IE Principle 2: Honor Your Hunger

I have a few days of trying to be more in tune with my eating under my belt. I have unsubscribed to all of my weight loss newsletters/blogs and I am trying to figure out what to do with all of my weight loss books. I am still unsure about cancelling my Weight Watchers membership, it feels like a big step that I might not be quite ready to make. I am working on “rejecting the diet mentality” but it is so deeply engrained that I know it will take some time. I also know that until I do, I will never be able to fully embrace intuitive eating. Today I am going to begin looking at the 2^nd principle of intuitive eating:

Honor Your Hunger

This principle is all about the importance of keeping your body fed so you don’t trigger that primal drive to over-eat. Once we reach that point of being famished, all good intentions go out the window. You just want to eat and you will eat anything you can get your hands on. The intention of eating moderately or consciously became a distant memory. It is all about listening to your body and knowing its signals so that you never reach that point of excessive hunger.

I have a weird history with hunger. When I was a teenager someone told me to embrace the feeling of hunger because when my stomach was rumbling that meant my body had to use fat to survive. I took this nugget of info and ran with it. I loved when I felt that way however I could only hold onto the feeling for so long before I cracked. This was the beginning of my binging episodes. I would starve myself all day and then binge at night. I also just kept getting bigger and bigger. During my first year of university I realized that this disordered eating so I worked at fixing it and my weight started to move in a more positive direction. Unfortunately I became almost panicked when I would feel hungry so for years I never allowed myself to get to that point because it was uncomfortable for me.

 Two extremes, neither good.

Now I can live with the feelings of hunger (I am hungry right now!) but I don’t really trust my body and mind to decipher between true hunger and emotional hunger. This will take some time. I have been trying to become more aware of what those signals are and what some of my habits are. For example, often when I am hungry I have a cup of coffee. It fills me up, perks me up and I love the taste. This week instead of reaching for that quick fix, I have been asking “What does my body need right now?” usually it is some water and a few almonds or a piece of fruit.  If the answer is “A coffee” then so be it, but at least I took the moment to reflect on the situation.

This is also about not always eating to the clock. Just because it is noon, doesn’t mean you have to eat lunch. Similarly, just because it is 3pm doesn’t mean you can’t have dinner (call me Grandma!). It is about eating when you are hungry to fuel your body. Not because the clock tells you to, not because there is food there so you might as well, not because you are bored. You eat because you are hungry and you never allow yourself to get so hungry that you lose control. Hmmmm sounds doable right? Time will tell!