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Lots of people have been asking me: “Is TFID the same as Intuitive Eating?”

It is and it isn’t. They have the same goal: body trust, appetite trust, and food trust, with different ways of teaching and explaining how to get there.

A lot of my writing over the years has talked about how I turned (what I thought was) “intuitive eating” and “listening to my body” into a diet. I turned it into a weird stressful attempt to eat the smallest amount possible. I interpreted good advice through a fat-phobic, food fearing, diet culture belief system.

Lots of people do the same thing I did: they take good advice and twist it into a diet that they convince themselves is not a diet, because they let themselves eat a few squares of dark chocolate 3 times a week! Moderation is intuition! Right?! (UGH!)

But… the more I’ve been asked to answer if TFID is the same as intuitive eating, the more I realize it’s important to reflect on how I’ve referred to IE over the past seven years of writing this site, as well as in my book that’s coming out in less than a month.

First of all, Intuitive Eating is a book written by two registered dietitian nutritionists, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, that came out in 1995. The book is revolutionary in its genre and field, completely evidence based, and I recommend you read it.

However, my experience with official Intuitive Eating and the official Intuitive Eating book is actually pretty limited, which means the way that I’ve referred to it (or not referred to it) should probably be examined. In fact, the book Intuitive Eating and Geneen Roth’s books are mixed up in my mind at this very moment as I write this. Maybe that’s because there is a hunger scale in both of them? (And I DEF turned that hunger scale into a diet.)

I only read Intuitive Eating book once, when I was 18. And I’m not positive if I even finished it because I became a raw vegan 2 weeks later.

I obsessively dieted as a teenager. I went on every fad diet that existed at the time. It was disordered, it was extreme, and I felt more and more and more out of control with food the more I dieted. When I read the book Intuitive Eating, it was the first time I realized that my dieting was dysfunctional. Before then, I thought that this was just the way it had to be. I remember the book really spoke to me.

But I still didn’t fully understand how deep it all went for me: culturally and metabolically and emotionally and on and on. And I didn’t see how messed up my relationship was with weight, and how that was actually the core of the whole thing.

I needed very, very explicit instructions to F*** IT: f*** all diet and weight loss noise, and be willing to gain weight and take up space and be angry and prioritize my mental health over my desire to be a pretty little thing. But I was also young, and clearly needed to suffer a little more before I really understood that dieting was always going to backfire.

(***I bleep curse words for iTunes)

Weeks after reading the book, and just a few weeks before I went off to college, my mom told me she had cancer, and we both became raw vegan to try and heal all of our earthly ills (it didn’t work) (my mom is fine, but not because of raw veganism, she ditched it soon after starting chemo) (also, I have complex feelings about pharmaceutical companies too, but raw veganism was still not the answer).(Yes I was a raw vegan in freshman year of college.)

I was raw vegan for almost a year – and then after I realized it wasn’t “working” (read: I was less healthy, starving all the time, horrible skin, horrible digestion, and crazier than ever around food), I started trying to “eat intuitively” again… for 6 years. My general idea was that if I could listen to my body, and “not eat too much,” that that was intuitive. But I didn’t revisit the book, instead, for six years I did some version of “listening to my body sooooo closely and constantly trying to eat the smallest amount possible”. My goal was always to be thin. I also stuck my application of French Women Don’t Get Fat into the mix, thinking: ‘this is awesome… I can eat intuitively and frenchly. And be skinny and perfect.’

I turned “listening to my body” into a diet so quickly.

I used to interpret any advice on how to heal my eating through a diet culture lens. I interpreted it all through my belief that the goal of any eating style, was weight loss at all costs. I figured that the point was to listen to my body in order to eat really, really welllll – and that if I was being intuitive, I should crave “balanced” things always and forever.

Disordered eaters can quickly turn the principles of Intuitive Eating (or any version of “listen to your body”) into another diet. You can turn anything into the diet. I turned The f***ing Secret into a diet.

There were big stretches of time when I thought this method was ‘working’. I thought I was eating intuitively… because I ‘ate what I wanted’ (weirdly slowly and in tiny amounts)… and I was skinny (thanks to genetics + semi-starvation).

But I was f***ing starving all the time. I cried a lot. I had weird food rituals to try and make sure I didn’t eat “more than my body needed”. I drank a lot of wine and coffee. And still thought about food nonstop.

Guys. That’s allllll diet. And it’s not intuitive, or intuitive eating, or Intuitive Eating. It’s assuming that being intuitive requires micromanaging. It’s assuming that listening to your body is about curtailing your hunger. It’s still trying to tightly control the size of your body. That’s the antithesis of intuitive.

When I finally started writing TFID seven years ago, I was radically applying a non-diet, pro-calorie, pro-being-full, “f*** all diet and weight noise” approach, pro-gaining weight, plus a Health at Every Size (R) and feminist lens too.

I wrote the way I needed to hear it explained. I needed to hear more about our relationship to weight. And I needed to be less afraid of eating lots and lots of food. (And clearly I needed someone screaming at me with curse words.)

So TFID was developed as a separate way to become a normal, instinctive eater, while also examining why my first attempts at “intuitive eating” had so epically failed. And in my book, beyond talking about the way we eat, there’s a lot of focus on diet culture, on our emotions, and on our beliefs too.

But I also now understand that the goals of Intuitive Eating and of The F*** It Diet, are the same. The goal of both is to get to a place where you trust your appetite and experience instinctive, natural, easy, normal eating.

But, I never revisited the Intuitive Eating book. So what that also means is that for a very long time, I assumed that Intuitive Eating didn’t “work”. And that also means that I really have only ever been referring to the bastardized lower case version of IE, and the wellness coaches who twist it and use weight loss in their marketing, instead of realizing earlier on that the book, authors, and certified practitioners have always been out there being awesome and doing it right.

Years ago, I started noticing that search terms for my site were “why doesn’t intuitive eating work?”. So I wrote more about that: It’s because we’re all turning it into a diet! It’s because we are all still afraid to gain weight! It’s because of all these bullshit beliefs we have about beauty and worth! It’s because we are trying to eat the smallest amount possible! It’s because we are underfed and afraid that eating a lot isn’t intuitive!

But I still never re-read the book to see where my own application and interpretation had gone wrong. I kept thinking I’d figured out something that the book didn’t understand or only half explained. And because I kept seeing so many people market a bastardized version of intuitive eating as a way to lose weight, it just further confirmed that assumption.

I’ve called it “obsessive intuitive eating” or “pseudo intuitive eating.” And sometimes refer to true intuitive eating (good) and obsessive intuitive eating (bad).

And while clearly, many people misinterpret or twist the point of Intuitive Eating, just like I did, what that still means is that I haven’t had the awareness to give the co-authors, and the people trained by the co-authors, the credit they deserve.

The Intuitive Eating book knows what it’s talking about. It’s all there. It’s evidence based. It warns you not to turn it into a diet. And the thing that clicked this all into place recently has been following one of the co-authors, Evelyn Tribole on instagram. Oh… this lady is the real deal.

But to go back and answer the question of whether I teach intuitive eating? No, I don’t teach official Intuitive Eating or their 10 principles. I developed my own tools and lessons and ways of teaching.

But the goal of both is the same: easy, instinctive, intuitive eating.

On my path towards healing, I also needed to read books that talk about our confusion about weight and health (like Body Respect), and a feminist take on our cultural obsession with thinness and beauty (The Beauty Myth) and Fat Positive/Body Positive messages (one example: Lessons From the Fat-o-sphere that I read near the beginning of TFID… more recently Jes Baker‘s books). Maybe that would’ve knocked enough sense into me, more quickly. Or maybe I just needed to struggle and fail for as long as I did in order to write about eating the way I do now.

I only started following lots of certified intuitive eating non-diet dietitians (the people who don’t turn it into a diet, and understand the weight piece) on instagram in the last YEAR, once my book was already written. And OF COURSE, it was only once my book was finished that I realized… oh no… 

I don’t even refer to the Intuitive Eating book at all, because my subconscious intention was to not say anything bad about it, but now I don’t feel great about saying nothing about the book either.

I wish I had had this clarity earlier so I could have said all of this way more explicitly in my book. In addition to warning people not to trust random “intuitive eating gurus” who teach what I refer to as “obsessive intuitive eating” and promise weight loss, I should have also mentioned the people who created official (true) Intuitive Eating, and who continue to do amazing and revolutionary work in the nutrition, non-diet, and eating disorder recovery world.

(I will update this in a second edition, with a little line about how the Intuitive Eating book, creators, and practitioners certified in it, understand how important it is not to turn it into a diet. But for now, I link to lots of certified Intuitive Eating dietitians and therapists and coaches on the (soon-to-be-shared) resource list and on the current reference link page, as well as the Intuitive Eating book. I will also will be sending extra resources and some of the content I had to cut from the book for length to people who sign up for the book resources, so it will be easy to clarify this about official/real Intuitive Eating vs. co-opted intuitive eating there as well.

The F*ck It Diet book is the culmination of many, many, many things I learned over the years of dieting, thinking I wasn’t dieting, and actually not dieting.

But I wish my clarity on intuitive eating had come earlier, and I had been way more direct in giving a shout-out to the wonderful people who wrote it and don’t turn it into a diet.

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I started writing about how to heal from disordered eating and body hatred seven years ago, back when I was f—king* sick of being afraid of rice, and being full, and gaining weight. My life was hijacked by the obsession with beauty and thinness and health and purity. And I was f—ing over it.

I didn’t start this website to become instagram famous or become a “thought leader” or “influencer” in this space. (Ew?) I didn’t set out to work with people or run groups. And I definitely didn’t think I was going to have a book coming out on not-dieting. I was just a writer –and I was anonymous for the first three years.

I was just f—ing exhausted of diet culture and my own f—ing brain and I felt very strongly that I needed to write about it, for my own sake, on a little blog that no one read.

I was writing about what I was applying to myself as I clawed my way out of the miserable hole I was in. We all just needed to f—ing eat and rebel against absurd body standards.

I kept writing, and learning, and eating, and writing. Eventually I put together workshops and courses, teaching some of the ways I helped myself process fear and resistance and diet culture. I’ve always had a special interest in the way we avoid our bodies, and our emotions, and our humanity, plus all of the subconscious cultural beliefs we are operating under that need to GTFO.

My “expertise” is on how we are afraid of our hunger – and how that will always mess up our eating. And a huge part of that, if not the core underlying factor, is our fear of our bodies, and our cultural fear of, and misconceptions about, fatness. That’s always been clear to me: Fat-phobia is the reason we are messed up around food, and the reason we fear gaining weight above anything else.

But still, no matter how much I care, or how important it is to me: I will always inherently have blind-spots in writing about the full scope of these issues, because of my many privileges. It’s just a fact.

I am not an ultimate authority on body image, body acceptance, body positivity, or fat liberation, even though I know how important those things are.

My thin privilege inherently becomes one of my shortcomings on this subject. In the BIG PICTURE, me learning to accept my body isn’t really that radical, because I have always naturally been on the thinner side. And even when I’ve yo-yo’d A LOT, I’ve always had thin privilege.

A thin girl saying: “stop dieting! we should be allowed to get full and gain weight” feels safer to people. (But still …not that safe. People still tell me I am giving dangerous irresponsible advice). But if I were fatter saying the exact same thing, so many more people would say: “Woa woa woa, stop trying to make excuses for your lack of willpower and laziness. Stop ‘glorifying obesity’. Stop leading people into disease.” And then they’d probably tell me to die of heart disease along with other explicit and aggressive threats.

I have always been able to say things that people in larger bodies also say, and people listen to me, because they assume TFID is “working” for me, because I am thin. And this is based on major misinformation about how much control we have over our weight, and what weight means about us and about our health and our habits… and all the other s#@t our culture teaches about fatness.

So that is one of the first problematic things – I have been given a voice and a platform because of the systemic prejudice I am trying to talk about – the assumptions we make about people based on their size. The assumption that I’m doing something right, and that fatter people are doing something wrong.

Also, TFID is meant to be for every body and every size: the instructions are the same. But one piece of those instructions is to rebel against societal beauty standards, and a fat person learning to rebel against society will experience a lot more pain and pushback than me being like, “oh, I finally accept my size F boobs even though I don’t look like the delicate disney princess I always hoped I could become.”

Yes, it’s radical for anyone to rebel against intentional weight loss in a culture that is obsessed with tininess. But pretending like it’s the same for every body is … incorrect. And erases the trauma and cruelty and pervasiveness of weight stigma and fat phobia.

The only semi-good thing I can see about TFID seeming like some pop-trendy thing right now (and this is problematic in and of itself) is that it can hopefully be an entry point to learn more about inclusive body positivity. If it seems “palatable” to the masses of chronic dieters who start reading because they want to learn how to stop binge eating and being obsessed with food, that gives me an opportunity to explain the underlying, core issues. Which means that people who have not learned that our fat phobia is THE ISSUE, and that it’s a matter of social justice, and many other misconceptions, will hear it. It’s an entry point to go deeper.

But I understand that even that is problematic, because I get to do the work of pointing at the problem, while benefitting from the problem.

And still, I usually write (right here! on my blog!) about pretty entry level things, for a reason. Because the way I see it, that’s where I have to start. That’s where readers have to start: Let me explain the first thing that’s happening to you (that your body is wired against diets, and that you are not an unstoppable food monster), and then the deeper we go, the more I can unravel and explain.

Another one of my shortcomings is that body politics and body autonomy extend beyond weight, and intersect with disability, chronic illness, race/white supremacy, gender, and sexuality – and that is again, not my area of expertise. Except for chronic illness (which is a piece of my story) I am a thin, white, able-bodied, cis, straight-woman, whose major misery was being incessantly cat-called in middle school for having big boobs, and also that I wasn’t skinny enough to be cast as the ingenue when I was auditioning for professional musical theater roles… So… I f—ing get it. It’s all relative. Did that traumatize me and make me hate myself? Yes, actually.  But like…  I wasn’t pretty enough to be the prettiest person in the play? Hahahahahha, I f—ing get it. If that was able to traumatize me, what does that mean for other people who have way less privilege??? Who don’t have money to make ends meet? Who are the victims of constant harassment and abuse for the color of their skin or the size of their body???

Policing people’s bodies, and having a culture where some bodies are seen as superior or more acceptable, overlaps with privilege of whiteness, and ability, and sexual orientation. However, this is an area I still need to listen and learn, because if I began writing about overlapping intersectional oppression and marginalization in any other way other than just to point out that they are connected, and how stigma inherently affects our health and our quality of life, it would fall very, very short, because I simply don’t have the lived experience or the expertise or the language.

The other shortcoming in my message and writing is addressing how poverty affects people’s relationship to food. Not having enough money to make ends meet and being stressed over the price of food, creates an environment of food scarcity – which affects our bodies, our actual appetite, and our relationship to food. Not to mention that the stress alone negatively affects our health (independent of our weight), but people are still blamed for their health and overtly told to diet as if that will cure them – both things that perpetuate the cycle of blame, stress, and health problems.

My book talks about these concepts, because they’re important and because it is impossible to untangle them from the reason we are f—ed up with food. But again, especially as far as radical body positivity goes, the book is inherently limited. I see TFID as an entry point – an intro to radical body positivity and the importance of body politics as a social justice issue.

I know TFID helps chronic dieters heal their relationship to food. My writing and lessons lean into what I can write about in my sleep: how dieting fucks over our bodies, our deep irrational fear of our hunger and our appetites, our fear of food, our avoidance of feeling our bodies and our emotions, and all of the destructive beliefs we’ve learned about food and weight and beauty and worth.

But when going deeper into the fat experience, the intersection between other areas of oppression (disability, race, gender identity, and sexuality), and writing about food for people with actual food scarcity, those areas are not my expertise– and they’re important.

And because I know there are inherent shortcomings in my perspective and work, I have been creating a resource list for the book, that is not completed yet.

For now, here is a list of diverse body positive activists that I hope you follow, with links to their instagram accounts:

Jes Baker – Author of Landwhale and Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls

Virgie Tovar – Author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat

Meghan Crabbe – Author of Body Positive Power

Imogen Fox – Queer disabled woman serving up radical body politics

YrFatFriend –Anonymous essayist and fat activist/educator

Nicole McDermid – Social Worker & Eating Disorder Recovery Coach

Dana Falsetti – Weight inclusive yoga teacher

Sonalee Rashatwar – Non binary bemme, trauma therapist, rad fat politic

Ashlee Bennett – Body Image Therapist, Online Counsellor & Art psychotherapist

Beauty Redefined – Nonprofit promoting body image resilience, Lindsay & Lexie Kite, PhD

Anna Sweeney – Disabled non-diet dietitian

Ragen Chastain –  Fat Activist and Athlete

Dani Adriana – Fat Activist

Ivy Felicia – Body Peace & Holistic Wellness at Any Size Coach

Jessamyn Stanley – Yoga Teacher and Author

Sonya Taylor – Author of The Body Is Not an Apology

Corissa Enneking – Fatgirlflow, queer, happy fatty, influencer

I am still putting together a list of non-diet dietitians, important books, and other helpful resources that will help expand upon TFID, and help people go deeper, and get the help they need. That list will be a digital resource that goes along with my book.

And, not sure if you want to read my book? You can read a sneak peak by signing up here.

Ok. That’s it for now.

* I can’t freaking curse in my blog posts anymore because I use them as podcast episodes too and iTunes censors curse words in the text of podcasts, which is why the name of my freaking podcast is the freaking “F” it diet.

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Some people assume that The F*ck It Diet is unnecessarily extreme.

They assume it’s a steady diet of donuts, McDonald’s, and fried ice cream for the rest of our short little lives. That we’re a group of lazy anarchists who are reveling in our newfound food-related health problems, and not taking any personal responsibility for our health, and who refuse to make any attempts at self-improvement.

Or they think: Why can’t we just be balanced? Why can’t we just enjoy cake every so often but mostly try to eat a healthy, moderate diet?

The answer is because: we’ve tried that.

Also, chronic dieting is somewhere on the eating disorder spectrum, so for people who’ve become obsessed with dieting, trying “to be balanced” doesn’t work. It doesn’t heal us. And ironically, it perpetuates feeling totally out of control with food.

There is nothing wrong with true balance, but for many people, “just trying to be balanced” becomes the new diet. Not to mention that after years of restriction and dieting, balance is eating a hell of a lot, for a good chunk of time.

The beautiful thing I found, once I truly allowed myself to eat with total abandon, is that my body actually spoke up. After years of bingeing and restricting and bingeing again, once I stopped judging myself for eating and stopped trying to micromanage my weight, my body actually finally felt fed, and my lifelong food obsession melted away.

Note: I never thought that could happen. I thought I was born a food addict, and would die a food addict.

The F*ck It Diet is the (seemingly) counter-intuitive way to stop feeling insane around food. Allowance paves way for easier, nourishing health choices, and getting in tune with what your body wants and needs. It’s a way to get to a place where you can easily feed yourself a varied diet, without too much overthinking, and get on with your life.

However, I know it feels more complicated for some people. I understand why people still fear certain foods, especially if they don’t feel well, or if certain foods make them feel sick. And some foods really do make people feel sick. I understand this first hand: wanting to heal your obsession with food and dieting, but wondering if you’re actually causing your own pain and misery, and fearing that you need to be avoiding certain foods.

And so here are a couple things I want to remind you about food, weight, dieting, and health that may calm you down.

The biggest issue with dieting is assuming that weight is the cause of our health problems. That’s like blaming coughing for causing your cold. Weight can be symptom of underlying health problems, (and it can also just be… your body). But either way, focusing on weight loss is not your best bet to improve health, not matter what.

Stress from weight stigma has also been shown to cause the health problems that are blamed on the weight itself – including increased mortality.

The other issue with dieting is assuming that you can’t trust your hunger and your appetite, and that the less you eat the better. No. That makes no sense. That is not good for you. That is not supportive of health or a good relationship with food. It’s not supportive of a strong metabolism, or good digestion, or good sleep, or anything really.

The Fuck It Diet is calorie positive. Calories aren’t a problem or the problem. Same with carbs, sugar, fat, and protein. Food is good for us.

So… once you can step out of both of those ways of thinking (demonizing weight and demonizing hunger/food) you can eat however makes you feel good. For people who have food sensitivities or who feel better eating a certain way, you can do whatever feels good and right, as long as you have healed your relationship to food and weight. Does that make sense?

And once you have healed your relationship to food, if a certain food makes you feel terrible, you can re-evaluate your relationship to it. Do you want to eat it if it makes you feel bad? Sometimes that may be yes, and often that may be no.

Health is so much more nuanced than we hope. Really it’s a complicated combination of genetics, immunity, environmental factors (chemicals, pollutants, heavy metals, etc), socio-economic factors, and stress. Motherf*cking stress.

Stress is a major determinant of health. Stress stress stress stress. Stress from your high powered job, but even more: Stress from being or feeling marginalized. Stress from not having enough money and constantly being in survival mode. Stress from being treated poorly. Stress from lingering effects of trauma.

Stress affects your gut, and your immunity, and your overall health.

Now… don’t stress over stress. And don’t blame yourself for stress. A lot of stress is not that easy to just breathe away (even though I do believe in breathing). But understand that it’s all complicated, it’s not your fault, and food is often the least offensive part of our lifestyles.

Under-eating actually causes health problems too: gut problems, hormonal problems, nutrient deficiencies, inflammation, anxiety, etc.

There is also something called a nocebo affect, where your fear over a certain food can actually give you negative symptoms when you eat it.

If health is your goal, healing your relationship to food is still an imperative step towards well-rounded health.

That being said, not all food is great for everyone. And not all food is great. (I don’t actually believe ‘all food is equal’. For instance, for instance… food with pesticides in it aren’t great for us, and worse for some depending on how efficient their body is at processing them out. But… at this point, you can’t avoid pesticides unless you live in an actual bubble. And even attempts at avoiding them requires lots of money to spend on organic food.) All food doesn’t need to be equal in order for you to be allowed to eat what you crave.

It is insane and crazy-making to always try to eat perfect food.

You can eat anything, even if it doesn’t fit into anyone’s definition of healthy. You can just eat and calm down about it. It’s more important to feed yourself than to constantly stress out over if your your food is healthy enough. The body wants to thrive. It wants to be resilient. As I’ve said above… stress over your eating actually perpetuates some of the health problems you may be experiencing, too.

Healing your dysfunctional  relationship with food and weight, will help you eat in a way that supports your health, whatever that looks like.