Honor Thy Hunger and Thy Fullness

3 ½ hours together driving back from New York gave us plenty of time to share music. I started by excitedly playing a recent find (Crayola by Kristen Andreassen http://vimeo.com/5466273) a performer I recently saw live, and whose group I adore. I hear this song and a huge grin comes across my face. Pure happiness! I feel good listening to Kristen and her silly lyrics—they make me smile, and tap my feet, and lift my mood. So I like it. No, I love it!

Then my son shares his tune. It’s okay, I think. It could grow on me, but I’d have to hear it again. He’s shocked, I could tell. When I ask him what he likes about it, he starts by describing the amazing, complex musical composition, comparing it to classics I didn’t know he was familiar with. And he truly appreciated the sophisticated lyrics. He had listened carefully to the words, and deeply to their meaning, quite analytically.

Our differing approaches to listening to music really struck me. For him, it’s a cerebral activity. For me, a gut reaction, strictly emotional, arousing my senses, not engaging my brain.

It made me think about eating. We’ve gotten too intellectual, too cognitive, too academic about eating. We’ve been guided to count things and analyze—calories, points, fat grams, approaching eating like a math equation. Eating is reduced to a chore, as we straddle restraining our eating, restricting what we really want choosing instead what our brain (and our doctor, the health experts and our mothers) say are wise and healthy choices. Short term we follow the rules, later over-indulging and regretting it afterwards. We focus only on external guidance, based on shoulds, and rarely on internal cues such as hunger and fullness.

In my last post I shared my forty-eight hour food fest as a way to normalize eating, to show you it was possible. But I hadn’t guided you on the how. So sorry! I plan to make it up to you in this and upcoming posts, providing the steps to get there.

Denying hunger

Denying hunger seems to be normal, a goal even, and not just for eating disordered individuals. No, it seems that most people who present to my office describe a mode of denying hunger, attempting to not respond to it, to buffer it with everything from diet sodas, to coffee, to huge quantities of water. Part of this is learned—Weight Watchers has always told members to have a glass of water when they are hungry. Partly they see short-term success with this strategy (did you catch the short term part?) So let’s think about this brilliant guidance. It seems to me most people (and dogs) know when they are thirsty, as opposed to hungry. And that if you substitute water for food, it's gonna bite you in the end. You'll get excessively hungry, and irritable and end up less in control of your food intake.

It seems to me that your goal should be to listen to your hunger—to eat when your body says it’s hungry and to not eat when it has had enough. You can’t not eat when you've had enough, and also not eat when your body says it’s hungry! It just won’t work.


Honor your hunger


Ideally, you’d eat when your body tells you it’s hungry—but not too hungry. You know what happens if hunger goes too far. That is not our goal. Rather, strive to respond to your hunger when it is just moderate. However it does help, when you are just getting started and are not very tuned into your body and its signals, to avoid going long periods without eating. It’s variable, but generally by 3 ½-4 hours it’s starting to feel too long if you haven’t eaten.

This may require you to carry snacks with you, and to do a bit of planning so that you have food available for when you need it. Or to make a detour in your plans, as needed.

Honoring your hunger means eating whenever you need to, regardless of the hour, regardless if anyone else needs food. (Yes, even after 8 PM!) I was at a conference the past three days and found myself very hungry at times I was not accustomed to needing to eat. It certainly did make sense—I did a ton of walking throughout this enormous complex and used public transportation—a significant increase over my usual driving and sitting at work all day.


But we shouldn’t need to analyze it. It should be enough that my body said I was hungry, that I needed fuel, and I needed to trust that. And I did.

Yes, we need to trust our body and what it’s telling us. And we need to ask, when we feel like eating, if that is truly hunger, the need for fuel, or an appetite for food to satisfy some other needs. You know, when you need comfort, to manage stress, anxiety, or sadness. Or because you had a hard day and feel you deserve it, or simply because you can.  Or because it’s available and feels like now or never. Or because everyone else is indulging. If it’s for any or all the reasons listed other that hunger, than no amount of food will readily feel like enough, and so you’ll find yourself overeating until you’re in a very uncomfortable place.

But maybe you struggle on the other side of the spectrum. “I’m not hungry”, you may say, so why should I eat? If you are in a healthy place, when your body and its signals work for you to maintain energy balance, that may be appropriate to listen to. But when you’ve been restricting, appetite gets suppressed, and hunger drops off. Our body also slows down, using less fuel 24/7 as a result. This can be compounded by anxiety and depression, impacting your interest in food, and even causing physical limitations such as stomach upset and tightness and difficulty swallowing. So you get into a catch-22 situation and normal self-regulating of food for energy balance will fail you.

The point is, there are times the signals don’t work for us. So if you are not in a healthy state then yes, you need to start by following some rules or guidelines designed to get you and your body on track. But ultimately, your signals will work for you, if you choose to listen to them!

Honoring hunger means eating throughout the day, as needed, even if you plan to go out to dinner. It means getting hungry, and responding to that hunger with food, with fuel. It means eating at 9:30, or 10:20, or 11:50 PM, if that's when you get hungry.


Keep a journal if you can. You can start just with the times you ate and your hunger rating (1-7 works well). Eating when hunger isn’t there? Were there other triggers which led to the eating? Or did something interfere with your ability to sense your hunger?

This is just a start! There is so much to share about legalizing foods, eating mindfully and eating until comfortably full. For now, just start with focusing, and honoring your hunger.

And let me know how it goes.