Become mindful of all the diet rules in your head, recognize the harms of diet culture and past dieting experiences, and build a desire for a different, non-diet approach to food.
Cultivate a peaceful relationship with food by basing your approach on self-care rather than self-control, allowing for flexibility and honoring your body’s needs and pleasures.
Give yourself unconditional permission to eat whatever types of food you want, recognizing there are no “good” or “bad” foods and that your self-worth is not tied to your eating choices.
Challenge the concepts of “good” and “bad” foods by allowing yourself to eat all foods without making them off-limits, thereby escaping a deprivation mindset.
Actively challenge the “food police” voices in your head that enforce diet culture rules and criticize your eating choices, instead cultivating a more self-compassionate way of talking to yourself.
Learn to notice and honor all your hunger cues, including subtle signs before stomach growling, to avoid the restriction pendulum and reduce rebound eating, fostering a more peaceful relationship with food.
Tune into your body’s sensations to recognize signs of fullness, understanding that reaching fullness is a positive signal of nourishment, without turning it into a rigid rule for when to stop eating.
Allow yourself to eat foods you genuinely enjoy and take pleasure in them, understanding that satisfaction is a key factor for overall well-being and helps you feel better.
Declare a truce with your body by respecting its natural size, shape, abilities, disabilities, and needs, including medical conditions, rather than trying to change it or imposing ideals, as a step towards self-love.
Engage in physical movement in ways that feel joyful and good, driven by self-care rather than the goal of shrinking your body, achieving a certain look, or hitting specific targets.
Make nutrition choices that support energy, sustenance, and satisfaction, integrating all other intuitive eating principles, focusing on adding beneficial foods rather than rigid, intellectualized restrictions.
Let go of rigidity and perfectionism in eating, as striving for “getting it right” ultimately prevents balance and a peaceful relationship with food.
Cease approaching food as numbers, points, or macros to be calculated, and instead cultivate flexibility and autonomy to choose what to eat based on desire, pleasure, and satisfaction, alongside considering what makes your body feel good.
Approach nutrition gently and as the last principle of intuitive eating, avoiding rigid rules early on to prevent reverting to a diet culture mindset.
Understand that the “honeymoon phase” of intense cravings for previously forbidden foods is temporary, and with practice, you can have these foods in your home without feeling compelled to overconsume them.
Understand that eating for comfort or distraction can be a normal part of a peaceful relationship with food, and differentiate true emotional eating from eating that is actually driven by underlying physical hunger.
When experiencing emotional eating, ask “what can I do in addition to eating?” to address underlying deprivation and other emotional needs, rather than solely trying to distract yourself from food.
Pay attention to subtle hunger signals, such as thinking about food or desiring a snack, especially if you’ve skipped meals, as your brain can signal hunger even without obvious physical sensations.
Allow yourself to eat for pleasure, comfort, or unwinding at the end of a long day, recognizing there’s nothing inherently wrong with these motivations.
Assess if your emotional eating is problematic by determining if it’s your sole coping mechanism for difficult emotions or if it’s driven by deprivation, which indicates a need for additional coping strategies beyond just food.
Approach meals with a sense of ease, focusing on sensory experiences, hunger, satisfaction, and fullness without guilt, self-judgment, or the intellectual calculation of diet rules.
While mindfulness during eating is helpful for learning, don’t rigidly avoid distractions like TV or work, as it’s not a problem and sometimes necessary, and you can still tune into your body’s cues.
Start meditating to become more aware of your thoughts, especially those that are venomously self-critical, as this awareness is the first step to addressing them.
Regularly revisit and reflect on intuitive eating principles to identify lingering diet culture mindsets and renew your dedication to the practice, as it helps solidify new ways of thinking.
Learn and practice the 10 principles of intuitive eating, which build on one another, to create a more structured approach to developing a peaceful relationship with food.
Adopt intuitive eating as a better way to interact with food, which has personally changed the host’s life by transforming his relationship with food and body.
Download the 10% Happier app and join the seven-day Anti-Diet Challenge, which combines science-backed intuitive eating principles with guided meditation to build a better relationship with food and your body.
Explore Christy Harrison’s resources, including her book “Anti-Diet,” courses, podcast “Food Psych,” and the “Making Peace with Food” card deck, for further guidance and strategies on intuitive eating.
Download the new 10% with Dan Harris app for a library of guided meditations covering stress, anxiety, sleep, focus, and self-compassion, plus access to weekly live Zoom community sessions and ad-free podcast episodes.
Listen to the Anti-Diet Series, especially episode one with Jamila Jamil, as it offers a path out of self-laceration and disordered eating patterns.