What is intuitive eating?

On Ep. 271, Nikkiey clears up what intuitive eating isn't. It isn't just eating when you're hungry. It isn't eating clean 100% of the time. It isn't ignoring structure or grabbing food on a whim, which is how social media often makes it look. For her, it means a deep, informed and respectful relationship with food, where you can read your body's signals and trust them because you've put in the work.

That work is what makes it possible. On Ep. 194 she explains that eating intuitively still means you can look back on your day and say, roughly, that you ate around 2,000 calories, mostly protein, with the rest from carbs and fats. Most people starting out can't do that yet. They don't know what a hunger or fullness cue feels like, and they don't know how much they're actually eating. On Ep. 271 she describes her own path: weighing food every day to learn, not to restrict, until she could estimate carbs, fats and protein by eye. After that came learning to tell emotional hunger from physical hunger and spotting patterns like stress snacking.

If intuitive eating hasn't worked for you before, it probably wasn't a willpower problem. You may have been asked to trust signals no one had taught you to read.