In this solo video, health coach and behavior‑change specialist Victoria S. Dorsano explains the concept of intuitive eating and outlines five core principles for adopting it. She begins by describing intuitive eating as the natural way children eat—eating when hungry and stopping when full—and cautions that the approach may not be suitable for individuals currently recovering from an eating disorder, urging them to consult a therapist. The first principle is to stop dieting and disengage from diet culture, including fad diets and social‑media influences, to break the yo‑yo cycle. The second principle emphasizes honoring one’s internal hunger and fullness cues, despite modern schedules that often dictate eating times. The third principle calls for making peace with food by discarding the “good vs. bad” labeling of foods, recognizing that all foods provide nourishment, though some are more nutrient‑dense. The fourth principle focuses on loving and respecting one’s body at any size, acknowledging diverse healthy bodies and fostering self‑acceptance. The fifth principle stresses holistic self‑care: regular medical check‑ups, balanced nutrient intake, moderation (e.g., not eating donuts 24/7), and caring for mental, physical, and spiritual health. Victoria concludes by inviting viewers to subscribe for more content on intuitive eating.
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Hey there everyone, my name is Victoria S. Dorsano and I'm a health coach and behavior change specialist. And today we're going to talk a little bit about what intuitive eating is. If you've ever watched a child eat before, it pretty much looks like this: when they're hungry, they decide to eat, and when they're full, they stop eating. And all in all, in a nutshell, that's pretty much what intuitive eating is. So let's talk about what that looks like. And really quick, before I dive into some of these principles about what intuitive eating is and how to get started with it, let me know that this is not an approach for everyone. For example, if you are, you know, just in the process of recovering from an eating disorder or have suffered with eating disorders in the past, this may not be the right step for you to start with. Now, eventually in any eating disorder recovery, this is a point where you want to get to, but it's okay if you're not there yet. And make sure you— if this is a goal of yours to start intuitive eating, that you— and you are in eating disorder recovery— that you talk to your therapist or whoever you're working with at that time. Okay, so let's go ahead and dive in with some of the principles behind intuitive eating. So the first one is to stop dieting and to stop thinking about the diet mentality or being a part of the diet culture. And really what this looks like is just that you stop dieting, you stop engaging in the fad diets or the celery juice cleanses or whatever it may be to lose weight or to get healthy. You eliminate, especially on social media, different feeds that come through that promote different types of fad diets or celebrity-endorsed diets. It's really important to almost do a cleanse of the diet culture and diet mentality because the dieting world really evolves in a cycle. And what it looks like is you feel bad about yourself, you're not happy with where you're at, you don't feel healthy, so you start dieting. You lose weight, you find that it's giving you that confidence you want, or you feel better because you've lost that weight. And then the diet ends, right? Most of these diets aren't meant to go on forever and ever and ever. At some point it ends, or you're going to indulge, right? So you indulge, you stop dieting, you gain that weight back, and then you start right back where you started, and you're going back into that same cycle of dieting again, losing the weight, gaining it back, losing the weight, getting it back. And that's what the yo-yo dieting is. And sadly, diet culture is built that way on purpose. It's a huge industry. We spend so much money, especially in the Western civilization, on, on dieting and dieting to weight in specific. So the first step is really to eliminate that mentality, the diet culture, and dieting overall out of your focus. The second principle is really honoring your hunger and fullness cues, kind of like how I mentioned at the beginning of the video. If you notice how children eat, they eat when they're hungry and they stop when they're full. And they don't stop when they're really exploding, about to like throw up full. They stop before that point, and then they'll go back if they're hungry. This is a really crucial part, is taking that time to feel, and that's part of this intuitive process, right, is to feel what our own bodies are actually needing. I know, I know, I know our, our culture is set up upon like time basis, right? We have our lunchtime. When we were in school, we had a set cafeteria time. We'd have lunch, we'd go home, we'd have a set dinner time with our family because that's when everyone got home from work. I know that it's not fully, fully realistic to eat whenever you want, however you want throughout the day, especially if you have a 9-to-5 job. Finding different strategies and getting creative with how you can still honor your hunger cues and honor when you're full to stop eating. That's a really important part of this journey because that starts to teach you and reteaches you, I should say, about how you're— how to feel your body from the inside, how to honor that grumbling feeling. Or sometimes a lot of us can get past that grumbling feeling and then we get hangry or we get frustrated or we're quick to certain emotions. And that's another sign of, huh, have I eaten in the past few hours? Probably a blood sugar check. All right, let's eat. So noticing these different body cues is a crucial step to the intuitive eating process because it's just that— it's getting intuitive with our own bodies again. The third step in the intuitive eating process, or third principle I should say, is making peace with food. And this sounds scary, right? I know, because we've gotten so used to calling certain foods bad, other foods good. We feel righteous when we eat something healthy. We feel bad or gross when we've eaten something bad. I'm not talking about gross internally, I'm talking about gross about our external appearances or self-consciousness. So we start to categorize and identify who we are based on what we eat, and intuitive eating is not like that. Food is food. All food is on the same level playing field in terms of good and bad. There really is no good and bad. Those labels are taken out completely because there's no evil in food. Food is just nourishment. This is where it gets tricky again because there's ways to moderate this, and this is where it gets further into the intuitive eating process. Junk food is still food, it's just less nutrient dense. So calling certain foods bad or good, that's gone. We're just saying there's some food that is a little bit more nutrient dense and there's some food that's a little less nutrient dense. It doesn't make it bad and doesn't make it good, they're just food. So making peace with food and, um, Starting to erase some of those different identifications that we take in about ourselves, about eating certain types of food. It's really important to make that peace and to make eating something that's enjoyable and, um, nourishing to our bodies and our souls. The fourth principle of intuitive eating is to love your body. It's a really important step because I acknowledge that I'm not going to look like a size 2 supermodel. That's nearly impossible for me and actually very unhealthy for my body. But for that size 2 supermodel, she may actually be healthy at that size. And for where somebody else may be healthy at a different size. Healthy looks different to everybody's body. It's very different across the board. So respecting that and loving your body in this process, no matter where you're at, even if you're not at a healthy point or what you would consider a healthy point when starting this process, still loving every part of your body throughout the process of intuitive eating is key. Understanding that, hey, I have lungs that are breathing for me. Hey, I have fat that's trying to protect me and keep me safe and to have energy reserves for to do the things that I love. Hey, I have these muscles that— or big calves or broad shoulders that help me carry things and move far, or far, or whatever it may be. I think it's really important to understand those aspects of your body, respect where you're at even if it's not exactly where you want to be. Loving yourself where you're at throughout the process of getting to where you want to be is crucial. And the fifth principle here for intuitive eating is to take care of yourself. Make sure you're going to your doctor's visits regularly on a yearly basis, getting checkups. Make sure that you're balancing the nutrients that you have in your diet. You know, intuitive eating doesn't mean eating donuts 24/7, because I promise you, if you did eat donuts 24/7, you probably wouldn't feel that great, and your body would intuitively be telling you, hey, I don't have the best energy, I keep on getting headaches, or whatever it may be. So It's finding those bounds of what self-care looks like within this broad parameter of nourishment, which can kind of be a fun journey. So taking care of yourself, going to doctor's visits, embracing a wide variety of nutrients in your diet, having fun with food, and not restricting. That's kind of what's encapsulated in the self-care realm, is really making sure you're taking care of yourself mentally and physically and spiritually in this process. So those are just some of the intuitive eating principles. It's definitely not all of them, but if you want to learn more about intuitive eating and the other principles that go along with this. Definitely like this video, subscribe to my channel. I'll be posting a lot more videos on this particular subject. I'm very passionate about it myself, and I follow intuitive eating. So if you want to learn more, definitely hit that subscribe button. I look forward to continuing to provide you guys more education on this topic, and I hope you guys have a great day.
