Non-Hungry Eating

The nutrition landscape has become a series of landmines, rabbit holes, and confusing anecdotes from the ‘study of one’ gurus.

WTF????

A lot of my work at the individual level is challenging those food rules — rules we’ve accepted as gospel based on not much truth at all. Said out loud, they don’t make any sense, yet they’re the basis of constant thought and torturous self-talk. “Carbs are bad.” “I can’t believe how many of those M&M’s I ate.” “I can’t eat anything after 3pm.” “I really let myself down today, I just had so much bad food.”

Does any of that help, though? Is that your version of health?

One simple question can help frame the discussion: how often do you eat when you aren’t hungry?

I just call it hunger

In the food diary process, one simple way to run any analysis is to use the hunger scale alongside the recording. Think about your own life — when was the last time you ate when you weren’t hungry? When did you eat beyond what your body needed?

Some call it intuitive eating, others call it listening to your body. I just call it hunger. Your body is a good regulator of what it needs. I like to think of it as the inner child — my very own toddler. It’s very good at letting me know what it needs and when. It hasn’t developed much social intelligence yet, it’s not interested in too many pleasantries, and you can’t ignore it.

So, when was the last time you ate?

Ask yourself:

• How hungry were you, from 1 to 10? 1 being the hungriest you’ve ever been, 10 being that feeling after Christmas lunch.
• Did you keep eating beyond the point at which you were satisfied? If so, why? (And the answer isn’t “I don’t know” — I promise.)

What drives non-hungry eating?

Hunger is a fundamental of the eating experience, and non-hungry eating usually comes down to a combination of a few things:

• Timing — the clock says it’s time to eat. This comes from living in a world of bells, classes, meetings and deadlines. Not necessarily a bad thing, but forcing food in just because you won’t have time later is tricky.
• Social — you feel an obligation to eat or drink beyond what feels right for you. Think of the child made to finish everything on their plate to respect the person who provided it. Waste not, want not — we’re trained, through social pressure, to eat when we’re not hungry.
• Emotion — any emotion (positive, negative, or indifferent — even boredom) can drive us to eat when we aren’t hungry. A reward for ‘being good’, or for dealing with a crappy boss. In that moment, what food is serving has nothing to do with your stomach and a lot to do with how you’re feeling.
• Deprivation — go without for a long stretch and hunger and emotion become Romeo and Juliet; good luck splitting those two. This includes dehydration — thirst can play a major part, since water is one of the largest constituents of food. You might just be thirsty, not hungry.
• An unmet need — closely linked to emotion, but a little deeper: the need for survival, to belong, for power or recognition (that inner toddler again… give me attention!), for freedom, and for fun. Soul food.

It’s not good or bad

I said at the start I didn’t want to complicate this for you, so let me be clear: eating when you’re not hungry isn’t a good or a bad thing. It’s simply whether it’s serving you and your goals.

If I can boil it down to a couple of questions for your next meal:

• How hungry are you?
• At what point in the meal do you become satisfied? Did you stop there, or keep going — and why, either way?
• Does the non-hungry eating serve you and your goals, or not?

It isn’t a bad or a good thing to eat when you’re not hungry. We just want to know the driver behind it, to make sure it’s consistent with your version of health.

Perhaps the question to sit with is this: does your non-hungry eating reflect the life you want — or is it just filling a gap something else should fill?

Bon appétit!
Sean Cornish