If you have embarked at all on Intuitive Eating, you have heard about the importance of listening to your hunger and fullness signals.
But why is this so important?
If you have dieted a lot (or restricted, or been a “clean eating” fanatic) you have probably worked to shut your hunger signals off, consciously or unconsciously.
Maybe, you were trying to lose weight. Instead of relying on your hunger cues, you adhered to a list of foods to eat and a prescribed time of day. Perhaps you were just busy and pushed off eating until you were famished simply because you hated taking the time to eat. Or, you went to the extremes of not eating all day or intermittent fasting, which obliterated your ability to listen to your body’s needs.
Either way, listening to your hunger and fullness cues is an integral part of Intuitive Eating. You can’t heal your relationship with food without learning this skill.
The first step is to become aware of your body.
You can practice this throughout your day, without any connection to food. The next time you’re at work, notice where your body is. How does it feel sitting in the chair? What signals are you getting from your body? Do you feel tired? Energetic? Where in your body do you feel these sensations?
How do your feet feel? How does your bum feel sitting in your chair? How about your neck? Your forehead?
And, rather than just beginning to notice discomfort, which is what usually gets our attention, can you notice good feelings too? A lightness or “aliveness” in your arms for instance?
As you begin to have more awareness of your body overall, it will become easier to notice signals of hunger and fullness.
Step two involves letting go of the fear of hunger cues.
You may actually have a fear of your hunger cues. In diet culture we learn that our natural cues for hunger are to be tamed and controlled, certainly not trusted or obeyed. We learn that our hunger is “bad.” Diet culture tells us that we should eat light foods that take the edge off so we don’t feel the hunger–without actually giving ourselves the nutrition and satiety we need. Maybe we take diet pills to suppress our hunger, or google ways to “trick” our bodies into not giving us hunger cues. Tanking up on diet soda and caffeinated drinks, chewing excessive gum, fasting: all are ways I’ve seen clients hold off their hunger.
But why would you want to suppress your hunger cues?
Our hunger cues are the way that our bodies communicate with us. When we shut them off we are in essence telling our bodies “I don’t care about you and what you need. I’m doing this my way.” The trouble is that our bodies don’t stop having needs. So they find other ways to communicate with us. Maybe it’s headaches or tiredness or a weakened immune system or cravings or binge eating or weight gain.
Yes, you read that right, weight gain, not loss. When you’re not eating enough, your body is being taught to hold on to every bit of energy it can because you might be in a starvation situation–it never knows when the next morsel of food is coming!
In paying attention to my own hunger cues, I realized that I am naturally hungry for a nice combination of foods about every 3 to 4 hours. When I pay attention, I eat according to what my hunger cues are telling me. It ends up being balanced, healthy, satisfying. I no longer have any logical reason to fear my hunger cues. They are now my friend. They tell me what I need in a gentle whisper versus the migraines, dizziness, irritability, and erratic emotions that I used to get when I ignored my hunger.
The third step requires actually feeding yourself when you are hungry.
There’s letting go of fear of your cues, but then there’s actually feeding yourself when you get the cues. Maybe fear holds you back, or maybe it’s logistical.
I have clients say that they don’t eat between breakfast and lunch because that would be “weird” or “bad,” even though they typically get hungry at 10 am!
Our culture has messed with our heads! It’s OK to eat at noon but not at 10 am, because the clock says so?!?
Your body is an organism. It doesn’t live by a clock! If you’re hungry it means you burned up all your fuel. If you deny yourself food, you’re running on fumes, and teaching your metabolism to slow in response to famine.
I am here to tell you that your job is to feed yourself when you’re hungry. It may take a little extra planning, making sure you bring snacks to work that feel satisfying and yummy. It can be a lot of packing if you’re stuck at work all day. But, the extra discipline is worth the progress you’ll make in obeying your hunger cues.
I also hear from clients that are nurses or teachers that they are so busy throughout the day that it is hard to find time to eat. But, I promise there is something out there you can snack on quickly, so that you don’t get overly hungry. Remember, your priority is healing your relationship with food. One of the most important parts of that is learning to feed yourself when you’re hungry. It is the basis of Intuitive Eating. So, problem solve: what can you bring to work that you can eat quickly, or how can you change the way you work so that you get a snack break? There is an answer, you just have to be committed.
Fourth, don’t overextend yourself.
It is hard to feel your body’s cues when you’re exhausted or emotional. Get appropriate rest, take care of your emotions in a healthy way, get an amount of exercise that feels balanced for you. Any time we are way out of whack it is hard to listen to our bodies.
Fifth, use the Hunger Discovery Scale in the Intuitive Eating book to gauge your hunger.
This can help you put a number to what you are experiencing within your body. Sometimes it’s nice to have an external representation of what you’re feeling inside, and it can help you sort out nuances. In the beginning it can be hard to distinguish between tiredness, thirst, boredom, stress or hunger. Rating your hunger on the scale can help you sort this out.
The sixth step is to distinguish between emotional hunger and biological hunger.
If you have been comforting your emotions with food for a long time, this can be a tricky process. Start with listening for true, biological hunger first. Then begin noticing when you want to eat when you’re not hungry, and what the reasons are. Remember, eating when you’re not hungry is not wrong. It’s just that in the early part of recovery it is a place to explore the reasons you go to food. Sometimes it’s pure habit, which is very changeable. Sometimes it’s deeply rooted emotions, and sometimes it’s stress or other easily identifiable feelings. As your coach, we’ll sort through these together, so it doesn’t feel so daunting.
Check out my recent blog post on the topic of emotional eating and how to recover from it: https://eatingrecoverycoach.com/2020/01/13/are-you-an-emotional-eater/
I write about emotional eating on my Instagram feed, too. It was a big part of my journey: https://www.instagram.com/eating.recovery.coach/
Takeaway for today: Eat when you’re hungry. It’s the most basic place to begin Intuitive Eating, and learning your unique hunger cues serves as the basis for all the other steps to build from.
