I’ve spent the last three years attempting to follow the adage: “Eat when I’m hungry, stop when I’m satisfied,” observing when it’s a struggle, and finding strategies that help me follow it more consistently.
This is NOT going to be one of those “this was the habit that changed the trajectory of my entire life or the shape of my body” posts. Nope. I’ve been doing this work for a while now, and I still have a long way to go. Ultimately, my goal is to reach a place of feeling happy and satisfied with how I take care of myself, including how I eat and move my body. And while I have a lot of book knowledge about what might be healthiest for folks in general, it’s been a trick to navigate my own needs as an individual. Coaching continues to be instrumental in helping me do this work.
Most folks who talk about changing their eating focus on managing the content of their meals. We’ve all been taught to believe that the most important thing about our eating is WHAT we eat. The sneaky, glorious truth of learning to work with our hunger and satiety cues, though, is that it teaches us how important it is to examine WHY we eat.
Doing this work has shown me that I eat:
Because it’s time.
Because there’s still food on my plate.
Because I’m sad.
Because I’m frustrated.
Because I’m bored.
Because it tastes good.
Because I’m afraid there won’t be more later.
Because I want more than my spouse.
Because there are sensations in my belly that might be hunger.
Because I’m afraid of getting hungry later.
Because it grounds me in my body.
Because it helps to regulate my emotions.
Because I’ve reached for food for comfort since I was tall enough to take food from the kitchen counter.
Every time I do the practice of waiting until I’m hungry and it feels hard, I learn something.
Every time I do the practice of stopping when satisfied but not full and it feels hard, I learn something.
A coach recently commented that she’d noticed a gradual switch in my attitude. She’d noticed that I’d begun to embrace that this work was a challenge, but that the challenge was worth it to me. And it’s true. This work is hard. It isn’t coming easily to me or quickly. But I value it, and newly, I’m finding myself encountering each roadblock as an opportunity to learn something new about myself rather than as a hurdle I resent having to overcome. This focus on self-learning and personal discovery gives meaning to any changes I make. As I learn to honor the information my body is telling me–that I’ve eaten enough, or it is time (or not) to eat again–I build self-trust and self-efficacy. This is part of the hard work of unlearning diet culture, which teaches us to focus on external tools to define how we eat.
Learning to listen to my body’s cues is the practice of learning about myself and my relationship with food. And that is what I really am hoping to gain from doing this work. I want to really understand and change my relationship with food and my body. I don’t want to be on autopilot, feel like I have to constantly monitor myself, or grit my teeth through unwanted eating urges. I want to feel in charge, empowered, and knowledge is power.
What could you learn about yourself by paying attention to and trusting the needs of your body?
Progressive Strength 