Intuitive eating is a lot about eating mindfully. Being mindful about our satiety levels. Being mindful about how we feel. Without being mindful about our body signals and without being in the moment while you eat, it's difficult to naturally stop once we feel fullness and satisfaction. Especially if we're not used to. 

A first step on the road to mindful eating is tuning in into your hunger feelings, or following the second intuitive eating principle: Honor your Hunger. As discussed in a previous post, our bodies are not able to distinguish dieting from starvation. If your body is starving, basic defense mechanisms kick in, and your body and your mind will try to do whatever is in their power to get you fed. “Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant”.

We were given this basic feeling of hunger, we lived with it our whole lives. Strange as it may sound, some of us need to learn again to hear it clearly. 

So to adopt this principle, and start practising being mindful, I will simply try to tune in to my hunger feeling as often as possible during the next week. I think I would like to achieve the following:

  • Create a habit of checking in with my self and my feelings of hunger 
  • Learn about the different levels and feelings of hunger 

For that I will try using the "hunger discovery scale", as suggested by the book. They define several levels, from very hungry (empty) to over-eaten (sick): empty-ravenous-set-pangs-neutral-satisfied-full-stuffed-sick. This scale if of course very subjective. But it's very interesting to think about how hungry you are during the day, especially before, right after and after eating. I make a difference between after and right after the meal because there is often quite a difference. Sometimes, right after eating I still feel unsatisfied, and twenty minutes later I feel full. Sometimes I feel satisfied right after eating, but later I feel quite neutral.

It's also interesting to see when we eat (with respect to our hunger level), because it ties in to the second principle: honor your hunger. Not very surprisingly, I noticed that if I wait to long and feel too hungry, it's very difficult to control my eating - even being aware while eating.

So I will carry around a little notebook, and whenever I remember (and I set my self some reminders), I will write down the hour, and the number from 1 to 10, depending on my hunger level:

  • 1 - empty
  • 2 - ravenous
  • 3 - set
  • 4 - pangs
  • 5 - neutral
  • 7 - satisfied
  • 8 - full
  • 9 - stuffed
  • 10 - sick