Health
Habits
Food
Weight 
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10 Simple Ways To Eat Less Without Noticing
Juicing: Stupid and Pretentious or Nourishing and Enlightening?
10 Tasty Carbs That Won’t Make You Fat
How To Start Working Out When You Don’t Like To Exercise
Focus More on Your Brain and Less on Your Diet if You’re Serious About Losing Weight
Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control
10 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight When You Think You’re Doing Everything Right
How To Burn More Calories Without Breaking A Sweat
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Foodists
Why “Only Eat When You’re Hungry” Is Terrible Diet Advice
I hear it all the time. People reach out to me who have been trying desperately to eat healthier or lose weight, lamenting their lack of willpower.
“I try to eat only when I’m hungry, but I just can’t seem to keep my hands out of the snack bowl at work.”
It isn’t always the snack bowl. Sometimes it’s the cracker box before dinner or the peanut butter at night. Whatever the source of the downfall it is always laden with a side of guilt and self-loathing.
On the surface the idea makes sense. If you only eat when you’re hungry then you should be providing yourself just enough fuel to be healthy without overdoing it on calories.
The problem is that you aren’t a car (or a Nutricon), and fuel isn’t the only reason you eat. And the longer you pretend that’s an achievable goal, the longer you will suffer.
Humans eat for many reasons. Hunger is obviously a big one, but there are several others.
Here’s a shortlist:
Pleasure – Food is delicious and can be deeply rewarding on a sensual level. Sometimes we eat because we straight up like a particular food. This is a feature, not a bug.
Emotions – The experience of eating can be both distracting (from painful thoughts or feelings) and comforting. It isn’t uncommon for some people to get strong urges to eat in response to stress, anxiety, shame, and other negative emotions. On the flip side, food can also be part of joy and celebration.
Habit – I’m not always hungry when I first wake up in the morning, but I almost always eat breakfast at home before I leave the house so that I don’t eat something I regret later. One benefit of having strong and consistent healthy eating habits is that your brain learns to moderate your hunger levels according to the rhythms you set. This can also work against you if you develop unhealthy eating habits.
Socializing – Sometimes we eat because we are supposed to. Culture (our collective habits) plays a large role in determining what, when, where and why we eat. For most of history this helped us make healthy food choices, but it has broken down in the era of industrial and convenience foods.
Nutrient deficiency – Your belly may be full, but if you are not getting adequate nutrition from the food you’re eating you may still experience cravings to eat.
Many of these may seem like bad reasons to eat, because they often result in poor food choices and/or overeating. However, the underlying needs behind all these motivations are perfectly valid.
It’s okay to eat something because it tastes good or enjoy a meal with your friends. These are a normal and wonderful part of the human experience, no matter your size. It is even okay to comfort yourself from distress with a familiar meal now and then.
More important, even if you put morality aside (since eating isn’t inherently good or bad, okay or not okay) you can’t simply will these needs away. Try as you might salty, sugary and fatty foods will probably still taste good, and eating with your friends will still be fun. And you’ve probably noticed that your brain does not allow you to neglect these needs indefinitely.
In fact, repressing or ignoring your urges to eat for any reason is far more likely to result in bingeing than in better food choices long-term.
So a strategy that requires you to “only eat when hungry” is innately impractical, as it is at odds with your biology and undermines your ultimate goal of better health. It doesn’t work and nobody actually does it (yes, even skinny people eat because food tastes good).
It is also distracting you from a strategy that actually helps you make better choices.
Imagine trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole day after day, year after year, decade after decade. Even if you believed it were possible, would you have the same motivation on Day 2,347 as you did on Day 1? Or would you start to doubt yourself, feel like a failure, and find it harder and harder to muster the effort to keep trying?
When you try so hard at something and don’t succeed it feels like you are personally failing at the task–that if you weren’t so weak you could triumph. But if you’ve been trying to do something that’s impossible it isn’t you that’s failing, it’s the strategy.
Once you see that the task is futile, you can drop the notion that the problem is you, put down the hammer, and start to look for a real solution.
Are you ready?
To come up with a better strategy to reach your health goals you must first accept that there is a valid reason behind all of your urges to eat. That doesn’t mean that following your every impulse is the best course of action, but it does mean that the underlying needs shouldn’t be ignored and must be handled in some way. Wishing for them to just disappear won’t work.
If you can accept that you need a break from work–even if there’s still much work to be done–then you can find an activity that rejuvenates your energy rather than procrastinating on Facebook with a bag of pretzels.
If you can accept that your mom’s amazing spaghetti might be the only thing that can lift your spirits after a bad breakup–even if you vowed to avoid pasta until you’ve reached your goal weight–then you might be able to sit and enjoy it mindfully and actually feel better, rather than overeating something less rewarding and feeling even worse afterward.
If you can accept that it’s okay to eat something because it tastes good–even if you still have a weight loss goal–it’ll be much easier for you to recognize when your curiosity is satisfied and you’ve had enough. You might even find that whatever it was you wanted to eat isn’t as good as you hoped and walk away after one bite.
That may be hard to believe if you’ve never experienced it, but ask yourself what happens when you deny yourself anything that you consider “unhealthy” or “fattening.” What are the odds that you’ll binge on something you know for certain isn’t worth it when your willpower is weakened?
In the first case you may eat a few calories more than you had planned for, but in the second case you’ll eat astronomically more and almost certainly won’t enjoy it as much. If you’d like the first case to be your new normal, it requires accepting that pleasure is a valid reason to eat.
Healthy eating is a fantastic personal value and when life is humming along normally it is wonderful to strive for habits that meet your hunger needs with Real Food and avoid impulsively eating processed foods. But connecting with loved ones, taking care of your emotional needs, and even enjoying life’s pleasures are also important values that I’m guessing matter to you as well.
Food is such a significant part of life that it is relevant to all of your values, not just health. Once you accept this, it is much easier to get the balance right.
Have you tried to limit your eating to only when you’re hungry? How did it go?
Totally agree with this! I’ve actually been trying to get into the habit of making dinner at the same time every evening whether I’m hungry or not, because I can pretty reliably state that, barring a late lunch out with my coworkers, I WILL get hungry at some point in the evening. I have this mental block over not eating when I’m not hungry, so I don’t want to make dinner until I’m already hungry – at which point it’s too late to start a 30-60-minute meal.
This paradoxically means I end up eating more, because I get hungry and want to eat right away. So I end up grazing, which, for me, is way less satisfying than sitting down to a meal, and although I snack on Real Food, I eat more, overall, than I would if I had dinner before I got ravenous and ate maybe one or two snacks instead.
Darya, I so love this post (and your entire blog!) This is a bit unrelated to the topic at hand, but…
In the last few months, I have learned the value of simplifying my weekly meal prep and stocking up on some convenience foods like frozen pizza and sandwich ingredients. I wouldn’t have dared to buy any processed food in the past; instead, I spent an embarassing amount of time on the weekend cooking elaborate recipes from scratch. Although I’m a good cook and the food turned out well, it just didn’t hold up in the fridge for as long as I hoped, and the amount of work I put into it made the food way less satisfying than expected. (Think: roasting chickens, making soups and salads with 20 ingredients [including dressings from scratch], various cooked preparations of vegetables, in addition to making snack foods- at least 8 hours of work.) I don’t know what the heck I was thinking, and after my husband’s pleading and reading your blog long enough, something finally clicked and I realized that all I need to make each week is some beans (thank you for reiterating the magic of freshly cooked beans), hard boiled eggs, a couple chopped up raw vegetables to toss on some baby kale with a pre-made dressing from Whole Foods, and maybe some tuna salad. Oh my! Suddenly eating lunch was rewarding again. Since then I’ve lost 5lbs and feel a heck of a lot healthier, even though now I occasionally allow myself a frozen pizza. What the heck happened? It got easier to incorporate more vegetables and fruits into my diet, now that I’m not agonizing over eating complicated from-scratch preparations of everything.
Making myself work so hard to simply eat was demoralizing and crazy-making. I love food, but I also love living my life and having my weekends back. Your blog has tremendously helped me figure out a lifestyle that promotes a nourishing diet without impacting the rest of my life negatively. And so, I thank you very much!
That’s awesome, Justine! I actually think it would be a great story/lesson for the podcast if you’d be willing to share. If so just fill out the form here (feel free to just copy and paste this comment as your story).
I would be honored to share this on a podcast, but I’m very shy! If I work up the courage I will fill out the form though. Thank you! 🙂
This is what I do. I just throw whatever I have together. Today, for example, I threw together some quinoa, lentils, cooked kale with onions, garlic, and artichokes, and sliced sweet potatoes. I had an English muffin with peanut butter on the side to help me feel more full and voila. Made a meal (it actually ended up making 3 meals, so now I’ll have leftovers, which is nice). It took me maybe 15 minutes of prep time. While the lentils and quinoa simmered on the stove and the sweet potatoes baked in the oven, I made the kale mixture. Simplifying meals helps us eat healthier, too because when we are tired, it’s easy to think: “ugh, I don’t want to spend an hour cooking…I’ll just pick up fast food or eat something really quick and processed.”
Darya, I totally get this in theory, but how do you implement that mind-change and outlook change? I started following your blog in April, trying to change from counting calories to following pretty liberal home court habits because I wanted to focus on enjoying food for what it is, and not the number it is.
I was successful in not counting calories for a few months, but during a time of stress I started counting again. How do I overcome this? Is it just practicing my daily thinking and trying to redirect thoughts that conflict with what I want? Or is it more than that? I’m having trouble with the implementation of your ideas/theories/approach, which I find aligns with my own food values, and am becoming frustrated.
Hi Maggie, do you listen to the podcast? We cover real life examples like this all the time.
Just wanted to start off by saying your site and podcast have been a great help for me so far. With this post specifically, i’d say it depends on whether or not you’re trying to lose a significant amount of weight, or just maintaining a healthy lifestyle. If you have say 50 pounds to lose, I think the “only eat when you’re hungry” method is applicable. Of course, this isn’t 100% of the time.
You’d still fit in time to eat for socializing, enjoying an indulgent meal, etc. For the most part, recognizing when you’re hungry though is a big step when it comes to losing weight consistently. I’d say much of overeating comes when someone can’t recognize when they’re actually hungry. So yeah, i’m not knocking this post in general, just depends on your situation.
I agree with you David. In fact, I think everyone should learn to recognize the difference between true hunger and other urges to eat, and decide what to do accordingly. I think the sentiment behind “only eat when hungry” actually confuses this because it invalidates those other urges and makes you feel bad for having/giving into them. Acknowledging their innate validity makes the process much more clear and easier to navigate. You seem to intuitively know to not take it literally “100% of the time,” but this idea is confusing to many people.
Your article literally made me cry! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. I recently found your website, after searching extensively a way to stop craving.
After a year and a half of eating extremely low carb and only when hungry (taught by my nutritionist), I actually did reach my goal. However, after 3 weeks of vacation and allowances, I gained back some of the weight and have been struggling for the past 6 months to lose the weight I gained on vacation.
I eat healthy overall and reward myself with a treat once a week. It worked for about a year without a problem. Unfortunately, I noticed that I started having cravings for sweets all the time, something I’ve never had my entire life, and I started bingeing often.
By reading your articles, I understood that restraining the group of food (carbs) is making me crave and I have been trying to change my mind set from “Low Carb, High Fat” to “Healthy and Happy.” I confess that it has not been easy, but the Mindfull Eating Challenge this week and reading your book are helping me so much.
Thank you so much for this article. I feel like I have not lost my willpower like I was thinking and I finally can breathe again!
I don’t disagree with the basic tenants of your post. I do think it is useful and an important element of mindful eating to at least learn to identify whether i am hungry before i eat. I was at an unhealthy weight for many many years (losing and gaining hundreds of pounds) but was unable to lose weight and sustain that loss (>100 lbs, now kept off for 2 years) until i learned to recognize hunger and fullness . For many of us who have been very big for very long, hunger was when food was available and fullness was when the food was all gone. Once i learned what hunger felt like, i could then look at what else was going on if i was not, in fact, hungry. Only then could i make a mindful decision to eat even though not hungry or take some other action to address the thing that was masquerading as hunger.
Great point, thanks for explaining. I totally agree being able to recognize biological hunger is an essential skill.
I tried the mindful eating thing but it didn’t work for me though it was encouraging for a while. This next comment is probably on the periphery of the subject of eating and hunger. I do like to wait til I am a little hungry instead of right on schedule. Also, I don’t think I am ever full or satisfied with food. So in a sense I am always hunger, yes? Health unprocessed food as described in Foodist has made a difference. I did find success by altering the mindfullness of things. I see food as a great spiritual analogy. Spiritual “food” does satisy me. So instead of shooting for being mindful of the physical food I am eating and avoiding distracted eating such as with TV on or while reading a book, I shoot for spiritual eating. While I eat the healthy physical food eaten when I start to sense hunger, I read my Bible. Also when eating with like minded believers, I appreciate spiritual topics while I eat without being a dork about it of course. And with non believers I just try to be interested in them and sometimes that leads to interesting spiritual topics. When I find myself facing temptation to eat for those other reasons which personally I think are the wrong reasons, I recite verses I have memorized or read the Bible some more. Works for me. THanks.
Hi there. Just reading this post today. Your point that eating only when hungry is impractical really resonated with me. As someone who thrives on structure, I have never been one to bother with hunger cues. I plan my meal times to fall into my daily schedule, and I almost always stick to them. I’ve tried to tap into hunger cues, but with my disordered eating habits, I would often trick myself to believe it was not actually hungry, and then start the “how long can i go without eating” game. I never won, hence, my eating on a schedule.
I also notice that people who say they forgot to eat lunch, or go all day without eating, tend to be unhealthy, with weight or heart problems. Not saying this for all, but it has been an interesting observation.
Thanks for the post and I look forward to being a regular reader. Have a great day!
That’s good but it is bad to drink and eat at 4:00pm or later ☹️
4p is pretty early to stop eating for the day, you’ll likely be hungry again before bed. If you can finish up before 8p that is great, but you don’t need to be militant about it.
I absolutely agree with this. I have spent way to much time not eating when I’m hungry! That is the worst thing to do. I would walk around with a growling stomach and deny myself what my body needed. I’m working now on loving myself and therefore nourishing my body. I have had such a bad relationship with food my entire life. Food isn’t the enemy and shouldn’t be looked at as such. It’s a constant struggle for a lot of people. I really like the points you made in this article and hopefully it will help people that are struggling.
Thanks for this. Really interesting stuff.
I’m loving this view. I have constantly been mad at myself for eating for pleasure thinking their is something wrong with me.
totally disagree on hunger part. I eat only when I am hungry I am not over or underweight . The most important thing that determines whether my body is asking for foods is some physical signs like low energy,Passing of urination multiple times, lack of focus,urge to burp but cannot burp. Eating when hungry requires alot of discipline which I myself sometimes lacks. I have avoided being sick every winter,Endless energy,sharp focus when I started listening to my body hunger urge. Eating according to seasons is very important as well. This is just brief. I can discuss more if needed.
So what we are saying is that we should ignore a signal out body is sending us and eat anyways?
Our body has signals for a reason…
I disagree with this.
I tried all kinds of “diets” including Weight Watches and the only thing that has finally worked for me is “don’t eat unless you’re hungry”.
To me it’s liberating. Instead of counting calories, points, deciding if I can only have this food or that .. all of which are either annoying or put me into a mind frame of “scarcity” .. “don’t eat unless you’re hungry” sets me free, now if I want ice cream I can have it, I just have to wait until later when I’m hungry.
The way I do it is I can eat whatever I want, but I can only eat it when I am hungry, and then only 1 thing. So usually that’s going to be a can of corn, or a piece of bread, a plastic container full of grapes, some dates, etc … but it can just as well be a small dominoes pizza if I want one, and that’s the kind of plan I needed to have in order to lose weight.
And surprise .. that’s how normal sized people eat, when they are hungry. Same as when I was young and wasn’t fat, I would go outside and play and come back and eat something when I was hungry.
So basically you have no medical content to support your claim. Plus the body knows how to ask for specific food, only if it knows it.
Food pleasure comes from hunger, hunger increases senses.
Socializing : WTF ?! Plus delaying hunger for one hour is still eating Shenmue you arène hungry. If you really with to est with people, it dors not m’en that you should eat the same amount.
So again : a simplistic title to catch attention (you did it !) with nothing to back it up.
Someone with a brain, thank you!
Your life coach liek advice is great and all, but your feeding schedule advice is simply unscientific. Eating when you are not hungry is merely giving your body excess calories, no matter what type of food you are eating.
here are some recent scholarly studies showing the detrimental effect on eating both sheduled meals, and eating throughout the day, have on weight-loss:
1.
“Increased meal frequency does not promote greater weight loss…”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19943985
2.
“Circadian Timing of Food Intake Contributes to Weight Gain”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1038/oby.2009.264
3.
Effects of meal frequency on energy utilization in rats.
Hill JO, Anderson JC, Lin D, Yakubu F. Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University
“The effects of differences in meal frequency on body weight, body composition, and energy expenditure were studied in mildly food-restricted male rats. Two groups were fed approximately 80% of usual food intake (as periodically determined in a group of ad libitum fed controls) for 131 days. One group received all of its food in 2 meals/day and the other received all of its food in 10-12 meals/day. The two groups did not differ in food intake, body weight, body composition, food efficiency (carcass energy gain per amount of food eaten), or energy expenditure at any time during the study. Both food-restricted groups had a lower food intake, body weight gain, and energy expenditure than a group of ad libitum-fed controls. In conclusion, these results suggest that amount of food eaten, but not the pattern with which it is ingested, has a major influence on energy balance during mild food restriction.“
4.
Meal frequency and energy balance.
Br J Nutr. 1997 Apr;77 Suppl 1:S57-70.
“More importantly, studies using whole-body calorimetry and doubly-labelled water to assess total 24 h energy expenditure find no difference between nibbling and gorging. Finally, with the exception of a single study, there is no evidence that weight loss on hypoenergetic regimens is altered by meal frequency. We conclude that any effects of meal pattern on the regulation of body weight are likely to be mediated through effects on the food intake side of the energy balance equation.”
5.
Thermogenesis in humans after varying meal time frequency
Wolfram G, Kirchgessner M, Miller HL, Hollomey S.
To a group of 8 healthy persons a slightly hypocaloric diet with protein (13% of energy), carbohydrates (46% of energy) and fat (41% of energy) was given as one meal or as five meals in a change-over trial. Each person was 2 weeks on each regimen. Under the conditions of slight undernutrition and neutral temperature the balances of nitrogen, carbon and energy were assessed in 7-day collection periods, and according to 48-hour measurements of gaseous exchange (carbon-nitrogen balance method) by the procedures of indirect calorimetry. Changes of body weight were statistically not significant. At isocaloric supply of metabolizable energy with exactly the same foods in different meal frequencies no differences were found in the retention of carbon and energy. Urinary nitrogen excretion was slightly greater with a single daily meal, indicating influences on protein metabolism. The protein-derived energy was compensated by a decrease in the fat oxidation. The heat production calculated by indirect calorimetry was not significantly different with either meal frequency. Water, sodium and potassium balances were not different. The plasma concentrations of cholesterol and uric acid were not influenced by meal frequency, glucose and triglycerides showed typical behaviour depending on the time interval to the last meal. The results demonstrate that the meal frequency did not influence the energy balance.
The studies go on and on and on…
It is often claimed that people should eat many, small meals throughout the day to keep the metabolism high.
Eating frequently may have benefits for some people (like preventing excessive hunger), but it is incorrect that this affects the amount of calories we burn.
There are even studies showing that eating too often can be harmful… a new study came out recently showing that more frequent meals dramatically increased liver and abdominal fat on a high calorie diet.
Additionally simply reducing/coutning calories is not a way of losing body fat, and even if you starve the body of needed calroies, its not a weight loss method which is sustainable, as the body rebounds from it dramatically (think all the people from TV weight-loss shows, where 90% of them regain their weight, and usually more). Reduced caloric intake results in reduced caloric energy used by the body, the body is not stupid, and likes to keep itself working. If you reduce calories enough that it cannot maintain this homeostasis, you will experience quite the bevy of nasty side effects – most prevently lethargy and hunger. as the body does not function well when it does not receive the calories need to function. Calor But there is FAR more to it than jsut that. Please review the literature below:
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Well said, this article is simply enabling those who want to eat whatever they want, whenever they want.
I have been researching high and low for an answer to this question. This is the best, most well-explained answer I have found on this topic. I have found many, clearly biased articles, that have said you should never eat unless you feel hungry; I have found seemingly equally as many on the other end that have said you should always eat three healthy square meals regardless whether or not you are hungry. Your answer to this is very clear and makes sense. Hunger is only one of many reasons why you should eat. You do a great job of citing the other reasons. Thank you for a thorough, and well-written article. Cheers.
For the most part, I only eat when I’m hungry (usually 2 meals a day) and have been able to maintain a great weight. Our body sends signals for a reason. I think it comes down to learning to reflect and self regulate. So instead of saying: “I’m bored/ sad/lonely, I think I’ll go eat,” we say: “I’m bored/sad/lonely, how about I address those feelings? Maybe I’ll do my favorite activity or go to a meetup to meet new people or allow myself to feel sad and process my experiences.” I think there are healthier coping mechanisms than eating and I think we have to recognize that as a society, we have a tendency to turn to temporary fixes instead of getting to the root of the issue. I know that’s just one part you talked about, but I felt like this is an important issue. 🙂
Excellent response.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this type of approach (only eating when hungry). You can follow it 80% of the time, and keep the other 20% for social gatherings, eating out at restaurants, hedonistic food etc. It doesn’t mean you cant eat for pleasure ever again.
People generally eat at say, 8am (for no other reason than because its breakfast), between 12 noon and lunch (because its ‘lunchtime’) and between 6 and 7 pm because its dinner time. You’re not necessarily going to be hungry at each ‘mealtime’, but people will still eat anyway. If you’re not hungry at one particular meal time, don’t eat the meal and wait for the next one. There’s no way you wont reduce your calorie intake by a good 10-15% doing this, and therefore lose some body fat.
The arguments made against the method in the article don’t make any logical sense.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this type of approach (only eating when hungry). You can follow it 80% of the time, and keep the other 20% for social gatherings, eating out at restaurants, hedonistic food etc. It doesn’t mean you cant eat for pleasure ever again.
People generally eat at say, 8am (for no other reason than because its breakfast), between 12 noon and lunch (because its ‘lunchtime’) and between 6 and 7 pm because its dinner time. You’re not necessarily going to be hungry at each ‘mealtime’, but people will still eat anyway. If you’re not hungry at one particular meal time, don’t eat the meal and wait for the next one. There’s no way you wont reduce your calorie intake by a good 10-15% doing this, and therefore lose some body fat.
The arguments made against the method in the article don’t make any logical sense.
To add: because I have high carb diet, I don’t even feel the need to eat in the morning and still feel quite “full”. I can eat a days worth of food in 1 sitting and I’d like to think my periodic fasting scheme, I naturally build myself this way, has made it possible for me to live in such way.
I can guarantee you I have energy throughout the whole day while all my peers at the office seem to plummet once lunch break arrives, which I often eat only something like 1 cracker if I feel my stomach or just an apple or tomato to boost a bit of my energy.
I get sick of all my peers constantly telling me to eat, but they all seem to be jealous of me when I’m at a restaurant with them and are able to eat 2/3 times as much as they do in 1 sitting.