Planning for Hunger
Today's podcast episode is all about planning for hunger. This is a concept I teach when I'm working with women specifically on helping them learn to honor their hunger as a way to start to build body trust within themselves. Planning for hunger helps us so much with practically being able to eat intuitively and honor our hunger. It's simply not practical to on a whim decide what to eat every time we feel hungry. Planning for hunger is so helpful with being able to take the principle of "honor your hunger" and make it practical for your life.
Diet culture feeds us a lot of messages about how we should and shouldn't eat, what we should and shouldn't look like. One of those beliefs it feeds us is that we can't trust ourselves with food. And so we give ourselves rules for how and when to eat. Specifically related to hunger, we are told to use external cues for when to eat instead of the internal cue of our hunger (because, again, our body can't be trusted).
We believe that the more rules we have around food, the "safer" we'll feel. The more rules, the less chance we have to "screw-up".
But when you get to a place where you realize diets and trying to control your body and yourself around food doesn't work and you learn how to take an intuitive eating approach that focuses on building trust with yourself and tuning into your body, you begin to see that rules actually work against our bodies. Rules do the opposite of what we intended they do... they leave us feeling more out of control around food than ever.
Honoring your hunger is one of the first things I work on with clients because of the immediate way it helps to break down barriers of distrust with yourself.One of the first ways to start to practice honoring your hunger is to notice your hunger cues. Specifically, learning to decipher and pay attention to your early hunger cues.
Early hunger cues may feel like...
a slight emptiness in your stomach
thinking about food
distraction
Late hunger cues, on the other hand, feel more intense...
sense of urgency to eat
deep emptiness in your stomach
dizziness, shakiness
The goal with honoring your hunger is to try and notice and respond to hunger when it gives you those early signals. Responding to early hunger helps you go into your meal feeling more calm and gives you the ability to eat more mindfully and actually enjoy your meal.
So, taking a practical approach to honoring your hunger, and taking "honor your hunger" a bit further, I want to teach you something I call PLANNING FOR HUNGER. I also sometimes refer to this as anticipating your hunger.
You want to PLAN for hunger before you are hungry. Just like you plan to get thirsty or plan to have to go to the bathroom throughout the day, planning for hunger helps you to be prepared to honor your hunger when hunger hits.
A great way to do this is by planning to have some snacks on hand. The majority of us probably already plan for 3ish meals a day. But maybe you don't plan to get hungry in between those meals. Everyone's needs are different, but in my experience, women can really benefit from eating snacks in between meals. Our carbohydrate stores in our liver run out approximately every 3-6 hours which, if you're like me, I read that and think "Of course! That's why I'm hungry when I am throughout the day". Now, this isn't to say that you can't eat if you're hungry 2 or 2.5 hours after you ate... there are so many factors that go into when and how often we get hungry (how we ate the day before, how much energy we're spending, even where we are in our cycle). The best gauge for when to eat is to go by your hunger cues.
But let this mean to you that YOU CAN HAVE A SNACK in between meals!
Something I shared on this episode is what to consider when deciding what to eat for a snack, and this is all based on how you want to feel when you're done eating and the purpose you want your snack to have. Here is where gentle nutrition and intuitive eating work beautifully! We know that pairing a carb-type food with protein/fat can help the energy we receive from that food last longer. So, if I'm hungry at, say, 3 o'clock and I know it'll be a while still until dinner, having something like cheese and crackers, yogurt and granola, or some fruit and nuts, is going to carry me longer and I'll be able to focus on work and other things as I wait for dinner. But, on the other hand, if I'm hungry and we're getting ready to eat dinner in the next hour or so, I may just grab some pretzels. I just need a quick little energy burst to tide me over until dinner.
The cool thing here is you get to decide what you want. Here is where mindset is key! You are approaching eating from a place of wanting satisfaction (not wanting to get to your next meal so famished that you can't even enjoy it) and from a place of self-care.
This is something I teach more on inside my course, How to Eat 101, which you get instant access to as a member of The Nourish Lab, my online intuitive eating community.
NEXT STEPS TO PRACTICE PLANNING FOR HUNGER
I shared some "next steps" for you if you're ready to practice honoring your hunger on the podcast episode... here they are:
Practice noticing what early and late hunger feel like for you
Practice honoring your hunger at the early phases
Write down some of your favorite snacks and, specifically, snacks that will give you more lasting energy (write down snacks and label as "mid meal" or "pre-meal"
Plan for hunger-- pack your lunch + a couple of snacks (I like to anticipate being my hungriest so that I'm prepared) or make sure you have easy access to these snacks at home
What's your next step? Be sure to subscribe to the Embracing Balance Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Google to stay up to date!