Common Questions About Hunger & Fullness With Intuitive Eating

Oftentimes, intuitive eating gets labeled and thought of as the "hunger/fullness" diet where you just eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. Yes, this is definitely a large part of it. But it's so much more than just that! Let's talk about some of the common questions I get with hunger and fullness that may be keeping you stuck with intuitive eating.A lot of times, when I'm working with clients, we start with the two principles of honoring hunger and feeling fullness. The clients I work with often come to me struggling with overeating and want to feel in control in that area of their relationship with food.I love starting here because it often creates easy wins for clients. We work on starting to explore eating according to hunger as opposed to specific times to eat that have been learned by diet culture and mindful eating practices that help with stopping when full. But then as we continue to work together they often discover some nuances to hunger and fullness.Like what if I'm not hungry for dinner but know that I'll probably get hungry in the middle of the night if I don't eat something.Or learning to eat even a little past fullness at a meal because that meal is so good and you know that you could just eat a smaller meal the next time.Or snacking just a little bit before dinner even though you're starving just to buy off some hunger to be able to enjoy dinner more.*Note...this is kind of advanced and if you don't first have some practice with intuitive eating and honoring hunger and fullness this may seem confusing. But my goal here is to help you see that honoring hunger and fullness isn't as black and white as maybe it seems.  

Let's talk about the nuances of hunger and fullness!

Say you get home from work and you're not super hungry that night. You had a bigger lunch because it had been catered and then had some cake for a coworker's birthday. Tuning into your hunger cues reveals that you're not really hungry. But tapping into your knowledge about your body (and using common sense) says I'll probably get hungry in the middle of the night or wake up the next morning starving, so I'm going to have something smaller for dinner like a bowl of cereal or a smoothie bowl.You aren't wrong for eating when you're not hungry here! In fact, this is such an empowered choice based in self-care that says, "I'm not hungry right now but the best thing for me is to eat something regardless!"The hunger/fullness scale is a wonderful tool to be able to use when you're rediscovering what hunger and fullness cues feel like for you. But it isn't religion. You are perfectly valid in making the right choice for your body based on knowledge even if it isn't quite what your cues are saying. What about deciding to eat a little past fullness? Is that ok? Short answer...YES! I love what Ellyn Satter says in her definition of normal eating. She shares that sometimes we are going to not eat enough and wish we had more and other times we will eat too much and feel uncomfortable. This may not be what you'd expect me to say but it is ok to overeat. Hear me out here... I'm not saying you overeat because you are trying to drown your emotions in ice cream (although there is grace for those moments...we've all been there!) or overeating out of boredom. My philosophy is that you are empowered to make a choice for yourself and what you want. And to be honest, there are times where I am really enjoying something and I choose to eat more and even feel a little uncomfortable.And maybe there are other times where you choose to eat when you're not hungry out of convenience because you're headed into a long work meeting and you know there won't be a chance to eat for a few hours. That is also ok and one of those times where you aren't necessarily eating because you're hungry but more so eating in anticipation of being hungry and eating out of practicality vs an actual sensation of hunger. How about snacking? Is it ok to snack all day? How about snacking when you make dinner? Snacking when you're not really hungry?Again, these are moments where you can make a decision based on what you want and how you want to feel. As an intuitive eater, you are the one empowered to make choices about how you want to eat and how you want to feel as opposed to how dieting dictates all of that for you and makes you feel powerless...yeah, not about that.And so here, I want to empower you to ask yourself with each opportunity to snack what your purpose for snacking is? Is it a very real necessity to not be so starving and hangry between meals? Or is it to find some pleasure and enjoy something new? Is it to add to the enjoyment of watching a movie? Or just because you randomly haven't been super hungry one day. What about if I'm just not hungry all day?Sometimes honoring our hunger is easy and we have those regular ebbs and flows throughout the day every couple of hours. And other days it's just absent. Maybe we're not feeling ourselves and we lose our appetite or something else causes us to not feel hungry.Honoring hunger is sometimes about doing what's practical and using head knowledge more-so than body knowledge. So in these cases, yes, you can eat and should eat. Maybe what you eat is just a little different and not as much as other days. A lot of intuitive eating is about letting go of rules and outer influence you've had around eating and finding your own voice, your own truth, with food. We have a deep wisdom for how to eat and nourish and care for ourselves, and when we uncover all of diet culture's influence we find that voice and can use it to feel free and our healthiest self!I'd love to know... what's been your real experience with honoring hunger and fullness?