No food is off limits! Intuitive eating is simple with no complicated rules

Mindful eating involves developing an awareness of internal hunger and satiety cues and making conscious food choices.

Diets for weight loss usually involve restriction. The 5:2 diet relies on restricting calories, and the ketogenic diet relies on restricting particular types of food.

Research suggests, however, that restrictive dieting can lead to a higher body mass index (BMI) over time and a greater future likelihood of being overweight. There is also evidence suggesting food restriction can lead to a preoccupation with food, guilt about eating, and higher levels of depression, anxiety and stress. So, if diets don’t always help you lose weight and could contribute to psychological problems, what other solutions are there? Recently, there has been an increasing focus on the concept of “intuitive eating”.

Intuitive eating was popularised by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, who published a book on the subject and developed a website dedicated to the topic.

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The goal of eating intuitively is to listen to your body and allow it to guide you about when and how much to eat, rather than being influenced by your environment, emotions or the rules prescribed by diets. The concept is similar to mindful eating, and the terms are often used interchangeably.

Mindful eating involves developing an awareness of internal hunger and satiety cues and making conscious food choices. It emphasises the importance of paying attention to the emotional and physical sensations experienced while eating.

Unlike many other diets, intuitive eating encourages you to eat what you want – no food is off limits. While some may expect that this could lead to adherents to the diet eating more high-fat or high-sugar food, research suggests that this is not the case. In fact, advocates of intuitive eating suggest that the more you restrict yourself, the more likely you are to binge later.

The concept of intuitive eating is simple, and it doesn’t involve complicated dietary rules. But what does the evidence suggest?

Positive effect on mental health

In terms of weight loss, it is not yet clear that intuitive eating is more effective than calorie restriction. Results from observational studies have found that people who eat intuitively have a lower BMI than those who don’t. However, since people who restrict may do so because they already have a high BMI, it is difficult to determine the true effect intuitive eating had. Also, the results from intervention studies with overweight or obese people are not as clear.

For example, one review found that of the eight studies they assessed, only two found a reduction in weight from intuitive eating. In a more recent review, weight loss was seen in only eight out of 16 studies. And out of these eight, weight loss was statistically significant in only three.

A low-carb diet to deli meats, here are 6 ways to follow the healthy route

The research lends strong support to the notion that diet quality, not quantity, is what helps people lose and manage their weight most easily in the long run.

Below are some of our readers’ favorite nutrition stories from the past year, packed with information that may help you eat better in 2019.

How a Low-Carb Diet Might Help You Maintain a Healthy Weight

By Anahad O’Connor

A large new study published in the journal BMJ in November found that overweight adults who cut carbohydrates from their diets and replaced them with fat sharply increased their metabolisms. After five months on the diet, they burned roughly 250 calories more per day than people who ate a high-carb, low-fat diet, suggesting that restricting carb intake could help people maintain their weight loss more easily.

The new research is unlikely to end the decades-long debate over the best diet for weight loss. But it provides strong new evidence that all calories are not metabolically alike to the body. And it suggests that the popular advice on weight loss promoted by health authorities — count calories, reduce portion sizes and lower your fat intake — might be outdated. Read more here.

The Key to Weight Loss Is Diet Quality, Not Quantity, a New Study Finds

By Anahad O’Connor

A study published in February in JAMA found that people who cut back on added sugar, refined grains and highly processed foods while concentrating on eating plenty of vegetables and whole foods — without worrying about counting calories or limiting portion sizes — lost significant amounts of weight over the course of a year.

The research lends strong support to the notion that diet quality, not quantity, is what helps people lose and manage their weight most easily in the long run. It also suggests that health authorities should shift away from telling the public to obsess over calories and instead encourage Americans to avoid processed foods that are made with refined starches and added sugar, like bagels, white bread, refined flour and sugary snacks and beverages, said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Read more here.

Which Kinds of Foods Make Us Fat?

By Gretchen Reynolds

For a diet study published this summer in Cell Metabolism, researchers randomly assigned one of 29 different diets to hundreds of adult male mice. Some diets supplied up to 80 percent of their calories in the form of saturated and unsaturated fats, with few carbohydrates; others included little fat and consisted largely of refined carbohydrates, mostly from grains and corn syrup, although in some variations the carbs came from sugar.

Yet other diets were characterized by extremely high or low percentages of protein. The mice stayed on the same diet for three months — estimated to be the equivalent of roughly nine human years — while being allowed to eat and move about their cages at will. The mice were then measured by weight and body composition, and their brain tissue was examined for evidence of altered gene activity.

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