How to Identify When You’re Hungry or Full — and Why It’s Important

A dietitian explains how to tune into your body’s natural hunger signals, especially after a restrictive diet.

Part of intuitive eating is exploring what pleasant hunger and satisfaction feels like for you. Sounds simple right? Well, it can actually be quite challenging especially if you’ve had a history of extreme dieting, restricting and/or bingeing. On most diet plans, external cues determine what and how much we should eat. This can look like eating at certain times (even if you’re not hungry) or eating certain foods (even if you’re not into them) because ultimately, you can’t trust yourself.

I’m here to tell you that you are the most trustworthy source of information when it comes to what foods work best for you. (Go ahead, read that again.) If you’ve been dieting for a long period of time, you may find that it’s really hard to tune back into those internal cues that we were all born with. Years of drinking water when you were actually hungry or having a snack when you needed a meal can completely throw those cues off, so it’ll take some practice to figure out what hunger cues and that full feeling look like for you!

This is Part 3 of a series on intuitive eating. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Hunger Is Different for Everyone

It’s important to note that hunger and satiety are not static, and they vary greatly depending on a number of factors like physical activity, hormonal changes, age, medications, sleep and more. Eating intuitively can help us tune into what our body needs as it goes through these different changes, and being flexible with food choices helps tremendously. If you’re about to menstruate, for example, it’s normal for your body to crave certain foods and what you eat during this time doesn’t necessarily have to reflect how you eat regularly. Eating patterns fluctuate and learning to identify what you need at the moment, outside of all the noise from outside sources, will be helpful in getting started.Head on over to FOOD NETWORK to read the full article! How to Identify When You’re Hungry or Full — and Why It’s Important