There’s a reason — many reasons, actually — I don’t teach “pure” Intuitive Eating.

That’s because it’s really easy to get stuck in common Intuitive Eating traps. I know because I spent a solid amount of time on the “Intuitive Eating diet” back in the day, convinced I wasn’t dieting.

Certainly there’s a lot of value in changing our behaviours around food and learning to eat based on our internal cues. But it’s our beliefs about what, how, and why we eat that are the true measure of our freedom from dieting. As long as there are beliefs about what we should and shouldn’t be doing with food, an invisible line in the sand we shouldn’t cross, right and wrong ways of eating, we will continue to fan the flames of the diet mentality. When we stop judging our wants and needs with food — when there is nothing to pass or fail at — we create space for self-compassion, self-care, and self-acceptance. We create the safety required to leave diet culture behind in the dust.

Obviously, this takes work. Our beliefs don’t come undone in a blog post (or in a single session.) So in the interim, let’s start with identifying the most common Intuitive Eating pitfalls, shall we?