What Happened When I Learned How to Be Hungry
Tuning into my hunger taught me two important lessons
I was 19 years old when I first heard someone mention hunger in conjunction with eating. I was at university and my housemate and I were supposed to be going out for dinner with some friends. My housemate was worried because she wasn’t hungry yet.
I remember being so confused — “Why does that matter?” I asked her. She told me that she didn’t want to have dinner until she was hungry and proceeded to jog on the spot to try and burn off some energy.
I had never considered the idea that you should feel hungry before eating. In my household growing up, we were never asked if we felt hungry — we just ate because it was breakfast/lunch/dinner time. Eating was an activity. Eating was what you did because, well, it was time to eat.
I had little control over how much I ate growing up. I was part of one of those families that tell you to finish what’s on your plate because there are starving children in Africa. What was on my plate was a portion that had been decided by someone else, without reference to whether or not I was hungry, whether or not I needed more or less energy that day because of what I’d be doing.
At some point in my teenage years, I started to equate food as a symbol of affection — and when my brother got more food, I took that as a slight against me and demanded equality, even though he was significantly bigger than me. As a consequence, I was often overeating on a regular basis and I started to gain weight.
When I was able to control eating for myself at university, I continued the habit of eating large portions at regular intervals and added alcohol and late-night eating to the mix. As you can imagine, I gained more weight, although I always did a lot of sports.
Even after my housemate introduced me to the concept of only eating when hungry, this idea didn’t take. My habits were already too well formed. It was only during a time of desperate desire to lose weight when I read the book called “I can make you thin” by Paul McKenna, that I started to think a little bit more about hunger.
Up until that point, I had rarely felt hunger. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I feared being hungry. Hunger was a loss of control. If I was hungry, it was because I wasn’t managing my surroundings properly. I also found the sensation of hunger to be quite painful, sometimes inducing nausea. As a consequence, being hungry just made me feel angry.
But after reading “I can make you thin”, where four rules are discussed: eat when hungry, eat what you really want to eat, enjoy every mouthful, and stop when you feel full, I realised that I could find a middle ground. I could wait until I was hungry and then eat, rather than just eating for the sake of it. If I was well prepared, I could make some healthy snacks and eat those if hunger struck when I was out and about. I didn’t need to fear hunger. We could work together.
When I started to eat in response to hunger, rather than out of habit, I noticed two big things.
The first was that food started to taste more delicious. I ate exactly what I wanted, and I started to focus on really enjoying each mouthful. I ate more slowly, savouring the food. There is an expression that states “Hunger is the best sauce” and I started to understand what that meant.
I found it hard to follow Paul McKenna’s last rule about stopping when you feel full, because I’d always eaten what was on my plate and I didn’t like the idea of wasting food, so I started serving myself smaller portions (I bought a couple of side plates and ate off those, instead of full-sized dinner plates) and went back for seconds only if I was still feeling hungry.
The second thing I noticed when I started to listen to my hunger is that I started to have more energy. I felt less lethargic and heavy, and my digestion improved. I don’t believe in weighing myself, so I have no idea if I lost weight or not, but I felt better - lighter.
I had to be careful not to let myself get too hungry. If that happened, I would end up over compensating and eating too much. After a few weeks of eating like this, my hunger started to even itself out and I did eat at regular times — although these were not the times that I’d previously eaten at. I got hungry around 9am (whereas before I’d eaten breakfast around 7am), again at 12pm, and then I would eat “dinner” at around 4pm. Most nights this would be enough, although occasionally I would have a snack before bed if I felt more hunger. I didn’t worry too much about the times. I just thought — I’m hungry, I should eat something.
I read that book around six years ago and while I don’t always stick to those four rules religiously (and they are definitely harder to follow when I’m out of my usual routine, like on holiday) I do feel that my health has improved from connecting to my hunger on a more regular basis.
