Everything around us encourages our disembodiment.
Capitalism capitalises on it.
Patriarchy demands it.
Anti-fatness insists we abandon our bodies. Our needs. Our desires. Our pleasure. Our hunger.
There are countless ways that we lose touch with our appetite. Trauma, shame, stigma, fear, food insecurity. They can all teach us that our bodies are unsafe, untrustworthy. This is on top of medication, chronic illness, neurodivergence and the multitude of other ways we experience the world that can make it harder to be in touch with our bodies.
Disembodiment can be a survival tool. Dieting and disordered eating make sense when the world teaches you your body needs to be ‘fixed’.
But it can also be a source of immense pain and suffering. When the strategies we use to try and conquer and dominate our bodies compound the distress - dieting, disordered eating, fasting, micromanaging our food, punishing exercise, restrict-binge-purge cycles. Then we layer on psychological distress - shame, guilt, and self-flagellation - because our appetites aren’t so easy to tame and they find ways to be heard.
One way we can begin to build more positive connection and trust with our bodies is noticing where and when hunger shows up for you. It’s a gentle way of coming back to our bodies and saying ‘I’m here, I care, and I value your needs’. It can signal to our nervous system, on a primitive level, that we are safe. But it can also just make being in our body a little easier. Don’t get me wrong, bodies are hard a lot of the time. But when we get regular and consistent nourishment we generally feel better. A lot of the time, we are out of touch with our appetite. We learn to push down feelings of hunger. Override and suppress them. We blame our symptoms of low energy, bloating, and being a bit spaced out on not working out enough, or an undiagnosed food intolerance, or too much caffeine. And while it can all 100% be other things, I wonder how we’d all feel IF our bodies could trust that we’d always feed them when they needed to be fed?
That said, beginning to notice what’s going on in our bodies might not feel safe or comfortable. If that’s you, then feel free to skip this practice. But if you’re curious about how to get more in touch with your hunger as a way of building bridges with your body, then read on.
Most of us think of hunger as a deep gnawing in the pit of our stomach. This is often a sign that we are over-hungry, which in turn can leave us vulnerable to feeling out of control around food, to feel as though we are addicted to food, and to binge eating. These experiences can be distressing, both psychologically, and physically, and reinforce a narrative that our bodies are untrustworthy or broken.
Hunger does not just live in our bellies - in fact, this is often one of the last places we notice it - when our hunger screams with urgency.
Hunger shows up all over our body. It looks and feels differently for each of us. It can be easier or harder to find depending on what else is going on in your body, your life, your world, but here are some places I see it show up with the folks I work with.
In our heads - finding it harder to focus or concentrate1, headaches, feeling spaced out, thinking about food, feeling light-headed
In our moods - getting cranky, snappy, and irritable
In our energy levels - feeling sluggish or tired, even when you’re relatively well rested
In our nervous systems - sometimes hunger can be perceived as shifts in our stress or anxiety levels
In our bodies - feeling weak or like we have low blood sugar
And of course, in our bellies - a rumble, feeling empty or gnawing feeling
We can start by just noticing if these signals show up in our bodies. It might not be just one thing, it might be a cluster of things. They may show up gradually or suddenly. They might be quieter than a whisper, or loud and crashing.
If you can, check in with your body. Take a few deep, grounding breaths, and scan your body, starting from your head, and working your way down to your toes. Notice how you feel in your head, be curious about your mood and your energy levels. How’s your nervous system? And what about your overall body sensations? And lastly, check in with your stomach.
If you’re a supporting subscriber, then there’s an audio version of the hunger-body scan from Just Eat It below that can help us notice where hunger shows up for us. I suggest doing it when you’re beginning to notice hunger, having a snack, and then rescanning your body 10-15 mins later. Sometimes it’s harder to notice hunger, but easier to notice the lack of it, or the changes in sensation after we eat. For example, maybe we don’t notice that we’re hangry, but after we eat we definitely feel less cranky. If you’re really having a hard time connecting with hunger, it can be helpful to set reminders on your phone every 2-3 hours to check in and do this practice. The idea here is not to try and get it ‘perfect’, but to notice and be curious about our experience.
And while it’s not helpful for everyone, some people find it useful to imagine that hunger and fullness are like a fuel gauge in a car. When the tank is empty, you’re running on fumes, you’re depleted. You might feel nauseous, numb, or have a painful ache in your stomach. We can conceptualise that as a 0 on the scale.
On the other end of the scale, when the tank is completely full, we might also experience nausea, pain, and discomfort. This is more than just needing to unbutton the top of your jeans and stretch out on the couch - it’s more akin to binge eating where an objectively large amount of food is consumed and can be an extremely distressing experience. This is a 10 on the scale.
5 is between these two points, neither empty nor full. Not quite full but not hungry either. We usually experience this as we’re eating a meal and filling up the tank. Or between meals when we feel content, but know that we will need to eat again soonish2.
Typically we wait until we’re at a 2, 1, or even a 0 before eating. Obviously we can’t always help this. But when we are consistently waiting until we’re over hungry before we eat, we are signalling to our bodies that food is scarce, and the body can experience this as an absence of safety. Irregular access to food can heighten anxiety and make it harder to self and co-regulate.
From a nutrition perspective too, it can lead to digestive problems - gas, bloating3, constipation, and other IBS-like symptoms. It can mess with our menstrual cycle, even if we are eating enough overall, if we spend large parts of the day ignoring hunger and then compensating later, it again sends the message that food is unreliable and can ‘dial down’ non-essential processes like menstruation. If we are trying to care for our blood-sugar levels (i.e PCOS, type 2 or gestational diabetes), getting over hungry can leave us vulnerable to binge eating, which would cause bigger swings in blood-sugar levels than would feel good for us.
That’s why it can be helpful to find the point of gentle hunger, when we’re definitely ready to eat, but not so ravenous that we’re going to gnaw our own arm off. This is often around a 3 or a 4.
I’m sharing a visual from How To Just Eat It, that might help you here. I’ve pre-filled it, but there’s a blank copy for supporting subscribers at the end of the post. Numbers aren’t always useful. If that’s you, I suggest looking at the overarching categories rather than the numbers (i.e. the tyre rather than the spokes of the wheel).
The practice of responding to hunger is often framed as a way to stop or prevent yourself from ‘overeating’.4 I think this is a disservice, because while it can support us to move out of a binge-restrict pattern, and help us move away from eating in a way that feels out of control, it misses something more fundamental; responding to our hunger signals that our appetites are valid, trustworthy, and deserving. This helps us build connection and positive embodiment.
Sign up now to become a supporting subscriber and access the hunger-body scan and the hunger and fullness gauge worksheet.