WHAT SCIENCE SAYS ABOUT MINDFUL & INTUITIVE EATING
The problem with entrenched diet culture is that it rolls out unproven claims like truth pellets from a wishful-thinking-dispenser. The latest trend is “Intuitive Eating.”
The National Eating Disorders Association defines Intuitive Eating as a process of eating where you trust “your body to make food choices that feel good for you, without judging yourself,” or being swayed by the “influence of diet culture.”
Sounds good in theory, but what does the science say about whether it works or not?
Does Intuitive Eating Work?
We looked at four of the better studies, starting with “The Relationship between Intuitive Eating and Health Indicator Among College Women,” which appeared in the American Journal of Health Education.
This study measured health indicators among female college students after they were taught basic Intuitive Eating principles, which the study defined as “an anti-dieting strategy that relies on recognizing and responding to internal hunger and satiation cues.”
The study used the “Intuitive Eating Scale-2,” where participants checked off 23 items that assessed “four dimensions of intuitive eating: 1. Eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, 2. Unconditional permission to eat, 3. Reliance on hunger and satiety cues, and 4. Body-food choice congruence.”
Participants were asked to “rate each item using a 5-point scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).”
The female collage students’ outcomes indicated that “intuitive eating was significantly correlated with lower body mass index, lower triglyceride levels, higher levels of high-density lipoproteins, and improved cardiovascular risk.”
In other words, there was a positive correlation between Intuitive Eating and healthy weight management.
The Skinny on Mindful Eating
The same journal published another study, “Intuitive Eating, Diet Composition, and the Meaning of Food in Healthy Weight Promotion,” which indicated another positive correlation between intuitive eating and health.
Participants were college students (343), both male and female from Western University. Those who scored high in intuitive eating had lower BMI scores, reported having “higher levels of pleasure associated with food and eating,” and, interestingly, reported less “health-consciousness in relation to food.”
In other words, they were thinner, enjoyed their food, did not appear to care much about a food’s health aspect, and generally displayed less anxiety about food and eating.
The authors of the study conclude that “the promotion of intuitive eating as one approach to healthy weight management should continue to be explored.”
The Journal of Eating and Weight Disorders reported more nuanced correlations in the study, “Contributions of mindful eating, intuitive eating, and restraint to BMI, disordered eating and meal consumption in college students.”
Correlations Between Mindful & Intuitive Eating and Restraint
This study sought to examine “the correlations between intuitive eating, mindful eating, and restraint in the same sample,” something which had not been done before. The results were correlated “with body mass index (BMI), eating-disordered behaviors, and meal consumption in a college sample.”
Interestingly, “elevated restraint,” by which they mean highly restrictive dieting, was “associated with increased BMI and disordered eating,” while “elevated intuitive eating was associated with decreased BMI and disordered eating.”
While these findings initially appear positive, the authors are careful to point out that in the scope of this study, “Intuitive eating and restraint appear to be only weakly correlated, and each is differentially associated with meal consumption. Mindful eating does not appear to relate to outcome variables.”
A study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics gives proof to idea that “diets don’t work.” The article, “Size Acceptance and Intuitive Eating Improve Health for Obese, Female Chronic Dieters.”
Those in the study group who focused on restrictive dieting showed a high attrition levels—41% compared to 8% in the “health at every size group,” the latter which emphasized body acceptance. In addition, participants in this group “maintained weight, improved in all outcome variables, and sustained improvements” a year later.
Those in the restrictive dieting group showed initial weight loss but they regained the weight and showed little physical improvements.
They conclude, that “the health at every size approach enabled participants to maintain long-term behavior change;
the diet approach did not [emphasis ours]. Encouraging size acceptance, reduction in dieting behavior, and heightened awareness and response to body signals resulted in improved health risk indicators for obese women.”
Conscious Eating and Its Effects On BMI
In Public Health Nutrition, clinicians studied multiple peer-reviewed research studies on the relationship between health and intuitive eating. The researchers defined intuitive eating as, “(i) eating when hungry; (ii) stopping eating when no longer hungry/full; and (iii) no restrictions on types of food eaten unless for medical reasons.”
Their review of the literature concludes that there is “substantial and consistent associations between intuitive eating and both lower BMI and better psychological health.” They advise additional research for further study.
The positive associations with intuitive eating led some researchers to study its relevance to cardiovascular health. In “Intuitive Eating and Biomarkers Related to Cardiovascular Disease in Older Adults,” in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, the authors found physical proof of positive effects via “blood draws, body composition assessments and accelerometry.”
The results were encouraging: “Greater intuitive eating was associated with a lower low-density lipoprotein/high-density lipoprotein ratio and lower triglycerides.” The researchers conclude that “Intuitive eating may be a key determinant of certain biomarkers and could be a viable target for interventions to help decreased the risk of cardiovascular disease among older adults.”
From these clinical studies, we conclude that the implementation of intuitive eating results in weight maintenance but perhaps not weight loss, improved psychological health, possibly improved physical health indicators other than BMI (e.g. blood pressure; cholesterol levels), possibly improved dietary intake and/or eating behaviors, but probably not higher levels of physical activity.
In other words, intuitive eating appears to work at several levels, although with some caveats. Our researchers noted, however, that the studies appeared to take for granted that the research subjects knew how to actually calm the nervous system enough to allow the possibility of “intuitively checking in” about food and hunger.
Throughout the NeuroSlim Program, we break down the steps necessary for actually implementing the intuitive markers necessary to be free forever from the dieting mentality.
Academic Studies Informing This Article On Intuitive Eating
Steven Hawks EdD, MBA, CHES, Hala Madanat, Jaylyn Hawks & Ashley Harris BS (2005) The Relationship between Intuitive Eating and Health Indicators among College Women,
American Journal of Health Education, 36:6, 331-336,
https://doi.org/10.1080/19325037.2005.10608206
TeriSue Smith MPH & Steven R. Hawks EdD (2006) Intuitive Eating, Diet Composition, and The Meaning of Food in Healthy Weight Promotion, American Journal of Health Education, 37:3, 130-136, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/19325037.2006.10598892
Anderson, L. M., Reilly, E. E., Schaumberg, K., Dmochowski, S., & Anderson, D. A. (2016). Contributions of mindful eating, intuitive eating, and restraint to BMI, disordered eating, and meal consumption in college students.
Eating and weight disorders : EWD,
21(1), 83–90.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-015-0210-3
Bacon, L., Stern, J. S., Van Loan, M. D., & Keim, N. L. (2005). Size acceptance and intuitive eating improve health for obese, female chronic dieters.
Journal of the American Dietetic Association,
105(6), 929–936.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2005.03.011
Van Dyke, N., & Drinkwater, E. J. (2014). Relationships between intuitive eating and health indicators: literature review.
Public health nutrition,
17(8), 1757–1766.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1368980013002139
Teas, E., Kimiecik, J., Ward, R. M., & Timmerman, K. (2022). Intuitive Eating and Biomarkers Related to Cardiovascular Disease in Older Adults. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 54(5), 412–421. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2022.01.010