES movement? Accept your size, trust yourself, adopt healthy lifestyle habits, and embrace size diversity.

Health at Every Size Research

Dieting and our culture’s fixation on weight loss and thinness actually CREATE health problems including:

• Adverse health and well-being

• Food and body preoccupation

• Lowered self-esteem, body dissatisfaction, and depression

• Weight stigmatization and discrimination in healthcare and society

• Repetitive cycles of weight loss and weight regain

• Distraction from other personal health goals

• Eating disorders and disordered eating

The research is evident that a HAES approach achieves MORE successful health improvements than dieting and weight-normative approaches do. 

Improved cholesterol, lower blood pressure, better self-esteem and body image, less disordered eating, increased physical activity, and no weight cycling are just a few of the outcomes associated with the HAES approach!

Connect with an Intuitive Eating, Ant-Diet, HAES Therapist

Dieting and disordered eating can feel impossible to break free from. The GOOD news is that freedom is possible! Working with a skilled therapist trained in eating disorders is vital to healing your relationship with both food and your body. 

If you are in search of a therapist who specializes in eating disorders, disordered eating, and healing your relationship with your body, please feel free to visit my website or email me to see if working together might be a good fit for you. My office is based in Salado, Texas, and I can provide virtual therapy services across the state of Texas.

Good on therapy? Great! I also have a weekly newsletter called Sunday Soothies you might be interested in signing up for. If you ever get a case of the Sunday Scaries, cozy up with your inbox every Sunday morning and soothe your way into your week! Join the Soothie Crew here.