Does Intuitive Eating Cause Weight Gain? Dietitian Offers 3 things To Combat Your Fears
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Intuitive eating has become very popular over the years and as a result there are many misconceptions about what it is, what' it’s for and what will happen to your body in the process.
Another common misconception is that weight gain will absolutely happen if you pursue intuitive eating and if it does, that means it’s not a good fit for you. While weight gain can happen as a result of starting intuitive eating and does happen for some, it’s important to talk about why intuitive eating isn’t a “one size fits all" approach to healing your relationship to food and why intuitive eating is not a weight loss program.
While you may be very curious about starting intuitive eating, the uncertainty of changes to your shape and size can keep you stuck in the cycle of dieting. This is especially so if you’ve struggled with an eating disorder, disordered eating and/or body image concerns. The concept of relinquishing control over your body and food can feel impossible and scary. And because diet culture promises “certainty” and weight loss, intuitive eating can feel unpredictable. This can lead to the belief that sticking with dieting, rather than trying intuitive eating, is the better option.
What’s Intuitive eating and why does it exist?
Intuitive eating was developed by registered dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in an effort to free people from being stuck in cycles of dieting, cutting out foods and food groups, and hating their body. Intuitive eating is an evidence-based nutrition approach that is supported and validated by over 125 studies.
There are 10 core principles to intuitive eating:
Reject the diet mentality.
Honor your hunger.
Make peace with food.
Challenge the food police.
Discover the satisfaction factor.
Feel your fullness.
Cope with your emotions with kindness.
Respect your body.
Movement - feel the difference.
Honor your health - gentle nutrition.
These 10 principles are designed to free you from the toxicity of diet culture and provide you with a frame-work to reconnect with your body and its cues. Intuitive eating encourages you to honor your body’s biological hunger signals and cravings, allowing you to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re satisfied. It encourages eating a variety of foods and takes the morality out of the eating experience.
Intuitive eating though is not as simple as influencers make it seem and it’s not “eat what you want whenever you want” despite this being another common misconception. Although a core component of intuitive eating is unconditional permission to eat food, it’s a framework that seeks to help you feel more in control of your food intake, decrease binge eating and eat in the rhythms that are appropriate for your body. Intuitive eating creates a pathway for you to stop yoyo-dietitng/weight cycling, and it challenges diet culture messaging you’ve received throughout your life as a means to be “healthy” such as trying to maintain a low caloric diets and cutting out foods/food groups.
Simply put: diet culture is a world of empty promises that are detrimental to your physical and mental well-being and intuitive eating seeks to offer you a path out of the destructive cycles.
What is a crash-diet and weight cycling?
Crash-dieting, sometimes referred to as “yo-yo dieting” or “weight cycling”, promises fast weight loss through cutting out and eliminating foods and/or food groups. These diets/lifestyle programs, such as current one’s like Noom and WW, promote that if you follow their program, you will quickly and easily lose weight and be able to “keep it off”. What most diets don’t tell you is that these diets are not sustainable. This means that for most people, when they stop restricting/dieting, the body will likely gain the weight back that it’s lost and then some. Feelings of frustration, failure, and shame creep in, and this causes the dieting cycle to begin anew. Then the diet itself and/or diet culture will blame the dieter for not being able to stick with the program and maintain a lower weight. This process of dieting and weight cycling is extremely harmful to the body, both physically and mentally in ways that most people are unaware of.
Common side effects of weight cycling and crash-diets are:
Elevated blood pressure
Increased binge eating behaviors
Slowed metabolism
Increased risk of metabolic syndrome
Weakened bones
Increased risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease
Elevated levels of stress
Increased risk of mortality
What happens to your body when you start intuitive eating?
Just as each person is unique, each body is unique and will respond to intuitive eating in a different way. When starting intuitive eating, it’s possible that you could gain weight, lose weight, or your body could not change at all. There is no definitive way to predict the body changes that may occur when starting and learning how to become an intuitive eater. Not only this, reconnecting with your body is a difficult thing to do! The possibility of changes to your body shape or size can be frightening especially after years of dieting. If you feel hesitant or doubtful of intuitive eating because you’re afraid of gaining weight, please know you’re not alone.
It’s common too that, after years of dieting, your body is weight suppressed. This means that because of the food restriction and dieting, your body may be at a lower weight than where it feels most comfortable and safe. Anyone can be weight suppressed and you don’t need to be in a thin body to be weight suppressed. As a result of weight suppression and a history of dieting, it’s common for your body to change in size when you stop dieting. This is not because intuitive eating is wrong, it’s simply because your body is finally being nourished for the first time in a long time.
What do you do if you’re afraid of gaining weight when you stop dieting and start intuitive eating?
It's important to note that intuitive eating was not created as a weight loss tool, and it is not a diet. It is a way of re-learning how to feed and nourish your body which is guided by internal cues and not external guidelines. And, the fear of gaining weight and having your body change as a result of becoming an intuitive eater is very real. Ignoring or dismissing this fear is not recommended. In fact, getting more information around your fear, why it's there, and what's contributing to it can help you to better address it, unpack it, and challenge some of your beliefs about bodies and fat.
three things you can do if the fear of gaining weight is stopping you from starting intuitive eating:
1. Challenge the idea that your health and wellbeing is based on your weight and body size.
Deciding to become an intuitive eater does not mean that you don’t care about your health. Diet culture has taught you that there are good foods and bad foods and that if you eat “good” and are in a thin body then you will be healthy.
Diet culture and the anti-fat culture that you live in has also taught you to believe that your body size and weight dictates how healthy you are. But the truth of the matter is: the amount of fat on your body does not mean you’re unhealthy. In fact, you can’t tell anything about someone’s well being by looking at their body shape and size.
One of healthcare’s greatest flaws is blaming body size for the development of cancer, disease, health conditions and so much more. Healthcare professionals add to this by promoting weight loss as a “treatment” without considering other important factors and the harm that it can cause, such as the harm of crash-dieting and weight cycling.
2. Take an honest look at what you're currently having to do to maintain your body shape and size.
Reflect on your current behaviors around eating and exercise, and ask yourself how these behaviors are impacting your life and how they may be harming you.
Do you find yourself in constant inner turmoil around the subject of food?
Are your periods of food restriction causing you to miss important life events? How about time with friends,family or your partner?
Are you struggling to connect with friends and family because of an obsession with your weight and body shape?
Do you find that food and/or your body shape/size take up a lot of head space?
If you said yes to any of these, then your life and your physical and mental health has been impacted by diet culture. It’s important to remember that the stress and anxiety you feel around food has likely caused more harm to your life than any food ever could.
3. Normalize the fear of gaining weight when you start intuitive eating.
You exist in an anti-fat culture so of course you’ll struggle with the concept of weight gain and this is especially so if you already have to navigate weight stigma and weight-based discrimination in your life due to your body size. It is perfectly normal for you to have this fear, and it can be helpful to get curious about WHY you have a fear of gaining weight.
It’s common to feel like your weight defines your worthiness, beauty, success, status and relationships. And because weight stigma is real, some of it may very well be true based on your lived experience.
And, your weight is unrelated to your worthiness ( of love, healthcare, community, respect, etc.) as a person and your value as a human. You deserve a life of food peace, joy, pleasure, ease, comfort and care regardless of your body size.
Acknowledging your fear of weight gain allows you to dig deeper and to challenge the beliefs about body size when and where it’s appropriate. You can begin to unpack any beliefs you have about your body, health, wellbeing and fat which can ultimately help you to heal your relationship with food (and your body) and become an intuitive eater.
Bottom line: If changes happen to your body after you start intuitive eating, it is important to remember that diet culture and dieting is at fault, not you and not intuitive eating.
If your body changes in the process of becoming an intuitive eater, it is likely a result of constantly dieting, not having access to a variety of foods because of dieting and/or food insecurity, and keeping your body in a state of weight suppression by restricting your food intake (ie your energy intake). Diet-culture has harmed you and has made you believe that the pursuit of weight loss is more important than your physical and mental wellbeing.
Intuitive eating isn’t right for everyone and at Bravespace nutrition, we believe in body sovereignty, the right for you to choose what you do with your body. As you explore whether or not intuitive eating may be a good fit for you, ask yourself this: Is the uncertainty of body changes that may happen with intuitive eating worse than the exhaustion, fear, and shame you feel in a constant pursuit of weight loss and dieting?
Intuitive eating can be opportunity to reclaim what diet culture has stolen from your life: your time, money, energy, and headspace! If you would like to begin your healing journey with intuitive eating, but don’t know where to begin, visit Bravespace Nutrition and schedule an appointment with an intuitive eating dietitian today!
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Looking for intuitive eating nutrition counseling and coaching in Seattle, WA or around the world?
It can feel challenging to know where to start with intuitive eating and to know where to begin after years of dieting and restricting food. If you want additional support to help you to take the steps to become an intuitive eater and find food freedom once and for all, the dietitian nutritionists from our Seattle, WA-based nutrition counseling practice would be honored to help you to overcome your challenges and to support you. To get support today, please contact us.