Can Intuitive Eating Lead to Weight Loss?

The majority of people come to me (an Intuitive Eating specialist) wanting to lose weight. So can intuitive eating lead to weight loss?

The Essence of Intuitive Eating

At its core, intuitive eating encourages individuals to establish a healthy relationship with food by listening to their body’s cues of hunger and fullness. Stepping away from external diet rules, it promotes a mindful and intuitive connection with one’s dietary needs, fostering a holistic approach to well-being. I prefer to think of intuitive eating as a way of eating that serves you best. It helps you have a healthy relationship with food and your body.

Can you actually do intuitive eating AND lose weight?

Yes and no.

And this is the hard pill to swallow when it comes to intuitive eating. We do not know if you will lose weight, gain weight or maintain weight. There is not magical calculator that can predict that. And it’s hard because I know that you are reading this hoping that I could give you a definite answer.

Your weight is far more complicated than what we will ever know with weight research still continuing on and on. Exactly, the well known “eat well and exercise” is way too simplified. Read my substack to find out more about this.

The Varied Weight Outcomes of Intuitive Eating

We now know that we do not know how our body will respond to intuitive eating. But, I can tell you that there is a lot of evidence and lived experience in weight stability with Intuitive Eating.

When we diet, our body weight varies alot which has evidence to show that yo yo dieting might have a negative impact on our bodies. Some evidence shows that we diet, lose weight, and when we cannot diet anymore (it’s the diet that fails us not us failing the diet) we rebound our weight and tend to vershoot what we weighed before the diet. Meaning we end up larger than we were before we dieted.

Try to think back, have you experienced the same as well?

Intuitive eating gives us weight stability that most of us who diet have never experienced.

Can I do Intuitive Eating if I still want to lose weight?

Absolutely. If you wait for that need for weight loss to leave you, you may be waiting forever. Part of intuitive eating is to reject diet culture which will help you so much in turning your back on weight loss for good. And I would be lying if I said that every now and then, some diety thoughts never happen ever again. Because of the world around us, there are things that will make us feel like we need to lose weight. With intuitive eating, you are left with a toolkit to know what to do when that happens.

Why does working with a professional help with Intuitive Eating?

I think this is why it is important to know that you can reach out to a professional (like myself) to help you. Intuitive eating is so different to dieting, you know a diet is “working” because of the changes in the scale. We do not have anything measureable for Intuitive Eating. This means that at times you are going to need ressurance but also someone who knows the ins and outs who have worked with so many people that they know what blocks you have and how to lift those. Making the work shorter and maybe not as difficult.

If you are reading this and curious about a different approach to eating and your body. If you are tried trying all the ways to lose weight. But still (understandably) fearful of the weight side of things, the best thing I can advise is to give it a go. I have a low cost workshop to get you started for large bodied people. You would be really suprised to know that you dieting more than likely does not align with your own core values.