What If My "Intuition" Only Wants Junk Food?

One of the drawbacks of “Intuitive Eating Popular” (a term I have come to call the Instagram Cliffnotes version of Intuitive Eating) is that people think if you eat enough pizza and ice cream, your body will just naturally stop wanting those foods and prefer salads instead. That one day you’ll just carb-and-sugar your way to the other side, and end up feeling like a French woman with a small appetite for organic, photogenic meals.

While the French woman thing is a fantastical version of Intuitive Eating, it is true that for some people, the instinct to constantly eat “fun foods” (a term for less nutritious foods that doesn’t carry the same condescension as “junk”) actually does settle down.

While the desire for those foods doesn’t go away completely (and that’s never been the point — Intuitive Eating is not just a more palatable way to spell “diet”), the instinct to eat so much of them begins to lift for many people.

The reason for this may be (in part) because if you have a natural inclination towards “healthy” foods, allowing yourself to eat fun foods after years of restricting them will gradually make way for an original, natural sense of balance between both. Kind of like if you clear away the diet culture, you’ll be left with your origin story of all-foods-fit.

This was the case for me. I grew up eating dessert after dinner, but I also ate vegetables regularly, and without protest. We had a salad with dinner most nights, and I remember loving when my mom would set out veggies and dip for us after school. Sometimes we ate fast food (especially when our evenings became a runaround of this kid to soccer, that kid to CCD), but I also liked grabbing slices of cucumbers and bell peppers on the nights when my Mom cooked. For me, recovery led me back to what was already there: enjoyment of both the fun foods and the nutritious ones.

But what if you didn’t come from that baseline? I had one client who told me she didn’t try a vegetable until she turned 18, and others who simply preferred greasier, doughier, sweeter foods and only ate “healthy” foods from a sense of obligation. So when they tried Intuitive Eating, they ended up feeling like they were doing it wrong because their intuition never brought them around to salads.

So what do you do when you’ve tried Intuitive Eating and you just keep keep keep wanting fun food, and never nutritious food?

Let’s look at a few things that might be happening here:

Mental Restriction Might Still Be in the Way

I know “restriction” is a belabored point in the anti-diet world, but it’s still the main thing that blocks people from genuine intuition.

A follower recently wrote to me after a post:

“Hey! I’ve never been officially diagnosed with an ED, but I know that’s what I have/had. My relationship with food is better now, but my body image is still torture. Pizza is something I crave daily and eat weekly. I make it all from scratch to make it ‘healthier,’ but it still feels naughty.”

 

We can see through the language here that food still lives in a hierarchy. When “naughty” foods are swapped for healthier versions, we are still dealing with food fear and food morality, which are hallmarks of mental restriction. Mental restriction blocks intuition because judgment creates scarcity, and the inner rebel will always defend access to what feels scarce.

Does that mean you always have to eat greasier pizza and can’t ever have whole grain? No, definitely not. You can absolutely make whole-grain pizza if you like it or want a more nutrient dense option, but if it’s coming from fear or judgment of the “regular” kind, you’re still operating under restriction.

If food still feels charged, your body will crave the foods that symbolize safety and rebellion. This is one of the stages of recovery as we deconstruct the judgment and learn to understand less nutritious food as less nutritious food, plain and simple. Not gasp! It’s less nutritious food, call the authorities! Once food can just be food, you can choose this or that without a rebel needing to defend the case.

Diet Culture Can Poison the Word “Nutrition”

For many, “nutrition” as a concept feels contaminated. Dieting made it synonymous with judgment and deprivation. So when you stop dieting, you might notice an allergic reaction to anything that even smells like “healthy.”

This is why many people swing to the opposite end of the spectrum, consuming all of the foods that symbolize the opposite of following-the-rules. And that pendulum needs to swing before it settles, even if at first it feels overzealous and overprotective. But your psychology is like — hey. You made me feel claustrophobic for decades. I’m not just going to forget that in a minute. Let me stretch my legs.

You can’t rush this. When I was in early recovery, I didn’t want to look at chia seeds, protein powder, or even grilled chicken. I wanted bagels and pasta and all things white flour.

But after a while, I noticed that I was actively resisting nutrition in a way that felt rebellious, too.

I remember running errands one afternoon and getting hungry in the middle of a CVS pharmacy. I walked past an aisle of protein bars that I used to eat to “stay on track” and remembered how much they really did fill me up. In that moment, I instinctively wanted one — not because I was trying to trick my stomach into fullness but because I was actually hungry and craving fullness. It was a pivotal moment for me, noticing how the protein bar actually made sense here but something in me felt resistant.

I started challenging my fear of “nutrition” that day (which was like a “phase two” of recovery), but it takes time to work with that resistance. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed forever, it might just mean your system is still healing from the years when nutrition was used against you.

Maybe You Just Don’t Like Vegetables. (You can still be intuitive.)

The client who didn’t taste her first vegetable until she was eighteen had a childhood built around comfort foods. That’s what safety, comfort, and instinct feels like to her. So, of course, her intuition points toward those. 

When she asked if she should think of nutrition as a diet with more freedom, I understood why. For her, that concept only existed in the context of dieting.

Intuitive Eating, contrary to popular belief, does not mean “without thought.” It doesn’t mean impulsivity or following the path of least resistance.

Intuition can mean understanding that our preferences may be wired for something and that it’s not against the law to incorporate basic nutritional wisdom alongside of it because it makes sense. Your intuition is not void of logic.

So you might not crave vegetables and still decide to include themsometimes because you know your body benefits from variety. That decision can be cognitive and still be intuitive.

Intuition Isn’t the Same as Impulsivity or Passivity

The biggest misunderstanding about Intuitive Eating is that it means waiting around until your body feels like doing the “right” thing.

For many people, that day doesn’t come. Not because they’re doing it wrong, but because biology, psychology, and environment all play roles. Maybe you didn’t grow up eating produce. Maybe fast food is the most convenient option. Maybe your dopamine system lights up faster from sugar because you’re neurodivergent or prone to lower moods.

As previously mentioned, intuition isn’t the absence of thought — it’s the integration of thought and body awareness.

When my blood sugar dips around ovulation, I crave sweets constantly. If I followed my body’s cravings alone, I’d live on cereal and chocolate for three days and feel terrible. So I use what I know: that protein will help stabilize me. I eat both. That’s not restriction, it’s common sense.

Restriction says: I want chocolate but can’t have it. Intuition says: I want chocolate, and I can have it. And I’ll add some protein so I don’t crash.

Other days? It says: I want chocolate and I’m just going to have it. Other days, still: an impulsive part of me wants chocolate but another part of me wants to slow down and give myself something more substantial.

(Note: that last one is all but impossible if you are restricting. If you are chronically impulsive with food and it feels like a force field you can’t get out of, the issue may be restriction and needs a closer look before the other options in this essay.)

We cultivate intuition around when to do what based on thousandsof experiments, of making mistakes, of noticing how foods feel for us over time. You don’t just “do” intuitive eating — you build it over months and years, so that one day your understanding of food + body + psychology + nervous system + environment = an implicit knowing.

If you want pizza but also think, “I could use some fiber,” try adding the salad. You’re just allowed to experiment without it becoming a rule. You are also allowed to not add the salad and notice how that feels. Every time you eat, you are collecting information.

So go ahead and collect information. But collect it without judging it.

Maybe the point isn’t to reach a state where you naturally want nutritious food. Maybe it’s to stop expecting intuition to be another perfectionism quest.

Sometimes intuition sounds like “I’m tired of fighting myself.”

Sometimes it sounds like “I want pizza and I’m fine with that.”

And sometimes: “I want to eat a vegetable even if I don’t crave it” or “I want to try this” or “I have compassion for the part of me that’s protecting something.”

Wherever you are in the process, “intuition” does not have to be a French woman eating pumpkin seeds. Maybe it’s just you, understanding where you are for right now, and staying self-allied as you keep learning.