Intuitive and Sustainable Eating: How to Eat for Your Body and the Planet

Have you reached your eating endgame? The one that starts with “I’ve tried every new diet that’s come down the pike, and I still don’t look like Taylor Swift” and ends with throwing up your hands in despair? Maybe it’s time for a new approach. What is intuitive eating, and can it help you improve your health without measuring portions or giving up favorite foods?

Intuitive eating can even support a healthier planet. Here’s how to marry intuitive and sustainable eating for a healthier, guilt-free you.

What Is Intuitive Eating?

What does it mean to be intuitive? Among psychologists, intuition is regarded as your “gut instinct,” a way of knowing that bypasses conscious mental processing and arises from your unconscious mind. Part of this information could even come directly from your belly. Scientists already know that gut bacteria send messages to your brain through neurotransmitter production and the vagus nerve.

Intuitive eating is making food choices without the influence of fad diets or shame. Although it arose out of the anti-diet movement of the 1960s, which combats weight discrimination and the obsession with thinness, it’s nevertheless linked to lower heart disease rates and improved mental health. It acknowledges that while the nutritional value of a slice of pie and an apple vary, choosing one over the other doesn’t make you a good or bad person.

Although being intuitive means arising without conscious mental processing, intuitive eating can be quite mindful, and taking such an approach may help it work better for you. However, instead of consulting food scales and carb counters, you rely on cues from the inside.

Intuitive eating operates on ten basic principles that revolve around tuning into how you feel during each meal — which requires mindfulness. According to the 1995 book published by registered dietitians Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S and Elyse Resch, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S, FAND, these are:

• Reject the diet mentality
• Honor your hunger
• Make peace with food
• Challenge the food police
• Respect your fullness
• Discover the satisfaction factor
• Honor your feelings with kindness
• Respect your body
• Move in ways that feel good
• Honor your health with gentle nutrition

For example, many have lost touch with what it feels like to be hungry or sated. You eat when the clock tells you to or for other reasons — for example, noshing at your work desk when you aren’t hungry to ease boredom and frustration.

Furthermore, classifying foods into “good” and “bad” categories closes the door to creative ways to make healthy foods tastier. A plain apple becomes a wholesome indulgence when baked with whole-grain oats and topped with vanilla yogurt.

What’s the Best Diet for Planet Earth?

Intuitive eating can mesh with the best diet for the planet. The tenth principle of intuitive eating instructs you to honor your health with gentle nutrition, and many of the things that are good for you are good for Mother Earth, too.

For example, meat consumption contributes to between 14% and 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions and 60% of food-related emissions. Should you adopt a vegan lifestyle? Not necessarily, as getting adequate nutrition on such a plan could mean relying on foods shipped from quite a distance, which also impacts emissions production. However, opting to eat as plant-based as possible, with meat only as an occasional indulgence, cuts your carbon footprint.

Going plant-based also reduces your disease risk. In a recent meta-review of nearly 50 studies, vegetarian and vegan diets lowered cardiovascular disease risk while reducing cancer and heart disease risk factors such as high body weight, high cholesterol and elevated inflammatory markers.

Replacing ultra-processed foods with whole versions close to their natural forms also benefits your health and the planet. Processing takes energy, and most factories still run on fossil fuels. Furthermore, relying on such meals raises your risk of obesity by 55%, Type 2 diabetes by 40%, sleep disorders by 41% and depression by 20%.

The best diet for planet Earth and your health is full of plant-based whole foods. Understanding this while eating intuitively can help you maximize your joy and gusto at meals while feeling good about what you put in your mouth.

How to Eat Intuitively, Mindfully and Sustainably for Your Body While Supporting Your Health: 4 Tips

Here’s how you can combine the ten intuitive eating principles with mindfulness and sustainability for a diet that makes every aspect of you feel good — body, mind and spirit.

1. Ask Yourself Gentle Questions Before Eating

If you’re used to eating on the clock or following external rules about what you should and shouldn’t eat, you could struggle with intuitive eating at first. Try asking yourself the following questions before you dig in:

• Am I eating because I feel hungry? If not, what’s the reason? If it’s to fit in socially, how can I best honor my body’s cues while also considering the needs of others at the table? If it’s because I’m bored, could I find another way to break mental tension?
• If I could have any meal in the world right now, what would it be? What do I crave? How can I satisfy that craving in the most planet and health-friendly way?
• How will I feel immediately after eating this meal or snack? An hour later? If it could spur negative emotions like guilt, what different choices could I make now to feel better later?

2. Tune Into Your Body’s Cues

When was the last time you physically felt hungry? If you can’t remember, you may have fallen out of touch with your body’s innate cues. The next time you have a day to yourself, engage in a bit of retraining. Don’t automatically rise and shine with breakfast.

Instead, wait until your stomach growls to dig in. Avoid doing anything else while you eat. Simply tune into your bodily sensations until you reach satiety. You might surprise yourself with how much less you eat when you aren’t distracted.

3. Treat Diet Information as a Suggestion, Not a Rule

Humans are innately curious. Intuitive eating doesn’t mean living in a bubble. You can still read up on the latest diet research and use it to inform your choices. However, avoid all-or-nothing thinking. For example, you may choose to cut back on carbs to see if a version of the keto diet helps specific health issues you struggle with — but don’t deny yourself a once-a-year taste of your nephew’s birthday cake if doing so makes you feel deprived.

4. Combine Indulgent Taste With Sustainable Food Choices

Many of the principles of intuitive eating entail rebuilding your relationship with food and reclaiming your enjoyment of mealtime. Evolution designed eating to be pleasurable for a reason — you should look forward to dinner.

Therefore, combine your love of great taste with sustainable, mindful choices. For example, the urge to snack strikes. You tune into how you feel and determine you’re hungry and crave something salty. You choose popcorn over beef jerky and chips to go plant-based and give yourself a shot of filling fiber instead of empty calories while still indulging your taste buds with the flavor they long for.

What Is Intuitive Eating?

Intuitive eating entails listening to your body’s innate clues about when, what and how much to eat. It encourages a healthier relationship with food while getting adequate nutrition. It also eases mental stress from measuring and remembering lengthy diet rules and emotional distress from shame.

Intuitive eating can improve your health and that of the planet. Once you understand what intuitive eating is, you can tune into your body’s cues and satisfy them with meals that tread lightly on Mother Earth.