BOOK REVIEWS: Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works
By Laura Simpson, RN
Reprinted from Eating Disorders Recovery Today
Fall 2006 Volume 4, Number 4
©2006 Gürze Books
By Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD, and Elyse Resch, MS, RD, FADA, © 2003, St. Martin’s Griffin, 284 pages, $13.95
In Intuitive Eating, Tribole and Resch indicate that dieting undoubtedly leads to a preoccupation with food. The author’s discuss how dieting induces excessive feelings of guilt, designates food as "the enemy," and is responsible for promoting a slowed metabolism as the body screams louder and more intensely, "Starvation, deprivation, hold onto every calorie that is ingested." Tribole and Resch introduce reades to the "Intuitive Eater" who marches to her own inner hunger signals and eats whatever she chooses without experiencing guilt or an ethical dilemma. The intuitive eater eats according to a biological trigger, namely hunger.
Discussed in detail in this book are the ten Principles of Intuitive Eating (pp. 20-29):
- Reject the diet mentality
- Honor your hunger
- Make peace with food
- Challenge the food police
- Feel your fullness
- Discover the satisfaction factor
- Cope with emotions without food
- Respect your body
- Exercise-feel the difference
- Honor your health-gentle nutrition
Regardless of how long and relentless one’s dieting strategies have endured over the years, it is possible to eat according to one’s intuition. Intuition pertaining not only to the biological realm, but also extending into the emotional, spiritual, and situational sense of knowing and respecting one’s desires and needs as they arise. Intuitive Eating is a beneficial tool to those who want to recognize that repetitive dieting is consequently leading them down a path to dishonor their bodies, as well as to feelings of guilt and shame.
