Q+A: Shouldn't we only eat when hungry?

So this is something I have healed and really looking into on a scientific and spiritual level :) But I encourage asking intuitive eating specialists who know and can offer more!

The whole notion of right and wrong has got to go around food! The question needs to be, does it feel nurturing? When we eat in a “gluttonous” way I think we can usually answer NO, that doesn’t feel nurturing. But of COURSE often it’s VERY nurturing and “balanced” to eat something or have a bite or a snack even when you’re not hungry! No? 🤷🏼‍♀️

It’s not always because we failed something! Diet culture wants us to believe that, so we can ridicule ourselves and then buy into diet programs and products. If you are thin-obsessed, you will only eat when you’re hungry (if that 😔).

Of course if someone has a tortured relationship with food or an eating disorder, and their voice and intuition is blocked, they will need specific guidelines to find their innate intuition around food. But most of us who uphold this “Only eat when hungry” rule, are simply doing that: letting food rules interfere with our innate knowing and joy and peace around food.

Food isn’t just a bodily experience, it’s also a spiritual, emotional and regulating one. We intuitively know how to balance this. We have simply been taught to fear that.

The reason you ask your question is because we have been taught to associate eating when not hungry with being “out of control” and not to trust your needs around food.

One of the things diet culture stole from us is enjoying food when you’re not hungry, just because you crave it on some level. How are we ever going to engage with food in an intuitive way if our body sometimes wants food when we’re not hungry and we have diet culture telling us “Nooooooo don’t do ittttttt don’t trust yourself!” Of course if we internalize this message we will eat when we’re not hungry from a place or deprivation and therefore binging! So the message of “Don’t eat when you’re not hungry” actually works against us and interferes with body trust and food freedom and joy.

Eating when you’re not hungry doesn’t mean you’re going to get fat. Unless you’re meant to be fat 😄 It means you’re going to tune into the ENTIRETY of your relationship and embracing of food, which is more dynamic than we’re being taught.

Do we tell our kids to only eat when they’re hungry? I sure don’t. Sometimes they just want to sit down and enjoy a bite of something — and offering that joyful peaceful experience allows them to not exclusively associate food with hunger and therefore when they ARE naturally hungry they will feel it! And they do! They know the difference. Into adolescence/adulthood and the more diet culture interferes, this gets ruined. And then when we crave something without hunger, we eat more than we needed/wanted to.

When a child grabs an apple, do we ask if they're hungry? NO. But if they grab a bag of chips, we often say, 'Are you hungry right now?" THIS MY FRIENDS IS DIET CULTURE. We generally seem to respect just wanting a bite, only when it's something we deem healthy.

We need not fear eating when we want to.

We need to fear diet culture that is messing us up to relate to food in a restrictive and untrusting way.

If we embrace the way we naturally work and crave food, and we trust ourselves and are in tune, and we ALLOW these food experiences, then eating when we’re not hungry won’t be such a big EVENT. It’ll just be something we wanted that we enjoy and we feel if we want more or if a taste was enough for the craving and...we move on and have a great day 😄