If you’ve been dieting for a while, it’s likely you’ve been taught to fight through your hunger. Diet culture leads us to believe that with more willpower and discipline we can overcome our hunger, but that is B*LLSHIT.
Why is it that when our body tells us we need to pee we don’t question it, but when we feel hunger, diet culture has conditioned us to resist and ignore it?
To make peace with food, we need to normalize hunger and honor it.
To do this, we just need to eat when we’re hungry! It sounds simple, but it is a hard thing to unlearn when diet culture has taught us to ignore hunger. You may even feel like you don’t know what hunger feels like because you’ve been so conditioned to suppress it.
When a baby cries for food, we don’t question its hunger. So why do we ignore our own hunger cues?
As a baby, you were able to honor your hunger! You were an intuitive eater! You were able to eat when you were hungry and turn away when you were done. We live in a world where we get external exposure to diet culture, which changes how we think. Even watching how our parents, friends, and family eat growing up shapes our habits. But the good news is making peace with food and food freedom is possible and working towards eating intuitively is the first step.
OUR BODIES NEED CONSISTENT FUEL.
When you fail to fuel your body consistently, your blood sugar drastically drops below its “normal” range. How can you even tell if your blood sugar is low? Common signs of low blood sugar include feeling irrationally angry, faint, light-headed, weak, or tired AF.
Keeping your blood sugar levels consistent:
- Drink adequate water throughout the day
- Eat every 3-4 hours
- Eat a variety of foods
It’s also important to identify the TYPE of hunger you are experiencing.
- Biological hunger
- Practical hunger
- Taste hunger
- Emotional hunger
Let’s briefly break these down:
Biological Hunger
- Your cells need fuel!
- Stomach is growling or feeling faint
- It’s time to check-in with the hunger & fullness scale
Practical Hunger
- Planning ahead
- IE should be practical, NOT rigid
- Honoring your future hunger
Taste Hunger
- Eating because it sounds good
- Eating because the occasion calls for it
- Food is an important part of culture! It is not just fuel.
Emotional Hunger
- Quenching uncomfortable feelings with food
- Curing boredom with eating
- Check-in with yourself – you may actually be experiencing primal hunger
So what are these hunger cues I keep mentioning?
Notice the signs:
- Headaches
- Feeling faint
- Irritability
- Uncomfortable stomach pain
- Difficulty concentrating
- Lightheadedness
- Growling noises, gurgling stomach
Explore your “hunger silence”:
- Why don’t you feel hunger anymore?
- This could be due to trauma, dieting, chaos, stress, or your basic needs not being met
Give yourself grace! Like any skill, this is going to take practice.
There is nothing wrong with you for being hungry.
Hunger is a normal biological cue.
You are allowed to eat for pleasure.
Honoring your hunger is what keeps you alive and helps you thrive.
If you enjoyed this blog post make sure you check out our post “Intuitive Eating Principle #1: Reject the Diet Mentality” here!
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