Purpose <p>To investigate the relationships between Intuitive Eating and maladaptive eating behaviors among Brazilian university students.</p> Methods <p>A cross-sectional quantitative study was conducted among technical, undergraduate, and postgraduate students aged 18&#xa0;years or above, between 2020 and 2021. Participants completed an online survey comprising sociodemographic questions, the Intuitive Eating Scale-2 (IES-2), and the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire-Revised 21 (TFEQ-R21), both validated for the Brazilian population. Spearman’s correlation and MANCOVA tests were used to assess associations between study variables.</p> Results <p>The study included 1,237 participants (82.6% females) with a mean age of 26.3 (SD = 8.0) years. Intuitive Eating and its domains were negatively associated with Cognitive Restraint, Emotional Eating and Uncontrolled Eating. In the MANCOVA model, the Unconditional Permission to Eat subscale (IES-2) explained a large proportion of variance in Cognitive Restraint (η2p = .314), and the Eating for Physical Rather than Emotional Reasons subscale (IES-2) explained a large proportion of variance in Emotional Eating (η2p = .587).</p> Conclusion <p>Intuitive eating and its domains were negatively associated with maladaptive eating behaviors among Brazilian university students, particularly Emotional Eating and Cognitive Restraint, with Eating for Physical Rather than Emotional Reasons and Unconditional Permission to Eat showing the strongest relationships.</p> Level of evidence <p>Level 4—Cross-sectional study.</p>