But I CAN’T Honor My Hunger Cues
Once you enter the world of Intuitive Eating, your eating issues seem to magically melt away. You always listen to your body. You eat when you reach the exact right level of hunger, and you stop when you hit that perfect state of satisfaction. You honor your cravings but never go overboard. Everything, until the end of time, is perfect.
Right?
Yeah, right. 
One of the most common questions people face when they begin an Intuitive Eating journey is this: “But what do I do when the circumstances simply don’t allow for Intuitive Eating?”
Lately I’ve been facing this question on an almost-daily basis. You see, the office I started working at in June is rather small – five employees, to be exact. And we eat lunch together every single day. Not by force, and not by intentional design. It’s just the way it is, and the way it always was.
So I eat lunch, admist conversation with my boss and co-workers, every afternoon at 12:30 on the dot.
In so many ways this is a blessing. It gives me a chance to connect with the other staff members on a deeper level. It forces me to take time away from my desk to eat a nourishing meal. But it also makes it really difficult to honor my hunger cues.
Some days 12:30 rolls around and I’m not the slightest bit hungry. My body simply doesn’t want food at that moment, and yet I feed it anyway. Other days I’m ravenous by noon and fear that I’ll chew my arm off by the time the clock says it’s officially lunch time in my office. And other days I’m so hungry at 11:30 that I eat a snack, which totally throws me off the 12:30-lunch schedule. Days when my hunger perfectly matches my office schedule are gloriously rare.
But you know what? That’s ok.
(Source)
FACT: There are going to be times when you simply cannot eat at the exact right moment of hunger. There are going to be days in which external circumstances leave you ravenous, and others when you will eat (either by force or by choice) when you’re not really hungry at all. That’s just life.
No rule or guideline – regarding eating or anything else in life - is going to be applicable to every situation you face. The only solution is to accept it, be flexible, go with the flow, roll with the punches.
Believe me, I know that’s easier said than done. No one has ever called me the Queen of Rolling with the Punches.
But still, when you’re faced with situations where honoring your body’s cues just doesn’t work, the only thing to do is not stress about it. Because when you start stressing over eating intuitively, you’re missing the entire point of the experience: to stop stressing so much over your eating habits! 
Intuitive Eating won’t solve your eating issues; indeed, it brings with it its own set of challenges and struggles. It ain’t gonna be perfect, but remember this: perfection was never the goal in the first place.
Do you find there are days/circumstances that make listening to and honoring your body’s cues close to impossible? How do you deal?
AND
Are you pretty good about going with the flow when it comes to your eating habits? As for me, I’m working on it…
Themocracy
This is EXACTLY what I needed: ” Because when you start stressing over eating intuitively, you’re missing the entire point of the experience: to stop stressing so much over your eating habits!”
I have been STRESSING about not being able to eat for my hunger. Binging. Etc. I actually took myself to the beach today and made myself go for a walk after an afternoon of baking and shoving my face. In fact one of my kids said to me ‘I think that you’ve eaten at least three cookies worth of dough’. I stopped in my tracks and realised that I don’t want to keep hiding anymore.
You see I am stressing and not making peace. I think, for me, life is about making peace with food/life/stress. When I am not focusing on making peace…I focus on digging up everything that I have planted in faith and that is NOT de-stressing.
Thanks for this.
I absolutely suffer with this Katie! But I have to bring myself back to reality and keep drilling it into my head that to follow intuitive eating, you must take everything as GUIDELINES and not RULES. The difference in those two words alone helps a lot in this process. Knowing that most of the time I am following the guidelines makes it easier to let things go when I encounter a meal when I’m not hungry or even too hungry.
I just had this exact same conversation with one of my clients yesterday. You ARE inside my head, Katie. Seriously. We are bloggie soul mates.
Anywho, enough of the mush.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Hunger is not the end all be all with when to eat. It just isn’t. Sometimes, life gets in the way of that and we have to be open to accommodating that. That means, sometimes, we will eat when we aren’t hungry and other times we will be so darn hungry we feel like we would eat just about anything.
One of my favorite sayings is that hunger is not an emergency and we don’t have to respond to it as if it is.
I have a post brewing about this myself.
At least it wasn’t on the exact same day again
xoxo
100% YES! If I’ve exercised hard, my hunger goes totally – if I honoured my hunger cues, I probably wouldn’t eat at all on those days, which is obviously not very clever! Days like that I have to totally overrule my body
I’m working on going with th flow too, and I’m definetly getting there
It’s funny, but for a very long time I was pretty strict about eating on schedule, etc., hoping that this was the answer to my struggle with food. But just like everything else in life, greater control is rarely the answer and does not usually lead to peace. Now I am more committed to eating when I’m hungry and it’s now that I find I’m in a job that structurally forces me to eat at the same time each day (12 noon). In addition, I think that it can be difficult when with a partner. It’s hard enough honoring the hunger cues of one person, but when you’re cooking and eating with a partner, you’re trying to consider two people’s schedules.
Great post! I really need to start thinking about this practice more! Um, and I’m pretty horrible to be around if you try and get me eating dinner any time past 7pm…I should work on that
I think as I am getting older and wiser, I am becoming more relaxed about all of my habits, including eating. I’m hoping that it keeps heading in this direction because it’s so freeing not to be a prisoner to your own self.
I think the biggest thing to remember is that during those time we CAN’T eat 100% intuitively we are still aware of our bodies and their hunger levels. We are still conscious and can make the best decision that fits in that circumstance. Like you said, we don’t have to be perfect with it just be able to make the best choices for our bodies at the given moment.
Excellent, excellent points. This is why I like the Tribole and Resch approach more than some of the other books out there. They talk about it not being perfect and warn that if you try to get it perfect, it just becomes another diet. So true.
I remember reading “Breaking Free from Emotional Eating” by Geneen Roth a couple of years ago, and in that book she is so hardcore about always eating according to your body’s signals and always eating just what you want. She even suggested toting a backpack and cooler with all your favorite foods everywhere you go. She also had a little chart you were supposed to fill out once you got hungry to discover exactly what you wanted to eat. I was trying so hard to follow her advice because I was desperate to stop bingeing. My husband (total intuitive eater – never dieted) found me me sitting on the kitchen floor one time, with chart in hand, sobbing. I told him I kept getting hungrier and hungrier, but I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to eat! He made me a bowl of oatmeal and told me that sometimes you’re hungry and you just eat what’s easiest. That was really a breakthrough moment for me. FOOD SHOULDN’T BE HARD!
When I read The Diet Survivor’s Handbook, the authors recommended carrying around a cooler filled with every type of food to satisfy any possible craving.
I already feel like a small pack animal when I go to work with just a regular lunch, I don’t want to be hauling any little thing I might have a craving for. I found that eating whatever I packed for lunch was fine, and if I was really craving something I could wait until after work or pick something up around my office.
You are so right, food really shouldn’t be hard!
i’m definitely still working on it, but i totally agree with what Tina said about we are still conscious of our hunger cues and what’s going on around us. it’s definitely a choice, but the important thing is how to deal with that choice later on, you know?
This happens to me on holidays because we’re always expected at two dinners almost one after the other. By the second dinner I’m just not hungry and sometimes feel guilty for sitting there with a bottle of water, but I can’t stuff myself to the point of discomfort in order to make someone else feel comfortable.
I’m not great at going with the flow with my eating habits– sometimes I’m good with it, sometimes not so much. I’m working on it too!
Wow, what a great post! I have found that when I was really rigid and restrictive about my food/rules I had a pattern of what and when I was “allowed” to eat.
The toughest part of intuitive eating for me is breaking free from that mold that I forced myself into, and attempting to forget the food rules that I have been living with. Most days I am not hungry for my apple and bar at 4:00PM but I eat it anyway. Some days though I am ravenous at 3:00PM and I, out of habit/control, don’t break into my apple and bar until 4:00ish.
Gotta break those habits/patterns! I am working on it : )
Those are hard questions. I’m working on it.
I find I have a hard time with this when I go back to work after summer vacation. Like you I “have to” eat at a certain time, other wise I can’t eat until I leave work. Eventually I find my body falls into the routine, but until it does it’s very hard.
Wow I can’t imagine having a set lunch time every day. There are days when I’m starving at 11:30 but other days when I don’t have time to eat until 2. I find it easier to eat intuitivelly at work surprisingly, it’s when I’m home that I struggle.
People still manage to do the all or nothing approach even with intuitive eating. No way of eating is perfect, including intuitive eating. you wont always get to eat exactyl when you are hungry and sometimes you will need to eat when you arent that hungry. I think as long as you are mindful when you are eating, all is ok.
I’m usually able to eat my meals when I’m hungry for them, and I get really stressed out about it when I can’t. I’m trying to be more flexible though!
I loved this: “Because when you start stressing over eating intuitively, you’re missing the entire point of the experience: to stop stressing so much over your eating habits.” SO very true! In a perfect world, we would only eat when we’re hungry….but when we bring other people into the picture, we can’t always abide by our hunger cues. Like you, I’m working on this….I just have to remind myself that even if I’m eating when I’m not hungry, it will all “catch up” eventually and everything will even itself out.
I find big family meals tough… Our culture equates celebrating with food so when I’m not hungry and don’t partake in all the “eating” part of the festivities.. people seem to think I’m not in a celebrating mood!
I find it very free-ing (?) to eat when my body wants. Some days it’s pizza (honest!) and sometimes its water and veggies and lean protein… I feel great about myself when I take a moment to listen to what my body needs from me. I’ve noticed a couple times on the weekend that even though I want to stay up late my body asks (begs, pleads!) to go to bed early.
I’ve found that I need to drink way more water and get more rest & relaxation time!
It’s pretty amazing (although not always so easy) that once you start listening to your body, its very clear on what it wants
Katie, I love this post, and I love that you talk about the importance of being flexible. I can totally relate because I tend to take anything, and become rigid with it. My hunger cues change from day to day, so I also don’t have a set time when I eat lunch. And I’m fortunate in that I work from home, so I can be super flexible with that.
Dinner is tricky because if I’m eating with my mom, she gets hungry early in the day, and I might’ve just had lunch. If it’s with my boyfriend, I need to have many snacks beforehand because he typically prefers to eat later.
Sometimes I have a hard time with the time and my need to eat. Especially if I eat what I think is a filling meal I try to convince myself that I couldn’t possibly be hungry. It was pointed out to me that if I am hungry, I have every right to eat.
Occasionally, I have to eat when I’m not hungry (like when my work shift stretches over when I usually get hungry), but I try not to stress about it. I’ve started to try and be mindful when I eat saying “I’m not hungry now, but I’m going to eat anyway and that is ok.”
I really love this post in conjuction with your post on thin day dreams. I feel like though I try to eat intuitively, and try not to think that 10lbs lighter I’ll feel any better about myself, that I should be happy with me right now as I am. But both can be hard.
Right now I hope that my eating habits will improve once I start school next month to become a Holistic Nutritionist. I feel like when I learn more about food and how my body works, it will help me with some of my struggles.
Great post.
thanks this was a really good post. I don’t label what i do intuitive eating, but I am trying every day to understand hunger vs emotional eating and yes somedays it doesn’t go as planned… today for example
This was good to read to remind myself that it’s all ok
I remember that feeling well of an office schedule – for me, I couldn’t leave for lunch until my supervisor was back from her’s – this put me eating at 1:30 or even 2:00 some days. So I’d snack and like you said, throw off the hunger for the main event.
Similar to you, I’m working on trying to go with the flow but there are still difficult days. I can turn from friendly to downright bitchy if I’m hungry and having to wait on others. I’m convinced Billy is a saint for dealing with me in those moments of anxiousness about eating.
When I started reading this, I could really relate. You mean intuitive eating won’t cause you to suddenly drop 10 lbs! You mean sometimes I’ll still eat poorly or too much? And sometimes *gasp* I have to eat when I’m not hungry. One thing I’ve noticed: If chewing feels like work, I’m not hungry!
My husband eats probably 3 times more than I do. And gets hungry way before I do. It kind of bothered me that he was starving when I was either still full from the previous meal or just not hungry. That was tough but after a while, I learned to order smaller plates since I knew I’d be re-fueling again soon!
What an awesome post! This is definitely something I have been struggling with and trying not to stress out about! Lately my remedy for this has to just take away the clock, when I’m at home and don’t have to be or go anywhere for a long time I cover the clocks and let myself listen to my body instead of making it go by the clock. It’s helping but these kinds of things take time and I know one day it won’t be so hard!
What a great reminder that eating doesn’t have to be on a strict schedule/time line. I have found that when I’m flexible I am less likely to overeat. Like with the office, going with the flow is ok at times, even if I’m not ready to eat I will eat something small and save the rest for later.
Of course, nothing is perfect, least of all intuitive eating. It’ll be nice to be in tune and able to “honor our body” at all times, but we also have to adjust to situations and circumstances. My appetite can be irradical too, and that’s okay. I definitely, most absolutely agree with you that the worst thing we can do is STRESS about it. That just sets us backwards!
[...] about this but she does a wonderful job of answering the age old intuitive eating question of what to do when you can’t honor your hunger signals. She also wrote an awesome, awesome post about Thin Fantasies. You know, those dreams of being thin [...]
I think you’re right on with this. I think I do best when I’m able to be flexible with things like hunger and time of eating.
this is such a great reminder to HONOR OURSELVES. really, whats the purpose of food other than to nourish our bodies and lives? if we aren’t happy with it, it can’t really nourish us.
you go girl!
[...] But I Can’t Honor My Hunger Cues: do you struggle with eating only when you’re hungry? [...]
[...] about her fear of hunger. The concept was then reinforced by Christie’s comment on my post about hunger cues in which she stated, “hunger is not an emergency and we don’t have to respond to it as [...]
Great post! Glad to know I’m not the only one struggling with a set schedule for eating. I’m a teacher and my lunch time is at 12:30. It’s not always possible for me to eat at another time if I am hungry earlier or later. My biggest downfall is the time between meals and waiting to be hungry to eat. I focus on that entirely too much and the time drags on or I decide to just eat anyway.
I absolutely know what you mean! I just try to remember to be flexible and take it day by day.