“Lina, I Can’t Eat Intuitively”: 4 Reasons Why Intuitive Eating Isn’t Working for You (Yet)

Sunday evening: you decide that from tomorrow you’ll simply eat intuitively. No more calorie app, no more forbidden foods. On Wednesday you’re standing in front of the open fridge, wondering whether this is real hunger or “emotional eating” again. And by Friday you feel you’ve failed at this too.

“Lina, I can’t eat intuitively.” I hear this sentence in Cycle Clarity Calls almost every week. But if intuitive eating isn’t working for you, it rarely has to do with you. Usually a few crucial steps were skipped, and the wish for freedom has quietly turned into a new set of rules: a diet that has simply given itself a different name.

I know this from my own experience. For a long time I was convinced I was eating intuitively, because I didn’t feel hungry in the morning and therefore didn’t eat. At the same time I added more and more exercise because I felt so energetic. Looking back, that wasn’t intuition, it was the old control in new clothes.

I’m Lina, a state-certified nutrition consultant and health coach for women’s health. In this article I’ll show you the four reasons I come across most often when supporting women, and what lies behind each of them.

Reason 1: You’re supposed to eat what you feel like, and you don’t know what that is

Intuitive eating assumes that you know what you like. After years of rules, though, this knowledge is often buried. Many women then tell me: “I don’t even like chocolate anymore.”

The question is how you would know if you haven’t eaten it in years. Taste really does change, but a preference can only be tested by trying. Often it isn’t the taste that has disappeared, but the rule that is so present you don’t even dare to go near it. What feels like dislike is really caution.

Imagine your taste as a library in which whole shelves have been taped off. As long as you only ever walk past the same three shelves, you can’t know which books you would actually enjoy.

On top of that there’s often the worry of slipping back into old binges with certain foods. A sober look helps here: You are not the person you were back then. You have more knowledge, a different starting point and, if you seek it, support at your side.

Reason 2: You allow yourself everything, but only in small amounts

Chocolate is allowed, crisps too, at least in theory. In practice the permission reads: “But only one piece a day.” On paper there are no more rules, in your head the rulebook keeps running.

That’s exactly the catch: What is scarce and exclusive becomes more tempting. Your brain rates a food that is only available in rations as especially valuable, and your thoughts circle around it all the more. Only when a food is truly available at any time does it lose its special status and become one option among many.

For me this ran through veganism for a long time, which gave me a socially accepted reason for a very restrictive diet. When I later allowed myself more again, it was strictly measured, and at some point the rationing tipped into binges and eventually into bulimia.

Unconditional permission therefore really means unconditional: no daily limit and no “but only at weekends”.

Reason 3: Your mind is on food all day

You’re sitting in a meeting thinking about your lunch break. After eating you wonder whether the portion was too big, and in the afternoon you’re already planning dinner. You actually wanted to think less about food; instead it has become the background noise of your day.

Mental hunger is a physical signal. When the body lacks energy or nutrients over a longer period, the brain deliberately directs attention towards food. This ancient protective mechanism makes us search for food in times of scarcity, and restriction keeps it active, even when it only happens in your head.

My first attempt at intuitive eating failed precisely because of this. I no longer had a reliable sense of hunger and fullness, and because my stomach didn’t growl in the morning, I assumed I was full. I didn’t recognise back then that tiredness, lack of drive and constant thoughts about food are forms of hunger too.

That’s why a regular meal structure at the beginning isn’t a contradiction to intuition but its precondition. Regular meals give your body and your hormone system the security to signal hunger and fullness reliably again, much like stabiliser wheels you only take off once your balance is there.

Reason 4: You want to stop when you’re comfortably full, but you can’t

Intuitive eating is often reduced to a single rule: eat until you’re comfortably full. And then you’re sitting on the sofa in the evening, the plate has long been empty, and you keep eating until your stomach hurts.

For me this almost always happened in the evening, when I was alone and the day had drained me. Food was my gap filler, the only reliable constant that let me switch off. In the moment it felt good, afterwards all the worse.

Usually two factors are behind it: too little energy during the day and too much stress. The prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for planning and self-regulation, only works to a limited extent under constant strain. In the evening the system effectively switches to flight mode, and you automatically reach for whatever is quickly available and requires no decision.

A food diary makes these patterns visible: when do you get up, when do you eat, what do you eat, and how do you feel? I like working with it in coaching because it shows where the gaps in the day appear. Plan breaks before your head takes them in its own way.

Does this mean intuitive eating doesn’t work for you?

No. It only means that after years of dieting, your mind and body no longer speak the same language. That isn’t personal failure, it’s the logical consequence of having learned to override your body’s signals.

Your body strives for balance: it wants neither to stay in scarcity nor to gain excessively. Rebuilding this trust takes time, structure and the unconditional permission to eat everything. The worry of eating nothing but chocolate fades for most women after a transition phase, because the special becomes normal.

What can happen to your weight during this time is something I explain in detail in the article Intuitive eating and gaining weight.

And if you notice that this path is too much on your own, you don’t have to walk it alone. It isn’t about squeezing you into a scheme, but about finding out what suits you and why food takes up so much space in your life right now.