Can Pole Dancers and Aerialists Follow Intuitive Eating?

There’s a lot of messaging out there that either pushes extreme restriction and “clean eating” for athletes and aerialists, or swings completely the other way and tells people to ditch all structure and just eat intuitively, meaning whatever you want, whenever you want, in whatever amount feels right. Both sides miss a lot of nuance. As dietitians, we tend to sit in the grey area, taking the useful parts from both approaches.

On one hand, extremely rigid and restrictive dieting increases the risk of disordered eating behaviours for most people, which is well established. At the same time, there is still value in paying attention to diet composition. A lot of that messaging is simply encouraging people to eat more fruit, vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains, and other nutrient-dense foods in place of less nutritious options, which is reasonable.

On the other side, intuitive eating is often presented online as “eat whatever you want”, “no rules”, “no structure”, or “just listen to your body.” While that messaging is usually well-intentioned, it’s an oversimplification of what it ACTUALLY is.

Intuitive eating is a skill that takes time to develop, and it was never meant to ignore nutrition knowledge or context. Without that nuance, people can interpret intuitive eating as reactive eating, where choices are driven more by cravings, convenience, or emotions rather than a more attuned and informed approach.

What Intuitive Eating Actually Is

Intuitive eating was developed by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch as a structured framework built on ten principles, including rejecting the diet mentality, honouring hunger and fullness, making peace with food, and incorporating gentle nutrition. It is an adaptive eating style that focuses on eating for physical rather than emotional reasons, relying on internal hunger and fullness cues, and removing unnecessary restriction while still considering overall health. There is a solid body of research showing that intuitive eating has a positive or neutral effect on diet quality and eating behaviours, and can reduce emotional and binge eating. For most athletes, it actually covers a lot of the bases.

Where Intuitive Eating Needs Support in Athletes

Honour Your Hunger, Respect Your Fullness

Where we sometimes need to slightly push that framework is when physiology or performance demands don’t line up neatly with internal cues. Athletes who have gone through periods of restriction, inconsistent eating, or high training loads often have disrupted hunger and fullness signals. This can show up as not feeling hungry despite high energy needs, getting full quickly, or feeling ravenous later in the day.

In these situations, waiting purely for hunger cues can lead to under-fuelling. Sometimes we need to eat when we’re not hungry, or eat beyond comfortable fullness, to meet energy requirements, especially when fuelling for intensive training blocks, performances, or muscle gain phases. This can also apply to hypermobile athletes, where altered gastric motility can blunt or delay hunger and fullness signals.

Food Monitoring

While intuitive eating moves away from rigid tracking and recording intake, there is still a place for occasionally zooming out and checking whether intake is actually meeting needs. That might involve looking at overall energy intake, assessing carbohydrate or protein intake for performance, or identifying if protein or fibre is crowding out carbohydrates. This can be particularly useful when working through injury recovery, managing gut symptoms, or addressing low energy availability.

Rejection of Dieting and Restriction

There may also be times where weight management is indicated or desired, and avoiding that conversation doesn’t help anyone. Athletes may have goals related to performance, weight classes, injury management, or personal preference, and they deserve support in navigating that safely.

In these situations, a completely unstructured approach may or may not be enough. Short-term structure, such as setting targets or monitoring intake, can be useful tools, as long as they’re applied with flexibility and with a focus on maintaining a healthy relationship with food.

Why Thirst Isn’t Always a Reliable Guide

Hydration is another area where relying purely on internal cues can fall short. Thirst isn’t always a reliable signal, particularly for athletes. By the time you feel thirsty, you’re already slightly dehydrated, and during training, especially in heat or longer sessions, relying on thirst alone often means you’re playing catch-up. Starting sessions well hydrated and drinking regularly, even without strong thirst cues, is often a more effective strategy.

Finding the Middle Ground

Overall, intuitive eating, when it’s applied the way it was actually intended, is highly appropriate for athletes. It works best when it’s combined with a basic understanding of nutrition and the demands being placed on the body. It’s not “eat whatever you want with no structure”, and it’s not “track everything and cut out half your diet”. It can be argued that all of these points fall under the umbrella of gentle nutrition. It’s knowing when to listen to your body, and knowing when your body might need a bit more support than that alone can provide.

If you want to learn more about how to fuel your training in a way that’s both evidence-based and sustainable, book a consult with me at thepolephysio.com/book-online.

Fuel well,

The Pole Physio Team

xx

References

1. Intuitive Eating Official Website. (n.d.). 10 principles of intuitive eating. Retrieved March 26, 2026, from https://www.intuitiveeating.org/about-us/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/

2. Hahn K., M. Wiseman, J. Hendrickson, J. Phillips, E. Hayden. 2012. Intuitive Eating and College Female Athletes. Psychology of Women Quarterly. doi: 10.1177/0361684311433282

3. Hensley-Hackett K, Bosker J, Keefe A. et al (2022). Intuitive Eating Intervention and Diet Quality in Adults: A Systematic Literature Review. J Nutr Educ Behav. Nov:1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2022.08.008