Intuitive Eating vs Mindful Eating
Written by Freya Torkildsen
Introduction
Although these dietary models overlap in their philosophies and attitudes towards eating, Mindful Eating is not the same as Intuitive Eating.
Mindful Eating involves adopting techniques to become fully present with your food, mind and body, while Intuitive Eating is more about healing your relationship with food and responding to your body’s needs in the moment.
Diet culture doesn’t take these ideologies into consideration when in fact they are some of the most logical approaches for achieving a healthy relationship with food while simultaneously gaining more knowledge of how to eat healthily while acknowledging your biological needs.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive Eating is a weight neutral approach to food and eating behaviours that places strong emphasis on rejecting the toxic restrictive mindset created by diet culture.
There are key principles of Intuitive Eating aimed to help heal negative attitudes and relationships with food. These include:
- Reject diet culture mentality
Instead of falling for dieting tips which encourage food restriction as the best way to achieve your dream body, intuitive eating encourages rejecting this harmful mindset and replacing it with more compassion to your body.
- Acknowledge satisfaction hunger and fullness
Honor your hunger. Keeping a sufficient intake of energy and carbohydrates supports your body’s natural rhythms and prevents eating beyond a comfortable fullness. When you are consistently and sufficiently nourished, your hunger and fullness cues become clearer.
Having a safe and relaxed environment with food makes it easier to notice when you’ve reached both physical and emotional satisfaction. When eating feels comfortable instead of stressful, your natural hunger and fullness cues become clearer, helping you recognise the point in which food no longer becomes enjoyable. This helps to gain a better perspective with food and avoid over or under eating.
Listen to the biological signals which your body gives you when you are no longer hungry, whether this be your stomach physically expanding or when you feel slightly breathless, this helps to prevent feelings of uncomfortable fullness. These signals are always present and help to create a calmer eating environment.
- Make peace with food and challenge the ‘food police’
The ‘food police’, also known as your own psyche, may have unreasonable toxic attitudes towards food which have been built up over time by the media we consume and the people we talk to. The ‘food police’ creates negative self talk and habits which can delay building a healthy relationship with food.
If you start telling yourself you shouldn’t have certain foods, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation which cause cravings and often bingeing, which can ultimately lead to feelings of guilt. Making peace with what you eat will help with creating a better relationship with food.
- Cope with your emotions with kindness
Emotional eating can occur as a result of our stress. Finding alternative ways to handle our emotions without turning to unhealthy eating habits (whether this be overeating or restricting) helps to gain a better relationship with food as it is not being used as a tool to fix your problems. Dealing with the source of the negative emotion is the best way to prevent a toxic cycle of bingeing and restricting.
- Respect your body
Respecting your body for the way it is and accepting it no matter the size is the only way to make peace with eating. It’s hard to reject diet culture mentality if you are overly critical of your body, your body deserves respect no matter if it is not society’s ‘dream body’.
- Exercise – feel the difference
Rather than hyperfixating on the calorie-burning effects of exercise, focus on how it feels to move your body and what makes you feel energised.
- Honour your health with gentle nutrition
Make food choices which respect your wellbeing and taste preferences, while being attentive to how food makes your body feel. You don’t have to eat perfectly to be healthy, it’s eating healthily consistently over time which makes the difference, a meal at pizza express won’t ‘ruin’ your progress.
(Intuitive eating pros, n.d; Harris, 2023)
How to eat intuitively
- Take a detox from diet culture
It’s difficult to have a weight neutral approach to eating when you are constantly bombarded by media which idolises thinness and promotes weight loss.
Get rid of those dieting apps and books, unfollow toxic food influencers and excuse yourself from negative conversations concerning bodies and dieting. Detoxing yourself from these spaces helps bring your focus back to your physical and emotional needs, alleviating some pressure from the dieting world.
- Practice positive self talk
Take note of the way you speak to yourself about your body and food choices. This could be simply when you say ‘I shouldn’t eat this’, instead saying ‘What am I hungry for right now?’. Ignore the negative voice in your head spurring diet culture nonsense in your ear and practice neutralising these voices by speaking more kindly to yourself.
- Add don’t take away
One of the best ways to incorporate gentle nutrition into your meals is to add nutrient dense foods to your plate instead of taking away food. For example with a burger you may opt for some salad on the side or opt for a fibre rich bean burger instead.
- Understand satisfaction
Allow yourself to eat food you are genuinely in the mood for instead of telling yourself what you can’t have, this way you’ll likely be able to better understand your body’s hunger and fullness cues.
It’s always better to ensure you are eating a sufficient amount than not enough. If you feel you may have overestimated your hunger, food can be reused another day as leftovers.
(Harris, 2023)
What is Mindful Eating?
Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as ‘the awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.’ (Mindful Staff, 2019). This can be applied to food practices.
Mindful Eating describes being fully present during mealtimes and tuning into your body, mind and food without judgement (Harris, 2023). The intention is to help individuals savor their food in the moment and encourage being fully present for the eating experience, the goal is not to lose weight (Nelson, 2017).
Research has shown many benefits to mindful eating such as:
- Eating disorder management
- Fewer cravings
- Increased hunger awareness
- Better food choices
(Warren, Smith and Ashwell, 2017)
These are the key attitudes when it comes to mindful eating:
- Nonjudgement
Start the process of eating by setting aside our preconceptions of certain foods, becoming aware of these pre-set judgments which are a critical element of mindfulness. For example, instead of immediately disregarding a food which you haven’t eaten since you were a child because you didn’t like the flavour, approach it with an open mind when you’re next offered it.
- Patience
Patience involves taking your time to accept the current moment without rushing yourself while eating. This helps with gaining resilience and calmer attitudes toward your eating experience.
- Beginners mind
This attitude involves approaching each moment with curiosity and an open mind like a child would. This can involve focusing on the flavours and textures you’re experiencing while eating instead of the calories.
- Trust
Developing stronger self trust helps us to become more accepting of ourselves and what we eat. Honour your experiences as your own and don’t compare yourself with others’ experiences. For example this may be trusting yourself with trying new foods or trusting yourself with how much you eat.
- Nonstriving
Nonstriving involves contesting diet culture beliefs which involves striving for the perfect body or diet. Rejecting these beliefs helps with mindfulness as it helps to accept the experience as it is without anticipating any outcome from eating other than for energising your body for the day.
- Acceptance
Developing a willingness to notice and accept experiences is at the core of mindfulness practice. This might mean accepting the positive things which come from eating such as the amazing taste of your favourite food.
- Letting go
Mindful eating involves letting go of past expectations such as letting go of any resentment gained from being forced to eat a certain food growing up. Letting go of judgments built from negative past experiences helps us build new associations and memories with food.
(Nelson, 2017)
How to eat mindfully
Mindful eating may come across as an easy process, however many of us eat while being distracted by our phones, TV, eating on the go or rushing.
These are some tips for how to eat mindfully:
- Turn off or put away any distractions – put your phone in another room, turn off the TV while you eat and avoid looking at magazines or books etc.
- Sit down at a table while eating.
- Put your cutlery down between mouthfuls, to avoid rushing.
- Try eating with your non-dominant hand. This can help to focus better on eating.
- Take deep breaths before eating to ensure you are relaxed and present during your meal.
(Nelson, 2017)
Conclusion
Intuitive Eating and Mindful Eating offer compassionate alternatives to the rigid rules and negative messages promoted by diet culture. While the approaches have similar principles, they support different aspects of developing a healthier relationship with food. Intuitive eating focuses on rebuilding trust in your body’s biological signals, whereas mindful eating encourages focusing on the present moment while eating.
Together they promote a healthier way of eating which prioritises nourishment, satisfaction and self-respect rather than restriction and perfectionism. Stepping away from diet culture and reconnecting with your body’s needs, makes it more possible to create a more peaceful and sustainable approach to food.
If you would like to read more on mindful and intuitive eating, you can find more information here. If you would like to work 1:1 with a nutritionist, you can book a free 15 minute consultation with no obligation to book.
Reference List
Harris, E. (2023). Elizabeth Harris. [online] Elizabeth Harris. Available at: https://elizabethharrisnutrition.com/blog/whats-the-difference-between-mindful-eating-and-intuitive-eating-tips-to-practice-both [Accessed 19 May 2026].
Intuitive eating pros (n.d.). 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating. [online] Intuitive Eating. Available at: https://www.intuitiveeating.org/about-us/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/ [Accessed 19 May 2026].
Mindful Staff (2019). Jon Kabat-Zinn: Defining Mindfulness – Mindful. [online] Mindful. Available at: https://www.mindful.org/jon-kabat-zinn-defining-mindfulness/ [Accessed 19 May 2026].
Nelson, J.B. (2017). Mindful Eating: The Art of Presence While You Eat. Diabetes Spectrum, [online] 30(3), pp.171–174. doi:https://doi.org/10.2337/ds17-0015.Warren, J.M., Smith, N. and Ashwell, M. (2017). A Structured Literature Review on the Role of mindfulness, Mindful Eating and Intuitive Eating in Changing Eating behaviours: Effectiveness and Associated Potential Mechanisms. Nutrition Research Reviews, [online] 30(2), pp.272–283. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954422417000154.
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