“Intuitive eating” is a popular idea that says we should be able to “naturally” eat the right amount of food to maintain a healthy weight, and perhaps be totally satisfied while doing so.
On the other hand, calorie tracking has gotten a bad rap over the years. It’s better now, but for a while it was equated with obsessive, neurotic, and even full-blown disordered behavior sometimes. But this sentiment is strange if you actually think about it.
Is Keeping a Budget “Disordered” Behavior?
Imagine somebody has money problems and keeps spending more than they make. Would you tell them that they need to become more “intuitive” with money and learn to “naturally” spend what they want without actually overspending? Would you tell them that keeping a budget is obsessive, neurotic, or disordered behavior?
Obviously not. That sounds ridiculous, and most people would agree that learning how to keep a budget is exactly what this person needs to do.
Intuition Comes From Learned Experience
The irony of the “intuitive eating” concept is that intuition itself is, by definition, something that is gained from learned experience—in other words, stuff that is not intuitive. Riding a bicycle is intuitive, but we still had to learn how to do it at some point.
Maybe you think you put a tablespoon of peanut butter on your toast, but then you actually measure it for the first time and realize your usual spoonful is a lot bigger. Now you know something that you didn’t before.
Tracking calories and learning about the actual numbers behind the food you eat doesn’t oppose or undermine intuitive eating. It’s actually exactly what is required to get better at eating intuitively.
And maybe one day you will be able to successfully eat entirely by feel, just like that person with money problems could eventually be able to naturally manage their money once they’ve learned what’s happening with a strict budget.
Or not. That’s fine too. Plenty of wealthy and financially savvy people still keep a monthly budget, and some people track calories for life, even if it’s loosely.
The Modern Food Environment Stacks the Deck
The unfortunate truth is that intuitive eating just doesn’t work for most people. Maybe it worked more in the past when we were doing manual labor all day and didn’t have access to hypercaloric junk food 24/7, but not so much now when the deck is so stacked against us. These food corporations literally hire PhD scientists to make you want to buy and eat more of their products.
Avoiding Calorie Tracking Doesn’t Necessarily Make Things Easier
A lot of these “intuitive” fad diets that promise effortlessness impose so many rules and restrictions that they’re honestly more stressful and hard to stick to, as opposed to just eating the foods you like—in reasonable moderation—and making sure you’re staying within a calorie target.