Food Psych #261: The Evolution of Intuitive Eating Over Time and the Impact of Diet Culture with Evelyn Tribole

Photographer: Khali MacIntyre

Introduction & Guest Bio:

Anti-diet dietitian and Intuitive Eating co-author Evelyn Tribole makes her third appearance on the pod to discuss the new fourth edition of Intuitive Eating and how the book has evolved with each edition, the research that supports intuitive eating, the impact of diet culture and the weight-loss industry, her thoughts on intuitive eating and food insecurity, and so much more. Plus, in “Ask Food Psych,” Christy answers a listener question about how to navigate diet culture in medical school. 

Evelyn Tribole, MS, RDN, CEDRD-S is the author of 9 books and co-author of the best-selling Intuitive Eating, a mind-body self-care eating framework with 10 principles, which has given rise to over 125 studies to date, showing benefit.

As an international speaker and workshop leader, Evelyn is passionate and has been called, “Wonderfully wise and funny”. Evelyn enjoys training health professionals on how to help their clients cultivate a healthy relationship with food, mind, and body through the process of Intuitive Eating. To date there are over 1,000 Certified Intuitive Eating Counselors in 23 countries.

The media often seeks Evelyn for her expertise, appearing in hundreds of interviews, including New York Times, CNN, NBC’s Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Vogue, Ten Percent Happier and People magazine. Evelyn was the nutrition expert for Good Morning America, and a national spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics for six years.

Evelyn qualified for the Olympic Trials in the first ever women’s marathon in 1984. Although she no longer competes, she is a wicked ping-pong player and avid hiker. Her favorite food is chocolate—when it can be savored slowly. Find her online at EvelynTribole.com.

We Discuss:

  • What Evelyn has been up to, and how intuitive eating has grown in popularity since her previous appearances on Food Psych®

  • Social justice in the intuitive eating and Health At Every Size® discourse

  • How Intuitive Eating has evolved with each edition

  • The dissonance between dietetics/healthcare training and intuitive eating

  • The work of an intuitive eating facilitator

  • Some of the key updates in the latest edition of Intuitive Eating

  • Research on interoceptive awareness and its role in intuitive eating

  • Changes to some of the principles of intuitive eating, including “reject the diet mentality” and “cope with your emotions with kindness”

  • The effects of restriction/starvation on the desire for food

  • Evelyn’s thoughts on “food addiction” and its research

  • Christy’s experience with “food addiction”

  • Why Evelyn talks about our bodies’ cells in her nutrition counselling sessions

  • The increasing incidences of eating disorders and disordered eating in recent years

  • Diet culture in the medical system

  • The impact of diet culture and the weight-loss industry

  • The Semmelweis effect, and the pushback against the anti-diet movement

  • The co-opting of intuitive eating, anti-diet, and mindfulness language by diet culture

  • Evelyn’s thoughts on trademarking the term “intuitive eating”

  • The silo mentality in science

  • How nutrition research often does not account for important confounding factors

  • Reframing nutrition as a philosophy rather than a science

  • How Evelyn is responding to criticisms that intuitive eating is inaccessible to those with food insecurity and/or marginalized identities

  • Why intuitive eating is not the “hunger/fullness diet”

  • How a history of food insecurity can affect a person’s relationship with food

  • Self-compassion, and its importance in intuitive eating

Resources Mentioned

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Ask Food Psych

Listener Question:

“How can I push back against diet culture beliefs as a medical student when I will be evaluated based on what I am taught?”—Megan

We Discuss: 

  • The value of “planting seeds” and starting individual conversations

  • Ideas for how to plant seeds

  • Having self-compassion for not always being able to act in alignment with your values

  • Not being your own thought police

 
Christy HarrisonIntuitive eating, Health At Every Size, book, dissonance, interoceptive awareness, diet mentality, diet culture, emotional eating, research, science, food addiction, eating disorders, disordered eating, weight loss industry, diet industry, healthcare, medical system, food insecurity, social justice, social determinants of health, accessibility, self-care, self-compassion, anti-diet, S820