“Oh, that looks good, but I shouldn’t.” “I just ate a little while ago, so I can’t be hungry again.” “I can’t eat that; otherwise, I’ll gain weight.” Any of these statements sound familiar?

There’s a good chance that you’ve heard friends, family members, or even yourself say something to this effect regarding whether or not you should eat. While there is a lot to unpack around food and eating it, let’s focus simply on exploring hunger and what that physically and psychologically looks like and feels like to us. It might help reduce some self-imposed frustrations and anxiety we have around willpower, body size, and weight.

Hunger and DIETING

First and foremost, dieting reduces our ability to trust and honor our hungry signals. After all, isn’t a diet just reducing food intake when we want it or eating something “diet approved” instead of what sounds good? Dieting takes a further and further away from identifying our body’s wants or needs at different times in our lives.

So, the first step to answering the sign of hunger is to stop dieting. Just say no to any plan, pill, or persuasion that tells you what, when, or how to eat. Our bodies know the answers to these questions; we just have to listen. We have to learn (or rather re-learn) to trust that we can innately make choices around food that will satisfy us AND allow us to be at our healthy weight.

When we listen to our body’s signals—hunger, fullness, or anything else—we can determine what it needs or doesn’t need. Maybe what our body needs is food, or maybe we are hungry for something else: love, comfort, security, companionship, accomplishment, and so on.

DEFINE YOUR HUNGER

So how do we hear our hunger and answer its call? Let’s start by defining what hunger means for you. On a sheet of paper, create two columns. On the left side, number 1-10. On the right side, identify what hunger and fullness look and feel like to you. For example, one might be “starving, can’t think straight, fixated on food and nothing else, can’t make decisions easily, short temper with others.” A rating of 5 might be “comfortable, focused, energized, peaceful.” A 10 might be “very stuffed, uncomfortable, want to sleep or lie down, low energy.”

 Define 1-10 for you and only you. This way, you can identify your hunger and fullness signals for yourself instead of taking external cues from the outside world, i.e., it’s noon, so I must be hungry and have to eat my whole lunch. Often we find that “full” or “hungry” start way before we have to undo our belts or eat the first thing we can get our hands-on.

Should I have that?

It might be surprising to hear, but eating foods that we find delicious not only satisfies our hunger but it is an excellent guideline for maintaining our unique healthy weight. Biologically speaking, pleasure is our reward for taking care of ourselves. So, if we eat something pleasurable, instead of saying what a diet tells us we should eat, our brain responds in a way that allows us to eat what we need and then stop.

If you eat something that doesn’t induce pleasure or enjoyment (or simply isn’t what you really want), your brain will continue to stay fixated on the food you deprived yourself of long after eating the less satisfying food choice. Now you have a greater chance of eating the diet-imposed food AND what you really wanted in the first place. This can lead to overeating and tipping our fullness scale from a comfortable 6 to an uncomfortable 9.

Some of us have been dieting for so long that we don’t even know what foods would satisfy us or bring true pleasure! If we eat something outside of our diet, we are riddled with shame, guilt, and fear about losing “control” and gaining weight.

Eating Mindfully

One way to reclaim your pleasure around eating it to start paying attention to your food. This is very different from fixating on it: calorie counting, meal planning with no flexibility, and other food rules.

Research shows that we don’t metabolize our food nearly as well when we are distracted during meals or just simply not paying attention to the smell, taste, look, or feel of our food. In fact, 30-40% of our physical response to food happens during this five-sense phase. If not paying attention, you can see how it would be easier to overeat and bypass your body’s response to fullness while eating. Another thing to note is when we are eating under stress, we don’t absorb nutrients as well.

All of this can be summed up as mindful eating.

A word of support

There’s nothing wrong with emotional eating or even eating too much…sometimes. Here’s what is important: you are aware that you are doing it and don’t feel like a bad person as a result of it. Many of us have been eating for reasons other than hunger for a very long time, either because of dieting or disordered eating patterns and rules. Emotional eating isn’t an eating problem; emotional eating is a problem of not dealing with your emotions.

Your appetite, or rather your body signaling to you that it’s time to eat or stop eating, is not a bad thing. It’s your body trying to keep you alive, and well so you can eat and then get on with all the other amazing things you want to do with your life! Feeding ourselves is a form of self-care and it should be honored.

Here are a few things you can do if emotional eating without signs of hunger is of concern for you:

Check-in with yourself before eating. What are you really hungry for, and what would it take to satisfy this need?

Sit quietly with your thoughts for a few minutes. Have a “feelings chart” available on your phone, in your home, or office so you can more readily name your feelings. A feeling is different from judging yourself, so make sure you go the extra step to truly identify how you’re feeling, not what you think you are. For example, “I’m fat” isn’t a feeling; it’s a judgment about how you feel.

Once you’ve identified your emotions and how you’re feeling, feel them. Experience them. Process them. Cry, write, talk to someone. This isn’t a practice of drowning them out or pushing them away. It’s about moving through them or just simply sitting with them until they pass.

Don’t judge yourself if you do overeat or eat for emotional reasons. Use that moment to reflect and learn. Layering guilt on to the experience won’t help. Choosing eating as a way to cope is not in and of itself a bad thing. It just can’t be the ONLY coping mechanism you have.



There is nothing wrong with you or your experience around hunger. We have internalized so many negative thoughts around this perfectly normal biological process that it feels scary to trust it. Just remember that mistrust has been taught to us by the diet industry that profits from us every time we try to fight against our bodies. The next time you feel hungry, thank your body for signaling to you that it needs to be taken care of and answer its call.