Years of dieting have taught your clients to ignore their body – so how can they eat intuitively? They need a stepped approach…
When I first learned about intuitive eating, I thought it was the answer to my prayers. I had been trying to figure out how to walk the line between being healthy and trying so hard to be healthy that it became disordered. So just being able to ‘listen to your body’ sounded almost too good to be true.
And it was.
I would give my clients a handout of the principles of intuitive eating and tell them about honoring their hunger and listening to their bodies. But they just froze. It felt chaotic for them and they worried they would spiral out of control. And they did.
Most of them never came back to a second appointment with me.
The problem wasn’t intuitive eating though. I was correct in my instincts that this was a good thing in the big picture. The problem was how I was using it. I was treating intuitive eating as a teaching tool, when really it’s the end goal – the thing that emerges naturally after you’ve done the work.
Because most clients aren’t ready to eat intuitively right away. It may sound counter-intuitive but they actually need more structured support at first.
Why clients struggle with intuitive eating
Intuitive eating assumes a certain level of body awareness and trust – the ability to notice your body’s unique hunger and fullness cues, eat regularly throughout the day, and choose foods that meet both your physical and emotional needs.
But our clients are coming from years of intentionally ignoring their bodies! Dieting has taught them that hunger is bad.
They’ve essentially been trained to ignore hunger, fear feeling full, and to moralize all of their food choices. So they just don’t have the skills necessary to make intuitive eating work.
When you take away structured eating too early, these clients:
- Skip meals because they “don’t feel hungry yet”
- Swing wildly between restriction and bingeing
- Mistake emotional hunger or rebounding from deprivation for ‘intuition’
- Feel guilty or anxious after eating
This isn’t failure. It’s physiology. Their hunger and fullness cues simply aren’t reliable yet because, after years of dieting, their bodies don’t yet trust that they will feed themselves regularly.
How do you have structure without it becoming a diet?
Here’s the bit where I see a lot of health professionals get stuck: how do you offer structure without it slipping back into diet rules?
The answer is a meal plan that’s non-prescriptive. It provides predictability without restriction. It doesn’t tell clients exactly what to eat, it just lists some ideas for each meal and snack, so they don’t feel overwhelmed having to make a lot of food decisions at this early stage.
And, super importantly, it doesn’t tell clients how much to eat. It’s just a framework for regular eating.
We’re not teaching clients to follow a plan. We’re just helping them to get into a regular eating habit so their bodies can start to regulate naturally. Because until the body feels safe and nourished, intuitive eating will always feel out of reach.
What it looks like
Here’s what a non-prescriptive meal plan might look like (this is obviously just a made-up one, you would want to be chatting about what your client actually likes to eat, what their cooking skills are, how much time they have to prepare food in advance, etc.).
- Breakfast options: cereal with fruit and milk, eggs on toast, peanut butter on toast with an Up & Go
- Morning snack options: crackers with cheese, fruit, nuts, muesli bar, baking, yoghurt
- Lunch options: leftovers, sandwich with meat and salad, toasted sandwich with baked beans and cheese
- Afternoon snack options: same as morning snack options
- Dinner: rice, mince and vegetable bowl, chicken and vegetable stir-fry, roast meat with vegetables and potatoes
Notice what’s missing – portion sizes, calorie counts, and food rules. In fact, I often include ‘naughty’ foods in these meal plans, to take away the association my clients’ have with these foods being something to feel guilty about.
This structure gives clients permission to eat without second-guessing themselves, whilst removing the decision fatigue and anxiety that can come from the idea of “listening to their body” when they’re not yet ready to read their body cues clearly.
The science behind it
Regular eating isn’t just about habit, it’s about physiology.
Eating consistently:
- Stabilizes blood sugar and energy levels, reducing the intense physical hunger that can trigger binge eating (it’s not the only trigger, but it is a contributing factor)
- Normalizes hunger and fullness hormones (ghrelin and leptin)
- Helps the body feel safe, because it realizes that food is available every few hours. This is very calming to a nervous system on high alert!
Remember the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, where food restriction led to extreme preoccupation with food (what we might call ‘food noise’ these days), binge eating, and major emotional distress. When the participants began eating regularly again, their mental and physical symptoms gradually normalized, but it took time! Your clients’ experience is no different. Regular eating is the foundation that allows body trust to rebuild.
When do you transition them off a meal plan?
It usually just happens naturally. There are a few other steps I will take clients through but the bottom line is they’re eating regularly, they can identify when they are hungry and when they’re full, and they’re less anxious about food… This is when they’ll naturally start to stray from the meal plan, as intuitive eating begins to emerge.
Remember, intuitive eating isn’t where the journey begins, it’s where it ends up. The first step is safety. And for most clients, that safety starts with a predictable pattern of eating that nourishes their body and calms their nervous system. As they eat regularly their hunger cues strengthen, their food fears soften, and their intuition begins to re-emerge.
Ready to learn how to implement this in real life?
If you want to help your clients heal their relationship with food – without pushing dieting and without overwhelming them with intuitive eating when they’re not ready – this is exactly what I teach inside Disordered Eating Coaching Academy.
You’ll learn how to confidently guide clients from disordered eating to intuitive eating with a proven roadmap that removes the guesswork, eliminates frustration, and helps you create real, lasting impact without second-guessing yourself.
🕔 Enrolment closes this Friday at 5pm!
Join me to become the kind of coach who truly transforms clients’ relationships with food, from the inside out. I don’t fluff around in Disordered Eating Coaching Academy, I stick to simple strategies that have been battle-tested in the field on countless clients over the last decade! This isn’t some academic wishy-washy stuff, it’s a repeatable system I know works. And I’m honoured to teach it to you!