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no hunger cues

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There are a few keys to having a life-long healthy, happy relationship with your body, and one of those is learning to recognize and obey hunger cues. Many of us have these eating habits that have been in our bones since childhood. You eat first thing when you wake up. Or you always eat lunch at noon. You always have dinner at 6pm. You have a snack when you get home from work every day (it was school as a kid). But we don’t question: well, am I hungry then? Do I need food then? We’re just following some arbitrary schedule. However, the only thing that should really be dictating when you eat is your own body. Culturally, we have these eating schedules. We meet friends for dinner between the hours of 6pm and 8pm (this may be more like 8pm and 10pm in some European countries). Or we do appetizers at 5pm with our happy hour drinks. These schedules do us some good. They allow us to stick to the rest of our schedule, like with work and family obligations. And they allow us to make meals social, as there is a general understanding of when lunch or dinner may occur if someone invites you over for lunch or dinner. But, ultimately, these customs can also interfere with our ability to catch our own hunger cues. In addition to arbitrary eating schedules, here are habits that interfere with hunger cues.

no hunger cues

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Drinking too much caffeine

The acidity in caffeine can irritate your stomach lining, creating a sensation that feels like hunger. Then, you may eat just to alleviate that sensation, but you aren’t actually hungry. Then, that can mess up your general eating schedule. You may still eat your scheduled lunch, though you aren’t necessarily hungry then, because your coffee drove you to having a hefty mid-morning snack. And you throw off the flow of the hungry-full-hungry-full sensations you should go through, throughout the day.

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