Top Highlights

• Psychiatrist and mindfulness expert Daniel Siegel, MD, calls this process “Mindsight.”
• The first region is called the reptilian brain, because when the early reptiles roamed the Earth, they acted and responded exclusively by instinct.
• As life evolved, another level of brain function developed, called the limbic brain, which mammals also possess. Emotions and social behaviors originate here. In the limbic brain, feelings are layered upon the instincts of the reptilian brain.
• Intuitive Eating embraces all three parts of the human brain. In infancy and toddlerhood, eating is mostly instinctual.
• There’s a lot more to health than what you eat—your relationship with food, mental health, social determinants of health, to name a few. Besides, body weight is not a behavior.