Intuitive eating

Intuitive eating is a nutrition philosophy based on the premise that becoming more attuned to the body's natural hunger signals is a more effective way of losing weight than counting calories, fat grams, or satiety levels.

Exactly when the intuitive eating movement began can be argued, and probably never resolved. One of the earliest pioneers may have been Gwen Shamblin, who founded The Weigh Down Workshop in 1986. The workshop and her books approach intuitive eating from a religious angle. Yet another religious approach, Thin Within, goes back to the early nineteen seventies.

Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, coined the name Intuitive Eating in 1995 in their ground-breaking book, Intuitive Eating. Many people over the years have written on the subject, including Barbara Birsinger ; Debi Lander ; Bob Merberg ; and Cathy Wong, Gillian Hood-Gabrielson  and Judith Matz & Ellen Frankel (The Diet Survivors Guide: 60 lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self Care, 2006).

In 2005, researcher Linda Bacon, published the first two-year long study demonstrating the effectiveness of Intuitive Eating. Later that year, Steven Hawks, a professor of Community Health at Brigham Young University, made headlines when he claimed to have lost 50 pounds following his version of an intuitive eating program.. Intuitive eating is designed to be a "common sense, hunger-based approach to eating," where participants are encouraged to eat when and only when their body tells them it is hungry.

Hawks claims the underlying philosophies of intuitive eating are thousands of years old and exist in most eastern and some western religions.

Intuitive Eating, just like the many books available today, goes by many names, including non-dieting or the non-diet approach, normal eating, wisdom eating, conscious eating and more.

Supporters argue that by eating in response to hunger and fullness, while allowing all foods to be part of the diet, weight will be maintained to one's "natural" weight. Natural weight is the weight range predetermined by our DNA. Currently most people eat in response to many other external cues, but not hunger and fullness. In avoiding hunger and fullness, emotional eating occurs. They claim most people eat because they're lonely, because "it's time", or because they are stressed. However, only in rare circumstances do people eat because they feel hunger signals in their stomach.

Intuitive eating can be considered the opposite of common concepts of Social Eating and Environmental Eating. It is a key component of the Health at Every Size concept.