After many years of failure, trial and error (and a lot of frustration!) I eventually learned that one of the most important skills for losing weight in a sustainable way is paying attention to my hunger cues, and only eating when I’m physically hungry.
The reason this took me so long, and the reason most of us miss this simple habit, is that we are so focused on minutiae like the types of food we should or shouldn’t be eating, specific diets, times of meals, the “best” exercises and workouts…and unfortunately, no matter how healthy the foods are that we choose, or how perfect our workout looks on paper, if we have a regular pattern of eating when we aren’t physically hungry, we’re going to struggle to lose weight.
In this article I’m going to show you why eating according to your hunger cues is so helpful for losing weight, and how you can start mastering this skill for yourself (and yes, it’s a skill!)
There are 3 reasons we eat food:
- Physical hunger is eating in response to a physical need for food. When our body physically needs food, we will feel physical sensations in our body to signal that it’s time to eat.
- Emotional eating is eating because we want food, but we aren’t necessarily physically hungry. Often we are trying to avoid or create an emotion, or we are experiencing food cravings. Usually this shows up in the form of wanting a specific type of food.
- Habitual eating is eating out of habit and is often done at specific times, like breakfast, lunch time, work breaks, dinner time, etc. Sometimes there’s no getting around this, such as break times at work and that’s ok, but it’s important to acknowledge that habitual eating doesn’t always align with our physical needs.
The ideal situation we want to work towards, especially for those of us with weight loss goals, is to mostly eat when we’re physically hungry, and reduce emotional and habitual eating where possible. It’s not about perfection, it’s about what we do most of the time and whether we are eating the amount of food our body physically needs.
Many of us have forgotten what our physical hunger sensations actually feel like, especially if we’ve spent most of our lives trying to ignore our hunger cues, following diets, or eating by the clock. That’s why it’s a skill we need to spend time rebuilding.
One of the most challenging parts of relearning your natural hunger cues is navigating emotional eating patterns. Most of us have an emotional eating habit because it’s how we learned to cope with things when we were younger.
Do you have an emotional eating habit?
Emotional eating in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a normal part of being human! It starts to be a problem when emotional eating becomes a habitual pattern, when it interferes with your goals (like losing weight) or when food is the only coping mechanism available to you.
Many people are unaware that their emotions are driving them to eat, and so they try to work around their emotional eating by:
- Going on diets that introduce external rules. This in an external attempt to control the amount or type of food being eaten, which sounds logical, but it’s really a band-aid approach because it doesn’t address the true underlying problem.
- Cutting out sugar, desserts, or carbs. Again, this is using external rules to try to avoid the behaviour. This is also pushed hard by the fitness industry, who promotes certain “good” foods and “bad” foods, which unfortunately leads to food fear and further fuels the emotional eating cycle…
- Intermittent fasting. Yet another external rule, aimed at trying to limit the amount of food you’re eating. Unfortunately this approach doesn’t always work because, even though we might be eating less meals per day, it’s too easy to compensate by eating more in each of those meals (therefore still eating more than our body needs in a day and not losing weight).
- Focusing on exercise. We’re told we need to constantly work out harder, sweat more and more, and that food needs to be earned by working out. This leads to an unhealthy relationship with both exercise and food, and can be an unsustainable and ineffective approach for many with weight loss goals. We call this situation “the exercise trap” – where you’re exercising a lot and not seeing the results you want, but you keep at it due to the fear of gaining weight if you stop.
Over time, these methods become harder and harder to stick to because the real issues have not been addressed. If we still use food to cope with our emotions, and lack the skill of eating according to our hunger cues, then no matter what diet or program we try, we will eventually fall back into our old eating habits and not reach our goals.
Think of this like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. Eventually, you get really tired and can’t hold it under the water any longer, so the ball will come back up to the surface again.
Your emotions aren’t just going to magically disappear, but your ability to manage, respond and take different actions can definitely change.
How to recognise physical hunger:
Everyone will have slightly different feelings of physical hunger, so it’s important to find what your signals are. Some common physical hunger cues include:
- Stomach growling or rumbling
- An empty feeling in your stomach
- A general feeling of lethargy or feeling light-headed (Note: this is only a hunger signal if haven’t eaten in a while and you are properly hydrated. These can be signs of dehydration or other conditions as well.)
Start by noticing these physical sensations – write them down if possible so you have a reference to look back on in the future.
Hunger sensations come in waves. You might feel hungry for a while, then the feeling will pass, only to return again later. This is a sign that your hunger is, in fact, physical – it won’t feel as urgent or specific as an emotional food craving.
When you’re eating, slow down and pay attention to the sensations you feel.
At what point do those physical hunger signals disappear?
Do you feel physically satisfied?
Where does the point of 80% full feel like to you?
Action item: Practice eating slowly and paying more attention to your hunger cues today after you watch this video.
Some major benefits of eating according to your hunger cues:
- You might notice you need a lot less food than you typically eat – this shows you how much of the food you’re eating is coming from emotional eating or is consumed beyond the point of 80% full.
- You’ll be able to lose weight a lot easier – you can still eat the foods you like, you’re just eating them when you’re actually hungry, and eating them slowly.
- You might notice less stomach upset or GI symptoms when you eat slower – many symptoms like bloating, gas, reflux, and stomach pain can be caused by eating our food too quickly.
- You will feeling more confident and in control of your eating habits – when you have the skill of eating according to physical hunger, you no longer have to worry about trying to eat specific foods, or count the calories in the food, or worry if this food will cause you to gain weight or not – it just makes the process so much easier and less stressful.
Your body knows how much food it needs, it’s time to start listening!
Last minute takeaways:
- Eat at the first sign of physical hunger. No need to wait until you’re starving – you have permission to eat.
- Not noticing your signals? Try this experiment: At your next meal, wait longer than normal before eating. Often we’re so used to eating preemptively that we never wait for physical hunger, so we eat before our body needs to send us any hunger cues. If you wait long enough, your stomach will tell you.
Don’t overthink this! Changing your habits and behaviours takes time and patience, be prepared for that and don’t beat yourself up about it. Take it one meal at a time.
Think about it like learning any other skill, the more you practice, the better you’ll get at it, meaning the faster and more consistently you’ll see results from doing it.
Over time, paying attention to your hunger cues will become a habit, and you won’t have to think about it all that much anymore. Give yourself time and patience to get to this point. That way you can get on with enjoying your life and still reach your goals without having to worry about dieting all the time.
Interested in getting further help and support to build new healthy habits that stick? Whether your goal is to lose weight, to start exercising regularly, or to eat better and feel healthier, we can help you inside The Habit Reset!
The Habit Reset is our monthly membership where we give you step-by-step guidance on building habits and living the life you want. Click here for more information!
