Is intuitive eating just another diet?

Many dieticians and fitness experts advocate for intuitive eating and are agaisnt dieting. There are two definitions of the word diet. Diet can be defined as the way a person, animal or community habitually eats. And diet can also be difined as consuming food restrictively in order to lose weight or for medical reasons. So when people refer to intuitive eating and claim to be agaisnt all notions of restrition, I believe that they are referring to the latter, type of diet. They are against the idea of eating restrictively to lose weight. I am unsure if they are also against the idea of eating restrictively for health reasons too. I mean if obesity is unhealthy, then a diet done to lose weight is also a diet done for health reasons isn't it?

So intuitive eating can be seen as an anti diet way of eating? Or an anti restriction type of diet. Personally I am not for or against the concept of intuitive eating. I believe that it is a skill to be learnt. It is not easy to eat intuitively these days, when so much of our foods are processed, have hidden calories in them and when we are becoming so divorced from how our food is produced.

My understanding of intuitive eating is that you use cues from your body such as hunger, appetite, satiation and feeling full to determine when and how much to eat. While this sounds fantastic, I see several challenges here. Some people cannot interprete those signs accurately. Some people naturally have a very high appetite, some do not. Besides the types of food we consume plays a big role in hunger levels. I mean if I eat a healthy muesli bar , despite the museli bar being healthy and being an energy snack, the muesli bar is so small that I'll be hungry within half an hour of consuming it. Whereas if I had a larger meal, which may have contained less the amount of energy, I would probably not be hungry so soon. So in my opinion, using intuitive eating alone, or relying on hunger levels and appetite levels alone is simply not enough to guide our eating habits. I think that for intuitive eating to be successful at managing body weight or maintaining health, then intuitive eating needs to be at least accompanied by some knowledge of good nutrition.

I believe that those in favour of intuitive eating advocate for this way of eating as a way to guide and help those with eating disorders, or who eat disorderly develop a positive relationship with food. And I can see how intuitive eating and being against restrictive diets is a good way of helping people develop a better relationship with food, but I don't personally believe that intuitive eating alone is enough to maintain good health and maintain a healthy body weight.

I use intuitive eating , I listen to my body, I eat when I am hungry, I stop eating when I am full. However I do not rely entirely on intuitive eating. I also calorie count because I like to make sure that I am eating enough and not over eating. I like making sure I am eating enough macronutrients, enough carbohydrates, enough fats, enough proteins and that I am getting my vitamins, minerals and fiber. How do you ensure you are eating enough protein, with intuitive eating alone?

So I am not for or agaisnt intuitive eating, in fact I used intuitive eating myself. I guess what I am against are the fitness experts and dieticians bashing other ways of eating and diets in general. Dieting culture is toxic there is no doubt about that. However, diet culture and a diet that we adopt to manage our body weight, nutritional intake and health is different to diet culture. Diet culture is valuing thinness, appearance and shape above overall health. So it is important that we do not conflate dieting and diet culture, they are different things. Many diets have merit in terms of health benefits. Tracking calories and macros for example, is an excellent way of making sure I eat enough and get all my macronutrients in the right proportion. So this diet ensures that malnutrition is avoided. Another example is the fodmap diet, while this diet is not a weight loss diet, it is designed to help individuals who are intolerant to fodmaps (Certain sugars) and the FODMAP diet is restrictive, but this diet has merit. I don't think we should be bashing all diets and making claims that all diets are bad and unhealthy.

Let's stop bashing diets with merits and intuitive eating can go hand in hand with other ways of eating. Intuitive eating and other diets do not have to be mutually exclusive. And there is also nothing wrong with wanting to maintain our health in a healthy BMI range. There is nothing wrong with wanting to lose a few kilos or wanting to lean out a bit. Just like there is nothing wrong with wearing makeup, getting your hair done at the hair dressers which are all things we do to improve our apperance, there is also nothing wrong with wanting to maintain a certain body apperance, provided we are not harming our bodies and not harming ourselves mentally in the process.