Intuitive Eating: a Revolutionary Anti Diet Approach

by Evelyn Tribole, Elyse Resch

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook

Paperback

Published June 23, 2020

About the author

Evelyn Tribole, MS, RD is an award-winning registered dietitian, with a nutrition counseling practice in Newport Beach, California. She has written seven books including the bestsellers Healthy Homestyle Cooking and Intuitive Eating(co-author). Her newest book is the Ultimate Omega-3 Diet.

Evelyn was the nutrition expert for Good Morning America, appearing from 1994-’95 and was a national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association for 6 years. She was contributing editor for Shape magazine where her monthly column, Recipe Makeovers, appeared for 11 years.

She is often sought by the media for her nutritional expertise and has appeared on hundreds of interviews, including: CNN, Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News, USA Today, Wall St. Journal and People magazine.

As a speaker, Evelyn is passionate and has been called, "Wonderfully wise and funny", whether providing a keynote or full-day workshop.

Achievements and honors include, receiving the American Dietetic Association’s Award for Excellence in Private Practice. Many national magazines have rated Evelyn as one of the best nutritionists in the country including: Self, Harper’s Bazaar, and Redbook magazine.

Professional memberships include: the Am. Dietetic Assoc., International Society for Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids, the Celiac Disease Foundation, and the Academy for Eating Disorders.

Evelyn qualified for the Olympic Trials in the first ever women’s marathon in 1984. Although she no longer competes, Evelyn runs for fun and is an avid skier and hiker. She also enjoys surfing, kayaking and white water rafting. Evelyn’s favorite food is chocolate, when it can be savored slowly.

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have some mixed feelings about this book. I appreciate that it’s a whole different way of thinking about eating, and I think it’s a needed corrective for our culture’s screwed up attitudes toward food, dieting, fat phobia, etc. For me personally, it’s not a giant epiphany - I think I’m already an intuitive eater, for the most part (could use some tweaking here and there). But it served as validation for me that dieting doesn’t work and I’m not a failure for giving up on attempt after attempt to lose weight. So I think that course correction is valuable for my own mental health (freedom from inevitable disappointment, guilt, shame, etc.)

However, the authors never address the very real health risks of obesity/overweight. It’s well documented that carrying extra weight increases risks of many diseases and shortens life span. We know this. If we are to leave diet culture behind (a worthy goal) and never trouble ourselves about safe, sustainable ways of losing weight, how are we to manage the resulting risks? The book never even touches on this aspect of health care and management, so in some ways I think this avoidance just fuels the confusion that many people feel when it comes to eating healthfully. There is also little to no advice on how to deal with health care professionals who focus on their patients’ weight to the exclusion of all else, or who focus on problematic measures such as BMI. I don’t want to have to educate my physician on why BMI is BS when I’m really there for some other problem (hypothetical example, my actual doctor is pretty awesome).

One more quibble I have is that the chapter on movement is pretty thin (no pun intended) and not really all that helpful. This is an area that’s actually the biggest struggle for me personally, and I didn’t really get any new insight on what might be behind that and how to address it in a way that’s in line with the Intuitive Eating philosophy. Or I should say, I would have liked this chapter to go a bit deeper.

Overall, I think this is a good resource for anyone who struggles with yo-yo dieting and a messed up relationship with food. It’s a good start in healing that relationship, but I think it’s only part of the whole story.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think it's quite telling (of how insidious fatphobia is) that so many negative reviews for this book boil down to "yeah they make good points, but they didn't shame obesity and fat people enough." The premise of this book is that you can learn to trust your body to tell you what it needs, and it's clearly shown that nurturing that trust will actually prevent you from overeating, emotional eating, and weight cycling (which is more dangerous than just being fat). Yet, societally-reinforced anger toward fat people seems to make people demand shaming, vitriol, and pitchforks, when we know that shame is a horrible motivator! Although making weight loss the goal goes against the principles of intuitive eating, people who eat intuitively are shown to weigh less - there's no need to pile lectures and humiliation on top of that.

Overall I think the authors make an excellent case for intuitive eating. The 10 principles are really clearly laid out, with good data to support the premises and excellent case examples (I might have appreciated a bit more detail about factors that interfere with intuitive eating, like access to food, allergies/dietary restrictions, and living with non-intuitive-eaters). I wish more people were open to these messages - as a society, it would do us a lot of good to spend less time fixated on our eating and our body image, and let our bodies do the job they were designed for (keeping us alive and healthy). I read the e-book and many of the tables were poorly formatted/cut off, so would highly recommend a print copy.

One idea that really stuck out to me: Diet culture trains us to view our bodily intuition as some kind of adversary to be defeated (instead of a source of genuine wisdom), and so we turn to external sources to decide what our bodies "should" need - and those sources are usually trying to sell us something. I think this is incredibly twisted. We know that human breast milk adapts to the specific nutrients baby needs (and adjusts for illness and other conditions), so do we really think our bodies are unable to tell us what we need nutritionally?

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some parts of this book I thoroughly enjoyed--and benefited--from. 5 stars for those.

Other parts felt incomplete or worded so "correctly" that they were unhelpful or just didn't say anything. (Body positivity isn't bad, but there are real health risks associated with genuine obesity.)

[marg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Embarrassed that i read this but honestly really good stuff

[Ashley Redding · Rating 5 out of 5]

life changing 🩷