Can you follow the intuitive eating approach while dieting to lose weight?

“Reject the diet mentality” is a core principle of IE. According to Tribole and Resch, people with a diet mentality typically believe that to lose weight or be healthy, they need to follow a restrictive diet or control the types and/or amount of food they eat. IE discourages this way of thinking, which means that following an IE approach while dieting to lose weight contradicts the core principles of IE.

The IE approach emphasizes prioritizing interoceptive awareness (the ability to recognize the body’s signals and emotional state) over weight loss, which should be deprioritized. Weight loss requires substantial dietary restraint and often ignoring hunger cues, which is not compatible with IE.^[1]

A weight-neutral context is critical to retain fidelity to IE’s unique approach.