Intuitive Eating, the best “diet”
Intuitive eating is exactly what it sounds like, eating intuitively. But what does that mean exactly, and what makes it the best way to eat compared to any other diet?
Intuitive eating is about viewing food as nourishment, not numbers, and rejecting diet rules. It means trusting your body’s innate intelligence (honoring hunger, cravings, and needs) while building a healthy relationship with food. Whether it’s a chicken sandwich or cheesecake, no food is inherently good or bad. Your body knows what it needs. In other words, its not a diet at all.
Diets create restriction, food obsession, a disconnect from your body, or a combination of these. Keto cuts out carbs, carnivore removes plant foods, and Paleo demonizes anything "processed." While these diets may produce short-term fat loss, they're rarely sustainable. The main reason? Mental restriction. Labeling foods as “off-limits” builds stress and cravings, often leading to bingeing and guilt. Long-term, many of these diets, especially keto and carnivore, can increase health risks. Yet despite diets having a 95% failure rate, the blame always falls on individuals, not the flawed approach. If any other system failed this often, we'd rethink it instead of blaming the individual. But in the $100 billion health and fitness industry, you're told to try again without changing a process that fails people more than 9 every 10 times. You give your time, money, and energy, and in return, get gaslit for when an approach designed for you to fail, fails. You’re better off gambling in Vegas, the odds of succeeding are higher. Plus you won’t get gaslit by the casino when you lose*.
If no one’s told you this, let me be the first: if you’ve been trying for a long time to eat healthier or lose fat and haven’t succeeded, it’s mostly not your fault. Most people in the health and wellness space don’t truly understand how the body works. A lot of the information out there is incorrect, misleading, or manipulative, and they won’t admit it. For every one person who pulls off a “16-week transformation,” there are nine who end up worse off or unchanged. It’s a broken system with a flawed approach, plain and simple.
A diet, by nature, reflects a lack of trust in your body’s ability to make the right choices for its own health. If you truly trusted and listened to your body, external rules and restrictions wouldn’t be necessary. Dieting is often a response to that lost trust, outsourcing decisions to rigid structures and arbitrary rules. This isn’t entirely your fault. Many factors can disrupt natural intuition, from childhood influences to an industry that constantly shifts its messaging on what and what not to do to keep people confused. But if most diets fail, were those “right” food choices ever truly right? And if not, how do we find the ones that actually work for us?
The right choices vary from person to person because nutritional needs and preferences are individual. This is why diets often fail, because they offer cookie-cutter solutions to unique and evolving needs. Trying to solve a temporary problem (“What should I eat right now?”) with a permanent solution (a diet) often creates a permanent problem: becoming disconnected from your body.
Intuitive eating encourages tuning in to your body rather than relying on external opinions (yes, even mine). At the end of the day, only you truly know how your body feels and responds. It's your body after all, not anyone else's. Your cravings and appetite will shift day to day, that’s a good thing. It’s how your body gets a variety of nutrients. Some days you’ll eat more or want something sweet, and that’s normal and healthy. Food is meant to nourish and to be enjoyed. Don’t let the fitness influencers project their miserable mindset onto you, you deserve better.
Intuitive eating is about creating your own personal approach, grounded in trust, health, and a positive relationship with food. It offers both physical and mental benefits. Since food is the foundation that fuels the body to thrive and survive, nutrition plays the primary role in living a healthy lifestyle, above exercise and recovery. While all three pillars are important for lifelong health, nutrition and intuitive eating are undoubtedly the key drivers of great health.
Intuitive eating promotes homeostatic regulation by letting your body guide hunger and fullness based on internal needs, not calorie counts or external rules. Yes, your body can regulate its own caloric intake. That’s why humans haven’t spontaneously expanded or shrunk over thousands of years. This natural regulation balances energy intake over time, reducing the need to micromanage food and helping prevent under- or overeating.
When you stop restricting or stressing about food, your nervous system can relax. Since food intake is essential for survival, if your body senses scarcity, whether from self-imposed restriction or lack of food, it conserves energy to survive. That’s why dieting often causes fatigue, low energy, and poor mental clarity, especially long-term. The body prioritizes survival, reducing energy expenditure until it feels safe. Less stress means less sympathetic drive, which improves digestion, recovery, and fat metabolism because your body knows it’s consistently getting the energy it needs.
Intuitive eating helps build a healthy relationship with food by fostering trust in your body’s natural drive to be healthy. Your body gains nothing from being unhealthy, its goal is survival and passing on your genes. It’s referred to as “survival of the fittest” for a reason. Don’t let health influencers tell you otherwise. This trust includes giving yourself permission to eat all kinds of food (even “junk”), which helps reduce cravings and overeating as their power diminishes over time. Make no mistake, this doesn’t mean eating whatever you want without thought. It means eating in a way that makes you feel energized and your best, a process that takes time and trial and error to discover. It’s more about being mindful of what and how you eat, practicing good habits, rather than imposing restrictive rules on yourself.
Allowing yourself to eat freely preserves and improves metabolic health. Without calorie restriction, metabolic downregulation is avoided, helping hormones like leptin, ghrelin, thyroid (T3), and insulin sensitivity stay balanced and function optimally.
Finally, by focusing on eating for energy instead of obsessing over calories, macros, or “clean” eating, you free up mental space to focus on what truly matters: your life, family, friends, hobbies, work, etc, because your body has got you covered.
If you’d like a more detailed guide on starting intuitive eating, I recommend this video by my nutritionist, Lucie Villeneuve. She explains the process far better than I can.
Let me be absolutely clear: intuitive eating is NOT a fat loss strategy. Its goal is to create a stable metabolic, psychological, and behavioral environment where the body senses sufficient energy, making movement consistent (and spontaneous), balancing energy intake, reducing food-related stress, and allowing the body to naturally shift toward a healthier composition without force or restrictive eating habits.
While intuitive eating is NOT a direct fat loss tool, it can support significant fat loss over time, especially for those who are overweight or obese. It can also lead to weight gain for many individuals initially if they are undernourished or overcoming restriction. Primarily, intuitive eating is a health tool that creates the right conditions for natural, unforced fat loss over time. In other words, a healthy body and mind. If anything acts as a fat loss tool, it’s exercise, particularly aerobic exercise.
Stay tuned for next week’s deep dive on why aerobic exercise, combined with intuitive eating, is effective for fat loss. Cheers!
-Nicho
*I’m NOT recommending anyone gamble. The point is simply this: the odds of a typical diet working long-term are so low that you'd statistically have a better chance of winning at gambling. Again, this is NOT a gambling endorsement. Seriously, don’t do it. Much like dieting.
TL;DR – Key Points on Intuitive Eating
What It Is:
Intuitive eating is eating based on internal cues like hunger, fullness, and cravings—not external rules, diets, or calorie counts.
Core Principles:
Trust your body’s natural intelligence to guide food choices.
No food is inherently “good” or “bad.”
Nourishment and enjoyment go hand-in-hand.
Why Diets Fail:
Diets often promote restriction, obsession, and disconnection from your body.
Mental restriction creates stress, cravings, and often bingeing.
95% of diets fail long-term—yet individuals, not the flawed system, are blamed.
The health industry profits from this cycle, keeping people stuck and confused.
The Real Issue:
Most people struggling with eating aren’t at fault—the system is.
Dieting reflects a lack of trust in your body, often rooted in misinformation or past trauma.
Individualized Approach:
What’s “right” nutritionally differs person to person.
Diets fail because they’re one-size-fits-all solutions to dynamic, individual needs.
Benefits of Intuitive Eating:
Encourages mindful eating and builds long-term healthy habits.
Reduces food-related stress, improves digestion, and supports metabolism.
Promotes hormonal balance and prevents metabolic downregulation.
Helps restore a healthy relationship with food by normalizing cravings and variety.
Clarifying a Common Misconception:
Intuitive eating is not permission to eat impulsively or without thought.
It’s about eating in ways that make you feel your best, discovered through trial, error, and mindfulness.
Long-Term Impact:
While not a fat loss method, intuitive eating creates the conditions for natural fat loss over time.
Especially effective when paired with consistent aerobic exercise, which supports sustainable body composition changes.
Main Takeaway:
Your body is designed to thrive, not fail.
Stop outsourcing your choices to diet culture.
Build trust, reduce restriction, and let your body guide the way—healthfully and sustainably.
