The intuitive eating strategy developed by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, which was formerly considered extreme, has become the cornerstone of the present anti-diet movement.

The Controversy Around Weight Loss

For some, intuitive eating amounts to an oversimplification — an ineffective response to the complex ways so many people relate to food. The idea appealed to Adina Kish, a 23-year-old actor and social media manager in New York who had struggled with anorexia as a teen. Trying intuitive eating for 18 months between 2020 and 2021 led her to “essentially binge eating,” Ms. Kish said, summarizing her resulting mentality as, “I should be able to eat anything, so I’m going to eat everything.”

Eating intuitively became an “excuse” to ignore nutritious foods, making her feel, at times, physically ill. “My mind might be telling me, ‘Hey, you should eat an entire pizza right now,’” she said. Typical indulgences never lost their charge. “I wish I had gotten to that point,” Ms. Kish said, “but I never did.”

Ms. Kish felt frustrated that the much-touted practice hadn’t worked for her, but she hesitated to comment about it on social media, for fear of backlash. Intuitive eating’s association with anti-dieting and the body acceptance movement make speaking out against it daunting, with anti-dieters on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok eager to discuss in the comments. “I try not to bring up the topic anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to be the bad guy.”

Asking people to rely on their own intuition to figure out what they should eat is “a lot of burden on an individual person,” said Andrew Kraftson, a clinical associate professor in the division of metabolism, endocrinology and diabetes and director of the weight navigation program at Michigan Medicine. “There is hormonal, neurobiological and metabolic dysregulation that can happen — your body is not always the north star” when it comes to knowing what’s good for you to eat, he said.

Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician at Harvard Medical School, praised intuitive eating’s guidance on attuning to your body. “If I’m looking at what my patients eat, I do have them think about what their body needs,” she said. The problem is, she said, it’s not the whole story; “it neglects the science of how the body regulates weight.” In people with obesity, one of the two brain pathways that regulate weight signals the body to eat more and store more weight, potentially clouding their intuition around food. “We want to listen to our bodies,” she said, “but listening to your body may be flawed.” (Dr. Stanford has served as an adviser for a number of pharmaceutical companies, a common practice for experts in the field.)

Asked about people for whom intuitive eating does not gel, Ms. Tribole suggested that they most likely weren’t practicing all the principles.

“I’ve had a lot of people have the false impression that intuitive eating is simply not dieting,” she said, rather than adopting the comprehensive guidelines of its 10 principles.

Dr. Stanford agrees with Ms. Resch and Ms. Tribole that “there are persons that have a predisposition to living in bigger bodies,” she said, citing research that found that about 80 percent of children born to two obese parents will themselves be obese, even when accounting for diet and exercise. Dr. Stanford differs, however, on intuitive eating’s rejection of weight loss and its potential health benefits.

“I find this to be very disturbing,” Dr. Stanford said. “If you know that you have a predisposition to diabetes, cancer, or any other chronic disease, and could modify it, would you? I think the answer is a resounding yes.”

Dr. Kraftson points to evidence in people with pre-diabetes showing that if they lose 5 percent to 7 percent of their weight, they reduce their chance of developing full-blown diabetes by 60 percent. Similar improvements are possible with other health concerns, including high blood pressure and sleep apnea. “You don’t need an 18-year-old beach body — a modest change in weight can have substantial health benefits,” he said.

Ms. Resch is unmoved by arguments that advocate for weight loss, even to address obesity. “Thinking about weight loss only disconnects people further from their inner wisdom about eating,” she wrote in an email.

Plus, she added, up to two-thirds of dieters regain more weight than they lost, and weight cycling — repeatedly losing and regaining weight — is linked to higher mortality rates, cardiovascular disease and hypertension.

Eating as an Act of Resistance

When Ms. Resch and Ms. Tribole were shopping “Intuitive Eating” around to publishers, some bristled at the idea of an anti-diet book, according to David Hale Smith, the pair’s longtime literary agent. “There were a lot of rejections,” he said, “where people said: ‘This is really great information, but how are we going to sell this? There’s no seven-day slim-down plan.”

Ms. Tribole said she had been “too scared” to write the book alone. Even after joining with Ms. Tribole, “it felt risky, because this was so counterculture,” she said. “It’s still kind of counterculture now.”

In the fourth edition of “Intuitive Eating,” Ms. Resch and Ms. Tribole condemn America’s cultural focus on obesity as both racist and sexist. They cite “Fearing the Black Body,” a 2019 book by Sabrina Strings, a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine, that argues that fatphobia is rooted in a history of white supremacy and patriarchy. In the United States, people are sold “stigma and shame” about their bodies, Dr. Strings said. With intuitive eating, she said, Ms. Tribole and Ms. Resch are among the voices “coming together to undo that oppression.”

Eating freely as a form of resistance was a part of the idea from the start, albeit in a way that was particular to its time. Ms. Tribole and Ms. Resch originally drew on second-wave feminism, connecting diet culture to the oppression of women. Susan Faludi’s 1991 book “Backlash” is among the feminist texts that helped shape “Intuitive Eating,” which was originally titled “Diet Backlash.”

Ms. Tribole had been a self-described “Title IX baby” who ran track at California State University, Long Beach, in the 1970s and went on to compete in the 1984 trials for the first women’s Olympic marathon. She likened combating sexism as a female athlete to countering diet culture. “We’re going up against a big system,” she said, “and just because it’s been done one way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s the right way to do it.”

Nearly 30 years later, societal barriers remain. “Who gets to comfortably and confidently give themselves permission to try everything?” said Liz Brinkman, a registered dietitian nutritionist and certified intuitive eating counselor in Phoenix. “If you are a fat woman walking into a restaurant ordering lasagna, chances are, someone is going to judge you. Someone might even walk up to you and say something.”

Ms. Brinkman was drawn to intuitive eating’s “freedom and flexibility,” she said, but in incorporating the method into her practice, she has come to feel that its principles “operate from unwritten assumptions” about people, including the notion that they “are adequately resourced with time, money, and a sense of agency,” she wrote in a blog post. Those assumptions apply to “a very privileged (and small) group of people.”

Ms. Resch and Ms. Tribole acknowledge that intuitive eating itself is a privilege, but they nonetheless see the practice as a form of empowerment for all clients. “We’re teaching them how to trust themselves,” Ms. Resch said.

After two leisurely hours at Il Moro, Ms. Tribole is officially full, “but dessert sounds really good,” she grins. There is flourless apple cake for Ms. Resch; a slice of chocolate cake for Ms. Tribole, who has a few bites and shares the rest. That she can stop there has made past dinner companions marvel, “You’re so good,” she said. “No,” Ms. Tribole replies. “I’m satisfied.”