Intuitive Eating (IE) is a brilliant approach for making peace with food. But after years of dieting, disordered eating or full blown eating disorders, embracing Intuitive Eating can be a very daunting task. It’s also not suitable for everyone, right away.

If, for example, you are in the process of recovering from an eating disorder, which has likely disrupted your ability to feel hunger and fullness at the appropriate times, then the unstructured approach to intuitive eating can leave you vulnerable to missing meals and not getting enough nutrition. For this reason, people in eating disorder recovery are often advised to begin with a structured meal plan, which outlines how often, when and how much to eat, to enable an individual’s body to adjust to an appropriate amount of food.

It’s therefore important to assess honestly, where you’re at with food and eating, before you dive into Intuitive Eating. Ask yourself if you're ready to implement it, or if there's still some work to do around body image and ditching diet culture. It’s totally fine if there is, healing your relationship with food is not a linear process!

Below are some statements for checking your readiness for IE. Make a note of whether you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to these statements and then tally them up afterwards:

• I understand that dieting is harmful to my health.

• I understand how focusing on weight loss damages my relationship with food.

• I can tell the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger.

•  I can cope with my emotions without turning to food.

•  I can identify my signs physical/biological hunger.

•  I can tell the difference between pleasant gentle hunger and unpleasant ravenous hunger.

•  I can identify my signs of fullness.

•  I can tell the difference between a pleasant feeling of fullness and feeling uncomfortably stuffed.

•  I can recognise when I’m hungry for a meal, vs only hungry enough for snack.

•  I can experience pleasure and satisfaction from eating a meal.

 If you’ve answered mostly ‘yes’, then you are ready to begin applying the principles of IE. If you still have quite a few ticks in ‘no’ column, that’s fine too. This process takes time and is vital that you’re patient and compassionate towards yourself throughout the process.

I recommend you spend some more time reading around the topics of body positivity and Health at Every Size before you move on with IE. This ensures you have a solid foundation in which to build on and helps prevent ‘relapses’ into the dieting mindset.

I have lots of free resources over on Beyond The Bathroom Scale to help with exactly this, so be sure to sign up for the free 6-day course within my coaching app to begin making peace with food and your body.