How Your Body’s Interoceptive Signals Shape Everyday Decisions (and is part of your eating and exercise intuition, too)

Most people in recovery from chronic weight cycling or binge eating assume intuition is something they don’t have. They say things like, “I can’t trust my body,” or “I don’t have intuition,” or even self trust.

But intuition isn’t a have or have-not. It’s actually the body picking up on signals faster than your mind can explain them.

You already do it all the time. You sense when someone’s upset before they say it. You notice someone walk into a room and feel an energy shift. You get a pull to rest or a hunch to wait, and only later realize it was the right call.

That’s intuition.

We’re wired for intuition because our survival depended on it. Long before language or logic, humans relied on subtle cues like facial expressions, tone shifts, posture, and energy to know what was safe and what wasn’t.

Our nervous systems evolved to scan constantly for that information. The vagus nerve, insula, and amygdala all work together to pick up micro-signals from the world around us and from within us. It detects changes in heartbeat, muscle tone, temperature, breath. Most of this happens beneath conscious awareness.

Your body processes these cues, runs them through a safety filter, and sends the results up as a “feeling.” 

It’s the same system that tells you when you’re hungry, full, tired, overstimulated, or finished with something. The same one that helps you decide when to eat, how much, when to move, when to stop.

Here are some ways that happens in real life:

• Waking up and implicitly understanding that you need a slower morning.
• Maneuvering around a tight space while driving, parking your car, or responding to other cars.
• Grabbing a jacket on your way out the door because you sense you'll be chilly (and you do in fact need it)
• Feeling a stomach drop before agreeing to something you don’t want.
• Being drawn to someone you later realize feels safe.
• Catching a mood shift in a room before anyone speaks.
• Noticing your breath get shallow in a tense conversation.
• Realizing you’ve been clenching your jaw.
• Changing into different clothes because something about the first outfit felt wrong.
• Moving to a more comfortable chair and instantly relaxing.
• Deleting a message that didn’t feel quite right.
• Standing up to stretch without deciding to.
• You sense someone’s lying but can’t explain how you know.
• Getting a drink of water because you sense thirst.
• Understanding that you need to go to the bathroom.
• Knowing when to shift position in bed.
• Feeling like you need to get out of the house, or change scenery.
• Knowing where you want to sit, or who you want (or don't want) to sit next to.
• Turning down the volume because your body’s had enough noise.
• You know the moment someone checks out of a conversation emotionally.
• Holding off on plans because something in you says not yet.
• Choosing what song you want to listen to; understanding when you want certain moods or energies or beats.
• You hold back a joke that suddenly doesn’t feel right to say.
• Leaving an event early and later realizing you were near your limit.
• Feeling your chest loosen around someone you trust.
• Noticing your child or pet might be sick or need a vet/doctor appointment

• You start craving soup when the weather turns cold.

• You change the order of a presentation slide because something about the flow feels off.
• You pick up a book and immediately know it’s not what you need tonight.
• You suddenly crave stillness after a stretch of social days (or vice versa)
• Feeling heavy around someone who drains you.
• Wanting to walk without knowing why, then noticing your mood lift.
• Holding back from saying something and later seeing it wasn’t the right time.
• Double-checking a lock that actually wasn’t closed.
• Skipping a workout and waking up with more energy the next day (or vice versa)
• Feeling a sense of “no” toward an opportunity that looks good on paper.
• Slowing your voice when someone is sad or upset.
• Grounding yourself without thinking—touching something solid, breathing deeper.
• Thinking “bring that thing” and later needing it.
• You sense someone’s about to interrupt you before they do.
• Feeling a burst of energy to do something and it flows when you follow it.
• Craving silence because your body’s done processing noise.
• Waiting one more day to send something and it lands better.

 What if our job isn't to develop intuition, but allow it to rise?

The problem isn’t that your intuition disappeared, it’s that it’s been buried under years of override. Dieting teaches you to ignore hunger. Hustle culture teaches you to ignore fatigue. Trauma teaches you to scan the world for cues of danger instead of safety. So you stop noticing (or trusting) the information your body gives you.

You don’t lose intuition; you lose access to it.

Rebuilding trust with your body starts with noticing these tiny hits of knowing that happen constantly. Eventually, your sense of confidence in the body's ability to intuit things can help you realize that food intuition is not out of reach. It's already there. Keep building trust.

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