The Final Diet Boss: Intuitive Eating

Over the years I’ve come across the concept of intuitive eating. I never looked into it beyond the headline. It seemed obvious what it was.

A reaction to diet culture where we obsess over food and our looks. Instead of meticulously counting calories we are told to eat what we want until we are satisfied.

It worked for our ancestors, why wouldn’t it for us?

The modern food environment has been blamed for a lot of our troubles. Hyper-palatable, ultra-processed foods are accessible 24 hours a day within walking distance for most.

The foods we are exposed to are carefully crafted to be delicious, addictive and cheap. For the profit of massive corporations and to the detriment of all those who eat it.

You might imagine it would be impossible for a human to eat intuitively today. But, we are the ones in control of our individual food environment.

I used to be what you would call a food police. Pointing out whenever I got the chance that you were eating something you shouldn’t.

Now I’m slowly becoming a proponent of the intuitive eating philosophy. Before I would want you to restrict period. Now, I want you to restrict options not amount.

As long as we prioritise some simple, but foundational, principles of diet we can eat what we want, and how much we want.

In the past two weeks, we’ve spoken about two of these principles. The only two that you need to follow really.

1. JERF (Just Eat Real Food)

2. Prioritize Protein

If you do this you get to eat until you’re satisfied. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Maintaining a healthy, functional and beautiful body without any struggle.

The idea that we need to suffer to look good or lose weight is a lie. A lie that stems from the idea that the only way to lose weight is to eat less.

It sucks to not be in shape but it also sucks to get into shape. False. There is no dichotomy, there is no choice of suffering.

If you implement the two principles I’ve outlined in the previous two newsletters (principle 1 & principle 2 ), you’ll reach the holy grail of a sustainable relationship with food.

Few people get to this point because most of us have a destructive relationship with food. I do not recommend you start here.

Getting to this point will take some time. Depending on how bad you have eaten in the past and for how long. It might take half a year or even three.

By committing to eat according to these principles you’ll soon become a rarity in our modern world. Someone who eats what they want, when they want, and still maintains great energy, a great body, and impeccable health.

Appetite regulation is a real part of your physiology. When it’s functioning well, it keeps you eating just the right amount to handle the demands you put on your body.

Now, you might be thinking that it would be evolutionarily adaptive to gorge on surplus energy and that that’s why we’re so fat today.

The truth is, that both under-eating and over-eating are stressful to the body. The body would only “think” gorging is a good idea if it “thinks” starvation is around the corner.

By eating the way we do we are telling our bodies that bad times are upon us. Many of us are (metabolically speaking) preparing for starvation that never comes.

Creating an environment that signals “good times” causes the body to optimize for health. As you can imagine by looking at us today, chronically gorging is not an effective strategy for survival and reproduction.

It’s arrogant to assume that humans didn’t have long periods of surplus energy during evolution. We’re clever creatures, and if the environment was stable enough, we would have figured out how to maintain a surplus of food over time.

Despite a surplus of food, I think those humans were the healthiest. Why? Because their appetite regulation was on point.

Eating in a way that signals “good times” allows your body to regulate your appetite and adapt to incoming stress. Basically, you want to create an environment that tells our biology it’s time to make babies.

An abundance of healthy (preferred) foods, a stable social environment, and lots of fun. Dancing, singing, playing, sports, and movement.

I could go on and on about the specific foods that signal “good times” and why, or delve into the topic of the species-appropriate diet for Homo sapiens. But, if you can master these basic principles, you’ll be well on your way to improving your health.

Here is a step-by-step process for reaching dietary harmony:

1) At the start, cook more than you will eat

Your goal is to start to notice the signal of satiety that has been hidden for years, potentially your entire life. To do so we need to let us eat until the signal emerges.

Cooking more than you would eat allows you to eat until you feel satisfied. Satisfaction is different than stuffed.

You want to eat until your body says, “That’s enough”. You don’t want to eat because it says, “I can eat more”.

Ease into it and try to find that signal.

2) Slow down your eating

Another great way to allow the signal to emerge is to slow down the speed at which you eat. We are supposed to eat in a parasympathetic state.

That may sound complex but all it means is low stress. Chew your food more, have conversations while eating, and slow it down. I mean really slow it down, especially if you tend to eat fast.

3) Remember the principles

Some of us have messed up our appetite regulation. To fix it we need to get our bodies to stop believing we are preparing for a period of starvation.

In evolution, what do you think our food environment looked like in times of plenty?

You guessed correctly. There were plenty of ripe fruit and our hunts were successful. Honey, ripe fruit and plenty of red meat should tell our biology that we are in good times.

That’s also what it seems like in practice. People adapting this way of eating are having success all over the place. Building muscle, losing weight, solving auto-immune problems and chronic disease.

You now have the fundamentals down. You eat real whole foods, prioritize protein and eat more fruit.

Do this for a month or two and see how it goes. At this point, you can start experimenting with the details. Like your carb-to-fat ratio, micro-nutrient needs, potential plant toxins, and which foods are easiest for you to digest.

The most important thing is to create a solid foundation. A foundation that gets you out of the way and allows your body to do its job of maintaining health.

That’s it. Simple yet profound. Let’s move away from dietary dogma and stand on sane assumptions. From there we can argue about the details. Without solid, logical, principles we will continue to drive our society into the ground.

These are the three simple principles to understand and implement that would massively improve the health of anyone who implemented them.

Until next Sunday, do what makes your future self proud—and what makes the world a better place.