Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works Paperback – September 11, 2003

I can't say enough about this book. It has completely changed my life. I'd been stuck in a dieting circle since I was 9 years old, and this book finally presented a way out.After losing a lot of weight (about 100 pounds) after years of Weight Watchers and strict calorie/marconutrient counting, I'd completely lost touch with my body's hunger and fullness cues, nutritional needs and any food intuition whatsoever. I ended up developing an eating disorder. I tried other books to help me get out of the diet rat race and get my life back, but this was the only one that seemed to make sense.Before reading this book, I was binge eating and purging anywhere from twice a week to 5-7 times per day. I binged and purged so much that my chest and throat hurt almost all the time. My teeth hurt. I had terrible acid reflux. I was going out of my way to binge eat, spending about $20 per binge at all hours of the day and night. I also exercised so much that I developed chronic tendonitis and stress fractures in both shins, requiring expensive doctor's office visits and 8 weeks of physical therapy, twice a week for 90 minutes at a time. My entire life was ruled by my eating disorder.Now, after reading this book and going to about a year of therapy, I feel like I'm starting to get my life back. I eat whatever I want, when I want. I know that sounds crazy and people often interpret that as me saying "I eat pizza and ice cream all day." But, when you listen to your body and turn off the food police, it's amazing what your body tells you. Of course no one wants to only eat pizza and ice cream. You'd feel awful.As it turns out, about 80% of the time I want foods that make my BODY feel good (tons of fruit, veggies, some dairy - I'm vegetarian). The other 20% of the time, I want things that make my SOUL feel good (dark chocolate, baked goods, chips, pizza, ice cream). I eat those whenever I want and feel zero guilt or zero pressure to consume as much as I can, because I know I can have these foods whenever I want them.The best part? I was terrified of how much weight I'd gain on Intuitive Eating, but I am only about 10 pounds heavier now than when I was restricting heavily, dieting, weighing every scrap of food I ate and exercising myself to the point of injury. I eat what I want, enjoy life, don't count any calories and it's only a 10 pound difference from when I was so hungry that I'd drink Nyquil just to be able to sleep through the hunger cues at night.IMPORTANT: The book alone was not enough to guide me into recovery (and the authors say as much) so I also saw two therapists once a week for about a year. This is crucial. If you have an eating disorder, this book will not be enough. You need to talk to a professional. I was embarrassed to admit I needed help, but it was worth it!

I'd like to describe my experience with Intuitive Eating (IE) as a concept, and how this book played a role in my getting to where I am right now. I'm 46 years old, a guy, 5'6", and have been at a sort of equilibrium weight of about 150-155 lbs for the last couple of years, which feels ok to me. I had been overweight most of my adult life, but I knew things were going in a bad direction when I weighed somewhere around 200 lbs in Oct 2007. I strongly suspected that I would continue to go through my little diet/gain cycles that up until then were resulting in my gaining something like 5-10 pounds per year. I was already very uncomfortable, but figured I was going to be in big trouble in my 50's and later.Not having been exposed to IE, through sheer force of will I lost about 60 pounds in a little over a year. I had never before accomplished anything like that. I have to say that as I began to lose the weight, and experience the new energy that came with that, and looking and feeling better, I regularly experienced a kind of euphoria that just kept me going. Nothing else in my life really mattered very much compared to this and I really didn't care at all when friends and family began to tell me they were worried about me. However, I came to realize in early 2009 that I had basically exchanged one eating disorder for another. That was very difficult to admit. But I began to see that my food "management" procedures had pretty much taken over my life and I could see that it was beginning to have a negative physical effect. That same Winter I nearly blacked out while driving once, and in general I felt cold most of the time in a way I never had before. I finally went to my doctor who suggested that for my body type, I was somewhat underweight (I've only gained back about 15 pounds, but when I see pictures of myself from those times in say shorts and tee-shirt, I look like I must have been sick).And so I really did not know what to do next. I had already come to terms with the idea that if I needed to eat very restrictively for the rest of my life in order to never again be obese, as well as to look how I had always wanted to, that I would be willing to pay that price. But now I had begun to fear that I was damaging my body or even reducing my life span. I felt like I had two choices, let up on my restrictive eating and probably gain all the weight back and more as had always happened before, or keep on with it and very likely damage myself irreversibly (even writing this now, brings back some of the emotion of that time).But then one day I heard some kind of reference to the idea of IE, and I grabbed at it hoping it would turn out to be some kind of lifeline.I found this book and loved what it had to say from the very beginning. But I will tell you that the authors KNOW what they are talking about when they say that it is easier to come to terms with IE and trust it if you start while overweight, than it is if you are already at or below your natural weight. Because even though I knew I needed to gain some weight, seeing that happen, even by a couple of pounds, was terrifying to me. IE made so much intellectual sense, and even resonated with how I always imagined our bodies are supposed to work. But the fear that I would not be able to stop eating once I started was almost more than I could take. Even after being able to mostly ignore that fear, it still sort of lurked in the background for a couple of years.I won't repeat what the authors teach since you can read the book, or the other reviews that give nice summaries. But I'll say that it all worked for me. It it just that it has probably taken far longer for me to trust what my body tells me it wants/needs than it needed to. Nevertheless, I have never been at such peace with myself and with food. It is nothing short of glorious to be able to eat whatever looks or smells good or interesting or different... to be able to go back to food shopping and cooking in a creative way... to be able to eat with friends in restaurants or at their homes, and comfortably go with the flow of it all. To be able to live this way, with no (or at least very little) mental record-keeping of how many calories I'm taking in and simultaneously planning how I will need to adjust what I eat later in order to compensate... to finally know, deeply, that my body itself is far better than my mind at doing all that naturally.There are some holdovers from the old "careful eating" ways, but I have consciously chosen to keep them on -- if I suspect a grocery store muffin has something like 750 calories(!), I'll check -- and if it does, then there is no way that counts as a little snack -- there are too many other ways to actually enjoy 750 calories :-) Same goes for fast food and soft drink decisions. But aside from these sorts of extremes, I know that I can eat (1) when I am hungry and (2) what I want, so long as (3) I really put everything else aside and experience the meal rather than eating mindlessly, and then (4) stop when I'm full. OK, I couldn't help myself, I had to make a plug for a few of the authors' principals - but they are my favorites. Read the book for the whole package -- it can change your life.Intuitive Eating may not work for everyone -- there is no question that food and eating have become a literal battleground in this modern world. But if you decide to give it a try, be prepared for the psychological effects to take a while to begin to kick in, especially if you are currently at or below your body's natural weight.

entonces si lo compraste esperando bajar de peso el que está mal eres tú. es un enfoque distinto y medio “oriental” de cambiar tu relación con la comida, de conocer tus momentos de ingesta de alimento y tus momentos de saciedad. Lo demás es pura paja.

Do you have bad eating habits and /or unhealthy views of food? This book will help you analyse why you wake up in the middle of the night for that midnight snack. or why you are always obliged to finish everything that's on your plate. It gives you permission to make peace with food and approach it on your own terms. It was a revelation for me.

J'ai adoré ce livre ! J'ai beaucoup appris par rapport à certaines pratiques et mythes comme le régime etc. Vraiment bien expliqué, détaillé et instructif. Si vous souhaitez arrêter le yo-yo alors n'hésitez pas.

If I could give this book 10 stars I would!! I had already read a couple of other books on intuitive eating so was familiar with the concept, however, this book goes into so much more depth and covers every aspect surrounding the whole concept of intuitive eating. For me, this book has changed my whole mindset - I know that I will never 'go on a diet' again. It has taught me to 're-tune' my body so that I am aware of when I am truly hungry and when I am truly full and all the other stages in between. I would wholly recommend this book to anyone who is sick and tired of the diet treadmill and cannot see a way out - it will make you realise that the time for beating yourself up for having failed yet another diet is well and truly something of the past.

I'm not entirely sure how to rate this book because.......on the one hand, it does make perfect sense and it is kind of eye-opening, but...on the other hand, there is so much information that is just completely unnecessary.The book is way too long, with way too many examples that do not really help. I know this sounds rude, but why should I care what happened in XYZ's life? I know these examples were chosen so that the reader has a representation/an example of the explained principle in 'real life', it might even give some people an opportunity to relate to those patients. But after some examples, I just skipped them altogether. Those names given to the patients also did not really help at all...In my opinion, it is enough to read the last chapter, which gives you an 'overview' of all the principles. The rest of the book is completely unnecessary if you already have some kind of knowledge and if you know how the diet industry works/what it is trying to do.the last chapter of the book gives you everything you need to know without the (sometimes annoying) examples. So basically, this book could be reduced to 20 pages maximum.HOWEVER, I can recommend this book to ANYONE who is sick and tired of being manipulated, and especially to young girls!!!!!It is so easy to become obsessed with certain food rules and beliefs (especially with YouTube now being a big business and people promoting different kinds of diet as THE ONLY RIGHT ONE). It is so easy to limit oneself, to become obsessed, to form rules and once you 'break those rules', even just slightly, everything escalates.I also really liked the way that the authors talked about exercise and fitness: People need to learn to see exercise as a separate thing from food. They asked a question, something like, how often do people think 'Oh, I ate so poorly today. I ate so much.. even working out won't solve that..' or 'only 10 minutes of a workout is not worth it.' or 'going for a walk does not burn enough calories etc.'. people need to see that while excising can be used as a tool in a diet, it is also separate from it. Because all those things mentioned above do not matter at all, if you consider for only one moment, what exercising means for your BODY and health, and not necessarily for body aims/diet aims. 10 minutes of slowly walking is STILL good for you, for your heart, even if it might not burn so many calories. And so on.What I really liked about this book is the emphasis on freedom. And that being free of diet mentality is SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than looking a certain way. It might not be as apparent how diets work, and how they limit people in their lives. Dieting can literally ruin peoples' lives without them even noticing (like, rejecting an invitation because you fear that someone will push food on you or force you to eat something. JUST THINK ABOUT IT. Rejecting an invitation for something like that!)I can say that I like the principle behind this book, and while I agree with everything the authors do say, I don't think that someone who has read the book is ready to change. It is not motivational enough (yeah, the reader must make the decision himself/herself, but still.). I expected some more guidance, too. Some more 'easy tools' to use during the process.Summing up:I believe that people have forgotten how to eat intuitively, and that diet culture and 'health movements' have totally messed up our ways of thinking. While I can at least somewhat proudly say that I really don't fall for any of those supposed-to-be-healthy-diets and products, and I don't fall for any ads/campaigns/'sucess stories) anymore, TOO MANY PEOPLE STILL DO. And it is those people that NEED to read this book ASAP!We have made everything WAY TOO COMPLICATED, way too restricted. We constantly fight to find THE SOLUTION, THE ONLY RIGHT WAY. And all the while, we forget what eating is actually all about: nurturing our bodies and spirit/souls (whatever you want to call it).The book states a lot of facts that makes the reader think about eating. The simple process of eating that has become such an obstacle for way too many people.But at the same time, I don't find the structure of the book helpful at all...