Mindful Eating vs. Intuitive Eating: Which One Is Right for You?
Key takeaways:
Intuitive eating involves using your body’s internal cues — like hunger, fullness, and emotion — to help guide your food choices. It rejects the diet mentality and accepts all foods as acceptable options.
Mindful eating involves being aware of what you’re sensing, feeling, and thinking as you eat.
Both styles of eating can help you if you struggle with food and/or your body, whether you tend to under-eat or overeat.
Mindful and intuitive eating are two practices that encourage a healthy relationship with food. They both involve increased awareness. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably. But mindful eating and intuitive eating are distinctly different approaches to eating. Here’s the scoop on the differences and which one might be the best approach for you.
Principles of intuitive eating vs. mindful eating
Intuitive eating involves a mindset about food that goes beyond mealtimes. Mindful eating, on the other hand, focuses more on your experience as you eat. Both involve an increased awareness of what you think and feel while eating, but they approach it differently.
Intuitive eating principles
Intuitive eating is an approach to eating that emphasizes being in touch with your body’s cues and using that to decide how and when to eat. It’s a non-diet approach to eating. Intuitive eating was originally coined by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch.
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Sam Previte, a Registered Dietitian and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, described intuitive eating as an evidence-based practice with many benefits. Intuitive eating “integrates instinct, emotion, and rational thought,” she added. Previte uses intuitive eating principles to help her clients make peace with their food, body, and physical activity.
Intuitive eating takes the focus away from the external prescription of what to eat and how much. Instead, it helps you learn to recognize your body’s cues — like hunger, fullness, mood, and your feelings.
The 10 principles of intuitive eating start with accepting all foods into one’s diet and rejecting the “good foods, bad foods'” label that can lead many people to restrict certain foods. The principles also encourage you to get in touch with your sense of enjoyment and fullness when eating. They focus on honoring and respecting your emotions, your body, and your overall health.
A principle often overlooked in intuitive eating is the 10th principle, titled “Gentle Nutrition.” According to Previte, this encourages eating in a way that helps you feel your best, which can include medical nutrition therapy.
But intuitive eating is never about intentional weight loss, emphasized Previte. Instead, intuitive eating stresses the importance of rejecting the diet mentality as a key aspect of healing one’s relationship with food. The book “Intuitive Eating” provides a step-by-step approach for how to break free from diet culture messages.
Mindful eating principles
Intuitive eating is a broad approach. It involves being aware of your physical and emotional state related to food. Mindful eating, however, focuses more on your experience while eating.
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Mindful eating can be thought of as one type of mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of what you’re experiencing in a given moment without trying to judge or change it. While it involves slowing down your pace, there’s a lot more to it than just eating slowly.
With mindful eating, you pay attention to the smell, taste, and texture of the food. You’re encouraged to notice your thoughts and feelings as you eat and simply observe what you feel.
There are different approaches to mindful eating. In general, it involves eating with:
Balance
Freedom from judgment
Fewer distractions
A slow pace
Awareness of one’s appetite
Mindful eating: There are several different ways you can start to practice mindful eating.
The dangers of yo-yo dieting: Intuitive eating can help you find freedom from the diet mentality and the health risks associated with weight cycling.
Stress eating: It’s normal to crave food when you are feeling stressed. If you’re concerned that you do it too often, intuitive eating can help.
What are the benefits of each?
Both mindful and intuitive eating can help you better understand your hunger and fullness signals. They may also reduce the likelihood of emotional eating and using food to cope.
Since intuitive eating also incorporates the anti-diet philosophy, it can help:
Reduce the likelihood of getting caught up in the latest fad diets and yo-yo dieting
Build a stronger, more positive relationship with food
Improve mental well-being
Improve body image
Lower your risk of developing disordered eating habits
Some worry that eating intuitively could lead to more foods that diet culture traditionally labels as “unhealthy.” But studies show that over time, practicing intuitive eating actually leads to improved diet quality.
Mindful eating can help:
Increase satisfaction with meals and snacks
Improve overall mental well-being by bringing mindfulness practices into your daily routine
Mindful eating vs. intuitive eating for weight loss
In theory, both mindful and intuitive eating could lead to weight loss. But that’s not the goal of either.
Intuitive eating principles emphasize the importance of “breaking up with diets.” This is an important step toward truly eating intuitively. In short, you can’t listen to your intuition and restrict food at the same time.
Mindful eating is all about eating without judgment and remaining present in the moment. While there’s no solid emphasis on breaking up with diets, a key part of the mindfulness philosophy is non-striving. In other words, being content no matter the outcome.
That said, some studies suggest that people who adopt intuitive eating are less likely to have a higher weight status after 5 years. There’s also a link between mindfulness and weight loss, though the studies aren’t clear if mindful eating is the reason for this link. So, while neither approach has a goal of weight loss, they may lead to it.
How to start practicing mindful eating
Starting to eat mindfully may be easier than you think. To practice mindful eating:
Slow down and take note of your five senses — your taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing — at each meal.
Before mealtime, ask yourself if there are any distractions that you can avoid while you eat.
During mealtime, ask yourself which flavors you appreciated.
Be aware of any unhelpful thoughts that come up around the foods you’re eating. Simply notice these thoughts and let them pass.
Choose foods that are nutritious and boost your energy.
Regularly check in with your hunger and fullness levels, without judgment.
How to start practicing intuitive eating
There are several ways you can apply the 10 principles of intuitive eating to your daily habits. To practice intuitive eating:
Notice when you’re hungry. Ask yourself if you’re feeling physical hunger or turning to food to deal with stress or other emotions.
If you’re feeling physical hunger, eat.
If you’re feeling emotional hunger, consider non-food ways to deal with your emotions. (But don’t be hard on yourself if you eat from emotional hunger.)
Avoid restricting food intake or aiming for a certain calorie amount.
Eat for satisfaction and enjoy the foods you love.
Pay attention to feelings of fullness, and stop eating when your body tells you it’s full.
Consider the benefits of striving for non-weight-oriented goals.
Unfollow content on social media that focuses on weight loss.
The bottom line
Intuitive eating and mindful eating have a lot of overlap. Both involve increased awareness around eating and your relationship to food. And both have health benefits. If you have a long history of dieting, intuitive eating might feel more aligned with your goals. If you’re busy and tend to eat with distractions often, you might find mindful eating helpful. Both approaches can help you achieve better health with less stress around food and your body.
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References
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Ha, O. R., et al. (2023). The role of emotion in eating behavior and decisions. Frontiers in Psychology.
Hazzard, V. M., et al. (2022). Intuitive eating longitudinally predicts better psychological health and lower use of disordered eating behaviors: Findings from EAT 2010–2018. Eating and Weight Disorders.
Hensley-Hackett, K., et al. (2022). Intuitive eating intervention and diet quality in adults: A systematic literature review. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
IntuitiveEating.org. (n.d.). 10 principles of intuitive eating.
Keirns, N. G., et al. (2020). The relationship between intuitive eating and body image is moderated by measured body mass index. Eating Behaviors.
Khan, Z., et al. (2014). Mindful eating and it’s relationship with mental well-being. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Olson, K. L., et al. (2015). Mindfulness and weight loss. Psychosomatic Medicine.
Nelson, J. B. (2017). Mindful eating: The art of presence while you eat. Diabetes Spectrum.
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