ABSTRACT

People can take months or years to explore and integrate Intuitive Eating and all its nuances. Intuitive Eating invites and prompts clients to take risks that feel different than what they’ve risked so far in recovery. Clients step farther away from prescriptive eating, their treatment team, and their eating disorder identity. During Intuitive Eating, nutritionists aim to give clients the wheel and begin driving their own recovery. Patients notice and gather a lot of data during Mindful Eating. They transition to Intuitive Eating by layering on discernment: the process of clarifying the collected information. From there, they can notice and identify new or existing patterns. Clients make the exciting recovery leap by practicing discernment, differentiation, learning from their edges and patterns, choice, decisions, and discovering preferences. During the practice of discernment, nutritionists come to recognize differentiation between people, places, and things. Differentiation reveals choices. Choices demand decisions.