Intuitive Eating Principle #2: Honor Your Hunger
Amidst the sea of diets and food restrictions prevalent in today's society, many of us have become disconnected from our body's intrinsic wisdom regarding eating. Often, we unconsciously adhere to external rules and societal norms, leaving little space for our body's natural hunger signals to play a guiding role. One of the core principles of intuitive eating is "honoring your hunger" - a transformative practice with the power to reshape our connection with food, nurturing self-compassion and internal nourishment.
When you diet and restrict your food intake, you are ignoring a key biological cue: HUNGER. Food is so important to survival that it is included as one of the building blocks in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, along with air and water, suggesting that these physiological needs must be satisfied before individuals can attend to higher needs like safety, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization. When we ignore our biological cue to eat for too long, we start a biological cascading event that turns on our desire to eat so strongly that we experience primal hunger, described by:
Gnawing Sensation: A physical sensation in the stomach often described as hunger pangs or a feeling of emptiness
Low Energy: Feeling fatigued, weak, or lacking energy, which can be an indication that the body needs fuel
Difficulty Concentrating: When the brain is deprived of glucose, it can affect cognitive function and concentration
Irritability (aka hangry): Hunger can lead to mood changes, making a person feel more irritable or easily agitated
Changes in Body Temperature: Some people may notice they feel colder when they're hungry as the body conserves energy
Increase in Appetite: Primal hunger often leads to a noticeable increase in appetite, making you desire and think about food
If you have been a chronic dieter, it may be hard to feel your hunger. You may have conditioned your body to only eat when you are ravenous vs hungry, resulting in a famine or feast approach, i.e. restricting and overeating. It’s also possible that you don’t feel hunger anymore because you have silenced your hunger. There are a few reasons why this may have happened:
Numbing
Dieting
Chaos
Trauma history
Skipping breakfast
Stress
Basic needs aren’t being met
The question you might be having now is “how do I ensure that I am listening to my biological hunger, or even know what to listen for?”. While this will vary from person to person, the following feelings or sensations are cues that you are hungry:
Mild gurgling, gnawing or growling noises in the stomach
Uncomfortable stomach pain
Lightheadedness
headache
Difficulty concentrating
Irritability
Feeling faint or weak
It’s important to recognize that honoring your hunger does not necessarily mean that you will only eat when you are hungry. If we were to follow that “rule”, then we may slowly slide back into a diet mentality of following rules and restrictions, and there is NO place for that with Intuitive Eating. In addition to biological hunger previously discussed, let’s look at a couple other types of hunger:
Taste Hunger: embracing food experiences that bring us joy, whether it’s trying a recipe that you found online, or enjoying an ice cream on a hot summer day
Practical Hunger (planning ahead): busy schedules and busy lives may impact when you normally eat, so planning ahead and having a light snack to avoid being “hangry” avoids rigid rules of when to eat and is a practical approach to honoring your biological hunger
Emotional Hunger: a common hunger is the need to quench uncomfortable feelings (loneliness, boredom or anger) and may be experienced as out-of-control eating, but sometimes this can be mistaken for primal hunger so it's important to learn to listen and check-in with yourself
