text: You may have heard your favorite fitness influencer talk about how they intuitively eat in order to get the right macronutrient intake. Sometimes, they'll even suggest that all you need to do is eat intuitively to reach your body composition goals. But what does it even mean?
  Intuitive eating, by definition, implies that a person makes their food choices without any evident rational thought. However, this simply isn't the case. That same fitness influencer, at some point, put a great degree of rational thought into which foods they consume. They learned about the specific macronutrient content (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) of each meal, and committed many of those macronutrient numbers to memory after repetition and time. That influencer may still be doing some basic macronutrient math when their personal fitness goals change, particularly when they're aiming to put on muscle or lose some fat in a short amount of time.
  The phrase "intuitive eating" can therefore be a little misleading. More appropriately, it could be called habitual eating, in that the individual learns what's in their favorite or go-to foods, and eventually makes a habit of eating those some foods in essentially the same quantities. So, anyone can learn to be an intuitive eater, but it does not happen overnight.
  Compare it to driving to your job, or driving home from that job. At first, you likely rely on Google Maps or Apple Maps to navigate to and fro. Eventually, you do learn the precise route to the point that you don't even know the names of the streets that you drive down, but you just KNOW exactly how to get home. Even when there is a blocked road or a detour, you naturally figure out how to navigate your way back to your house. Maybe you've left work for the day and started a phone call with someone while you're driving, and before you know it-- you're home! You have that slightly jarring thought of "I have NO CLUE how I even got home!" This is what intuitive eating ultimately looks like.
  The other major factor at play for people who rely on intuitive eating is something called homeostasis. This is your body's natural inclination to maintain all of its internal functions and deliberately maintain a certain amount of body mass, regardless of fluctuations in your daily diet. This allows an intuitive eater to sometimes eat less than their caloric needs or even be in a slight caloric surplus for a short term without seeing any change in their overall body mass! Once you reach your optimum body composition, this is exactly how you want to live. This way, you aren't overthinking or obsessing or fats and carbs-- you're able to comfortably live your life!