How to Tell if You’re Really Hungry

It’s a beautiful discovery of reconnecting with your body

For many people, recognizing hunger feels complicated.

It’s really common to question your hunger and wonder if you’re just thirsty, bored, anxious, tired, or nauseous.

There is plenty of information out there on recognizing hunger. Yet, there are few important things that you need to keep in mind.

We were born knowing our hunger

Just like breathing, peeing, and knowing when we’re too warm or too cold, hunger is a biological instinct that everybody has. This is why you can’t console a hungry baby with something other than food. And why you can’t feed a baby that isn’t hungry.

A baby doesn’t need to think about hunger. They know when they’re hungry. Period.

Remember when you were a kid and you left food on your plate so you could go outside to play? Your hunger was satisfied so you moved on. There were other things you wanted to do besides eat. Play. Schoolwork. TV. Video games. Time with friends.

But then something changed.

We stopped prioritizing our hunger

A parent may have demanded that you finish all of the food on your plate. Or, they promised dessert if you ate your vegetables, even though you don’t like broccoli. Or, you were told that if you didn’t eat during mealtime, you wouldn’t be able to eat later. It was either 6 pm dinner or no dinner.

You couldn’t override your parent’s rules, so you had to override your body’s cues. Hunger (and the absence of it) became something to negotiate with.

There are dozens and dozens of reasons why our parents and our culture dictate eating times and create food rules for us.

They may be great at dictating for us when to eat and what to eat. But they’re not great at reminding us that our body knows when it’s hungry. And that hunger is something to honor.

If your parents didn’t demand that you cleaned your plate or made certain foods forbidden, consider yourself lucky. You got the message that listening to your hunger was a safe practice. If there was ice cream in the freezer, you could have a bowl whenever you wanted it. And you only ate it when you were hungry for it.

Hunger is the enemy

When you went on your first diet or weight loss plan, you were given food rules to follow. Certain foods became off-limits. You needed to restrict how many calories you could eat each day.

As you’ve pursued weight loss, your hunger becomes highly inconvenient. Like a big boulder on your path to weight loss success, you learned to not attend to or listen to your hunger. Hunger was an obstacle.

You may be very resourceful at ignoring your hunger. Chewing gum, drinking coffee or diet soda, or drinking large amounts of water are some ways you may have tried to avoid the inevitable hunger signals so you can stick to your diet plan.

Hunger will always win

Many of my clients don’t notice hunger until they’re well beyond hungry. They’re starving. They’ve either not recognized the numerous signals their body shared asking for nourishment, or they’ve intentionally neglected them, hoping they’d go away.

Asking your body to not be hungry is asking your body to do the ONE thing it knows to do: stay in balance. It’s quite brilliant at keeping you alive and in a state of homeostasis. This is why you may notice that when you’re well beyond hungry, your mental and emotional state goes out of balance.

You’ll start to think about food a lot. You’ll get cranky and easily agitated. You’ll get anxious and feel overwhelmed.

At some point, your body’s demands will take over and you’ll eat urgently. Many people describe this as a feeling of being out of control because they eat fast and they eat whatever food is available.

Overeating or bingeing, something that diet culture demonizes as a problem, is just your body keeping you safe. If you’ve gone long periods without enough nourishment (because you’ve been dieting), when you do allow yourself to eat, your body will demand food because it’s unsure when food will be available again.

The opportunity

It’s a big step, I know. For all of the reasons I’ve shared, you’ve been taught to not trust your hunger. Your hunger has led to out-of-control eating.

It’s important to remember that your body is still sharing hunger signals with you, you’re just out of practice noticing these signals.

Getting to know your hunger is also a practice of acknowledging your needs. You are human, with a physical body that will make simple demands to operate at its best.

Are you also avoiding your other basic human needs?

You deserve to feel satiated, no matter what sized body you have. You also deserve to be well-rested. You deserve to have a body filled with energy. You deserve to feel loved, safe and secure.

As you permit yourself to honor your need for more nourishment, you’re also opening the door to allowing yourself to receive rest, love, and contentment.

Get to know your hunger

As you reconnect to your physical hunger cues, it’s important to stop looking at the clock. You may be surprised when you’re hungry a few hours after eating breakfast, or that you’re not hungry until 10 am. Your biological hunger doesn’t follow a clock.

Your hunger patterns aren’t static. They change with things like activity level, sleep, weather, travel, and your menstrual cycle.

Just like everybody is unique, each body shares hunger signals uniquely. How I notice my hunger will be different than yours.

The best way to discover your hunger is to be curious about it. Consider yourself a scientist, observe your body in a whole new way and collect a variety of data points before you reach any conclusions.

Your body is masterful at communicating hunger to you. Hunger isn’t just a growling belly, but instead a full-body process. Let’s take a look at some of the signals your body sends to you by noticing what’s happening:

In your head

One of the clearest signals you may first notice is your ability to focus. When you’re hungry, it may be hard to concentrate on the task at hand. Consider the last time you ate. If it’s been more than a few hours, there is a good chance you’re hungry.

When you’re hungry, you may start to think about your next meal or snack.

I was on a snowshoe hike this past winter when I started thinking about a bowl of chili with cheese sprinkled on top. I could see the chili in my mind. I even imagined the smell, the taste, and how the first spoonful felt in my body.

With your mood

You may be very familiar with the term “hangry” when you get impatient, angry, and frustrated at those around you because you’re hungry. Your mood is one way your body is communicating hunger to you. You may notice that you get cranky and agitated.

You may feel tired and low on energy.

Your body

You may get a headache when you’re hungry.

Of course, your hunger can arrive with an emptiness. You can notice this when you don’t feel any weight or presence in your belly, instead, it may feel like a void.

You may also notice your belly rumbling and growling when it’s hungry.

These are just a few common signals of hunger. There are certainly others.

It’s not about doing it right

As you start to discover your hunger signals, give yourself permission to not get it perfect. There is no “right” time to eat. However, there can be a sweet spot of your hunger, when you’re hungry enough that food will taste really good to you and when you’re not so hungry that you need to eat quickly and urgently.

The best way to know if you were hungry is to eat something. Do you feel better than you did before you ate?

Exploring your hunger is a really powerful process in healing your relationship with food. You’re reconnected to your body. The signals are there, it’s a matter of relearning how to honor them.

As you do, you’ll be practicing self-trust and creating a non-negotiable connection with your body.