Join me this year as I Eat Intentionally, putting into practice the ten principles of Intuitive Eating, one at a time. In January we worked on ditching the diet mentality, learning not to count calories, or measure portion sizes, or concern ourselves with how much we’re eating in any way. Now that the foundation of a healthy mindset is in place, we’re going to build from there. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a single post! Every Monday, we check in with our progress during Menu Plan Monday.
This month, your mission – should you choose to accept it – is to Honor Your Hunger.
Consider a baby: they know when they’re hungry, and they won’t rest until that hunger is satisfied. It doesn’t matter if they just ate 2 hours ago, they’re hungry now, and they want to be fed now.
Those same hunger cues don’t go away. And honestly, the time frame doesn’t change much either. From infancy to adulthood, the body needs to eat every 2-4 hours during the day to maintain adequate levels of energy. Our bodies were created to give us a signal whenever more nourishment is needed, and that signal is called “hunger”.
Unfortunately, many of us have learned to ignore that signal. When trying to lose weight, we force ourselves to eat a certain amount of calories a day, and we push ourselves through hunger so we can hold off consuming any more calories than we think we need.
This is counter-intuitive. Literally. When we ignore those hunger signals, thinking we will do our bodies a service, we actually do more harm than good. Inevitably, this is what happens:
- The hunger increases in intensity to the point where we can’t ignore it.
- We may feel shaky, irritable, faint, or even experience stomach pangs.
- We become so extremely hungry, we grab whatever is closest and easiest (usually not healthy).
- We eat rapidly in an attempt to quell the hunger pangs as quickly as possible.
- We eat more than was necessary and end up feeling sick to our stomach.
- granola bars
- Larabars or other healthy all-natural snack bars/protein bars
- nuts
- dried fruit
- trail mix
- apple or banana
I love this series by the way! I agree that our culture’s approach to eating is very counter-intuitive. A couple of years ago, I read a book, Eat What you Love, Love What you Eat, by Dr. Michelle May. It’s what introduced me to this concept of intentional eating (she calls it mindful eating). And funny enough, she came as a guest speaker to my office last year. Anyway, I’m like you, and SOOO done with dieting. I want to be healthy, intuitively. I want it to be second nature, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life counting, I want to enjoy life and enjoy my food.
I think its a sad place to be when our culture makes women (who are bigger than a size 2 anyway) feel guilty about enjoying food. I’m hungry and I’m gonna eat something delicious (and hopefully healthy). 
Here’s the link if your curious:
http://amihungry.com/eat-what-you-love-book.shtml
I agree that our culture is just completely out of touch when it comes to food in general! If we returned to the way our great-grandparents ate, a century ago or so, we would be much healthier. Thanks for the tip about the book – I hadn’t read that one, but it sounds like one I would enjoy!
I think there is definitely merit in this approach, but I have issues with stress eating. Any advice on how to tell the difference on when to avoid the ‘hunger signals ‘ and when to embrace them? I am very interested in changing my eating choices and am finding the heathly eating articles informative. Thanks!
This topic is addressed more fully in principle #7: “Honor your feelings without using food.” The whole point of intuitive eating is to be more aware of the functions that already exist in your body and to work with them not against them. You are well on your way because you are already aware that you eat out of stress and that’s a huge step. I think you probably already can discern the moments when you are truly hungry, and the moments when you just want to eat to get your mind off your stress. When the stressful moments hit, rather than focusing your mind on forcing yourself not to eat (which will likely backfire), I would take the time to figure out what is stressing you and deal with that. Enlist people to help you with that if you can – husband, sister, mom, best friend, etc. If nothing else, talk about what’s stressing you out with whoever will listen:) Praying and meditating on Scripture help me tremendously when I’m stressed. (And I highly recommend reading Intuitive Eating as they go into much more depth than I do here on the blog.)
Hi Anne, this post is so great, I completely agree that we should honour our hunger! I do not do it intentionally, but I often skip meals just because I’m not hungry, or too busy to notice. I try really hard to not do that, especially because I have low blood sugar. I find that if I’m eating healthy, whole foods, I’m hungry at more appropriate times, and satisfied more easily with my meals. Thanks for posting
Eating healthy, whole foods definitely helps!
Great tips–and yes, I have been so hungry I’ve gorged myself! Thanks for sharing w/ Healthy 2Day Wednesday! Hope to see you back next week!
Well, someone in your condition has an excuse