WHAT:
This habit is about learning to tolerate a little hunger and waiting until you’re truly physically hungry before eating.
WHY:
Hunger can be uncomfortable and even scary sometimes if you’re not used to it.
But, hunger is not an emergency. In fact, being a little hungry can help put you in that fat-burning mode, so learning to tolerate the feeling of hunger is a really useful skill to develop.
If you wait until you’re truly physically hungry before eating, it will help cut down on mindless snacking, emotional eating, and general overeating. You’ll find yourself cultivating better body awareness, getting a better intuition for when you need to or don’t need to eat and developing a better relationship with food.
Seeing hunger as a “game” to play with can make it feel a bit less serious and even a fun experience.
HOW:
True physical hunger usually comes in waves.
You feel a bit snackish, and then it lessens or even disappears for a bit, and then hunger comes back more seriously, and so on and so forth.
Learning to “surf” these hunger waves and play with them can help you delay eating until you’re truly physically hungry and need to eat.
- Before each meal, rate your hunger on scale of 1-10.
- A score of 1 being NOT hungry at all, a score of 5 being peckish, and a score of 10 being the hungriest you’ve ever been.
- If you’re trying to lose weight, you’ll need to let yourself get a little bit hungry from time to time. This helps with maintaining your weight too.
- See if you can push back your meal until you’re at a 7, 8, or even a 9 out of 120.
- Pay attention to whether you’re feeling signs of true physical hunger or just emotional hunger.
- When you do eat, eat slowly and mindfully. See if you can stop at around “80% full“.
Note: The idea here is not to starve yourself. It’s important to still eat enough food so that you can function well and meet your nutritional requirements. The intention is to get in tune with your hunger and eat more intuitively rather than emotionally or habitually.
TIPS:
✅ Set reminders on your phone before mealtime to pause and assess your hunger.
✅ Stick a copy of the Emotional Hunger vs Physical Hunger chart on your fridge as a reminder.
✅ Pair delaying your meal time with a pleasant activity, like taking a brief walk or a moment of quiet reflection, making the process more enjoyable and a great way to provide a bit of distraction from the mild feelings of hunger.
✅ Give yourself a bit of a hunger reality check by considering if you’re hungry enough to eat a piece of fruit or some carrots, especially useful if you want to snack on something less healthy and worry your desire for that food is coming across as hunger.
Resources:
- Sleekgeek: 6 Differences between emotional and physical hunger
- Sleekgeek: 5 Tools for better hunger and appetite awareness
- Sleekgeek: Do you need to eat, want to eat, or feel like you should be eating?
- Sleekgeek: The habit of eating slowly
- Sleekgeek: The habit of eating to 80% full
- Precision Nutrition: The Hunger Game worksheet
- Precision Nutrition: Intuitive eating – how to make it work for you
- Precision Nutrition: All about appetite regulation