Hunger Cues

What are hunger cues?

How often do you eat out of habit?

How often do you eat out of boredom?

How often do you CONTINUE eating even though you recognize that you’re not hungry, or you’re eating out of boredom?

One of the big things that contributed to my weight gain in my 20’s was the fact that I had zero concept of “listening to my body.” I had no idea what hunger cues were because I really just ate all the time. Instead of listening to my body I ate out of habit and routine.

I was never hungry because I ate all of the time. I never let myself get hungry. I had no idea what real hunger cues were.

Journaling helps. Writing down what your body is feeling helps to recognize patterns and decipher the difference between real hunger and boredom hunger.  Did I just have a fight with a friend? Was I feeling overwhelmed at work? Did something happen to trigger my desire to eat instead of actually being hungry?

Facing the issue directly instead of eating my feelings is something that I learned the hard way. It’s gotten easier with time and practice. Once I realized that the world was not going to end if I confronted the issue, or person, I felt empowered to take control of my life again. I didn’t HAVE to eat to feel better.

That was a big step for me. I was definitely an emotional eater and used food to stuff my feelings deep inside.

As I lost the weight and started exercising I started to recognize different things about my body. I felt what real hunger was. And guess what? I didn’t die if I felt real hunger. Subconsciously we know we need to eat to survive and if those hunger pains appear we panic. It’s all natural. But recognizing that it is NOT the end of the world and that having a small, healthy snack is all I need keeps me from overeating all of the time.

I am so in tune with my body and it’s cues now that I’m athletic. I can tell when I’m truly hungry. I can recognize signs that I’m crashing.

FEED ME!

 

There are different types of hunger for me:

The Running Hunger – This one was a brutal lesson to learn. Running a decent amount of miles each week triggered a different kind of hunger. I was suddenly craving foods I didn’t really eat. I was a vegetarian for 12 years and I slowly started eating certain meats when I got healthy. But when I started running I craved a big, juicy steak and nothing could satisfy that craving BUT steak. I gave in and never looked back.

The Swimming Hunger – I wrote about this last week when I said that swimming causes a hunger like no other. I don’t use the word “famished” lightly when I describe the Swimming Hunger. It’s a crash. I am famished. FEED ME NOW. The hunger cues are SCREAMING at me. Research has told me that thermodynamics (the cooler temperature of the pool) might be playing a big part in this equation.

The Cycling Hunger – When Michael and I were doing long bike rides training for Reach the Beach last year I fueled properly. I ate GUs and protein bars along the way, about every hour or two of the ride. This helped a lot. The Cycling Hunger was a delayed hunger. It was something that would appear after the ride was over, and often the next day instead. I was burning a lot of calories (1500-2500 a ride) too.

Reading about Intuitive Eating changed my perspective a bit. While I will always count my calories in order to maintain my weight loss, I do take some of the concepts of IE into my routine. I’m doing much better with listening to my body and my hunger cues. For example, during the week I typically eat a snack mid-morning (an apple, or banana). Lately I’ve been listening to my body and not eating a snack on days that I ate a bigger breakfast. I really wasn’t hungry. I didn’t need that apple. It was very liberating to listen to my body.

The Hunger-Satiety Rating Scale” is from Why Weight? A Guide to Ending Compulsive Eating by Geneen Roth.

Eating in the Dark: