What is the balance between intuitive eating and under eating?

What would you say is the balance between intuitive eating and under-eating?

I think this is quite a tricky question to answer because I think it's something that there's a lot of kind of nuance in this, and you are only going to find the answer to this really yourself through genuine experimentation and learning to retrust your body.

But I would say generally, with intuitive eating, you are really thinking about what is it that you really want to eat? What is going to really satisfy you, satisfy you on a health level, but also satisfy you on that kind of 'yum yum' satisfaction level, and then you're allowing yourself genuine permission to eat that food without having those rules and you're eating to the point of being comfortably full.

And so, you're much more in tune with your body.

Whereas I guess with under-eating, you are probably following some kind of rules like I'm only allowed to eat this much. Maybe it's a certain number of grams or so many calories, or maybe you are really tuned into your fullness cues in a perhaps oversensitive way, so you might stop eating before you're properly full.

And I guess a difference between intuitive eating and under-eating as well is kind of seeing how you're eating then pans out through the day, because if you've been under-eating, you're probably gonna be really hungry again quite soon afterwards and maybe searching for food.

Whereas if you're more in tune with your body and you're an intuitive eater, I mean, you might still be hungry later, but you're probably more likely to be able to eat to the point of satisfaction and to kind of really fuel yourself and then keep yourself going for longer.

So I think there's a lot more that could be fed on this, but I think those are some of the kind of little nuances to kind of pull apart between intuitive eating and under-eating.

Harriet Frew

Eating Disorder Therapist

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