THE RHYTHMS OF HUNGER

You were born with the instinctive ability to know when your body needs fuel. Unfortunately, many people have lost that important skill and instead eat in response to environmental and emotional cues. These external rules encourage you to ignore or distrust your natural signals.

Learning to manage your eating for life requires you to re-learn to listen to and honor your hunger rhythms. Once you understand the basics of hunger, you’re ready to learn about other nuances that can help you use your personal hunger rhythms to guide your eating.

Hunger Doesn’t Follow a Clock

Hunger doesn’t always follow a clock. If you tell yourself, “I should be hungry; it’s dinnertime” or “I shouldn’t be hungry yet,” then you’re not listening to your body. Hunger comes and goes according to your body’s needs. Hunger is affected by how active you are, what and how much you eat, and many other factors.

Since it’s not always convenient to eat when hunger tells you to, you may need to re-train yourself to be hungry around a particular time. For instance, if you aren’t usually very hungry during your scheduled lunch hour you could either try skipping your mid-morning snack by eating a little more protein at breakfast or just eat less at lunch and be prepared to have a mid-afternoon snack. If you’re usually hungry at four in the afternoon but you want to be hungry for an early dinner with your family, you could plan a light afternoon snack such as a piece of fruit so you won’t be ravenous when you walk in the door. On the other hand, if you’re having a late dinner, you could choose something that will “hold” you over, like a palm full of nuts or cheese and crackers.

The Most Important Meal

Breakfast is an important meal to spark your internal thermostat and give you energy, but some people don’t feel hungry first thing in the morning. It could be that it just takes a little while for your body to wake up. Maybe you ate a big dinner or ate late the night before. Or perhaps you drank several cups of coffee and rushed around all morning getting ready, so your hunger signals were suppressed. Since it’s important to “break the fast,” it’s worth retraining yourself to be hungry in the morning. Cut down on late night eating, getting up a little earlier so you can slow down to eat, or wait an hour or so, then eat a light breakfast.

Preventive Eating

Eating even though you aren’t hungry to prevent feeling hungry later at an inconvenient time is called preventive eating. But hunger cannot be satisfied before it occurs. Think of it like this. If you’re comfortable in a room, you wouldn’t put a heavy coat on now to prevent getting cold in an hour because you’d feel hot and uncomfortable in the meantime. Instead, you’d have a coat with you and put it on when you feel cold; then the coat will do what it is supposed to do—make you warm and keep you comfortable. Hunger works the same way. If you eat now because you’re afraid of being hungry in an hour, you’ll feel full and uncomfortable in the meantime. If you wait to eat until you’re hungry, you’ll feel comfortable and content.

Hunger May Seem Erratic

Hunger comes and goes according to your body’s needs. You may feel hungry frequently one day and rarely the next. For example, many women experience wide fluctuations in their hunger throughout their menstrual cycles due to changing hormone levels. Because of your activity levels and many other factors, you simply don’t need the same type or amount of food at the same time each day. This is contrary to the way most diets are structured and yet another reason why they often fail. You are more likely to “cheat” when your hunger levels didn’t match the rules of whatever diet you are following. This time, become your own expert by learning to understand and trust your body’s signals.