How to Get Hunger Cues Back: A Guide to Getting In-tune With Your Body's Natural Signals

Anyone who has ever dieted knows the dilemma of feeling hungry but thinking you aren’t *supposed* to eat. In those moments, you might choose to eat anyway, or you might decide to restrict your food intake and eat nothing. You can see how over time, chronic dieting disconnects you from your body’s hunger cues. Imagine your body saying to you, “Well, you never seem to listen to me when I tell you I’m hungry, so I’m done communicating!” 

If you’re healing from disordered eating or trying to lean into intuitive eating, a vital part of the process is regaining your natural hunger signals. Ideally, you will restore your relationship with your body and with food so that one day eating will be a natural, normal and easy action that doesn’t require a ton of thinking. For this to be the case, we want your body’s internal cues, like hunger, fullness, cravings, likes/dislikes and satisfaction to inform your food choices, instead of external cues, like diets or food rules, calling the shots.

In this post we dive into what hunger cues are and some steps you can take to restore your body’s natural cues. 

Understanding Hunger Cues

Let’s go over a basic definition. Hunger cues are physical and emotional signals that indicate the need for food. They vary in intensity based on how long it’s been since you ate, what kinds of foods you ate, what kind of activity you’ve been doing, your level of distraction or busyness, and more. 

Some examples of hunger cues include: stomach rumbling, inability to concentrate, crankiness, nausea, lightheadedness, feeling weak, or shaky hands. As you get more in-tune with your body and engage in regular body check-ins, you will be able to detect the more subtle, early hunger cues, instead of waiting until the later, more intense cues hit. 

Why Do Hunger Cues Disappear?

There are many things that can cause hunger cues to fade, either for a short time (acutely) or chronically. Let’s review some of the causes:

• Long term dieting, regular food restriction or eating disorders decrease the activity of your body’s hunger messengers, and eventually slow down your metabolism, too. Think of your body being in survival mode. If it learns that you aren’t providing it with adequate nourishment (energy), it attempts to conserve as much energy as possible, and can slow down many of your body’s internal messaging systems, including hunger. 

• Stress, depression or anxiety can quiet or completely eliminate your body’s hunger cues.

• Acute sickness (like having the flu) or taking certain medications can impact hunger signals, either increasing or decreasing them. 

• Life stages and conditions like aging, pregnancy or puberty can also impact hunger cues. 

The bottom line is this: ignoring hunger cues can lead to disconnection from your body’s needs. If you want to be an intuitive eater, it is imperative you reconnect with your body. Sometimes (like when you’re sick) hunger cues might fade, and you may need to eat without relying on hunger cues to tell you when it’s time. But most of the time, we want hunger cues to be a central part of how you know when and how much food to eat to adequately nourish your body.

The Role of Intuitive Eating

You’ve heard me mention intuitive eating a few times now. If you’re not sure what that is, check out this post “What is Intuitive Eating” for a bit of background. 

Very simply, intuitive eating is using the body’s intuition in harmony with the head’s knowledge when it comes to food, eating and connecting to your body. Babies are a great example of intuitive eating: they let you know they’re hungry by crying (or exhibiting some other signals) and once satisfied they’ll generally stop eating on their own. As we grow up and are exposed to all kinds of influence and ideas about food and eating, we can get disconnected from that intuition. Intuitive eating is a return to eating based on our body’s cues.

Intuitive eating relies heavily on you reconnecting with your body. As you practice it over time, it should reduce food-related anxiety and guilt, help you meet your nutritional and energy needs and support long-term health and well-being (including mental and emotional health!

Steps to Regain Hunger Cues

If you’re thinking that this all sounds great, but wondering how in the world you go about reconnecting with your body, let’s cover some actionable tips you can start practicing right away.

Step 1: Let Go of Dieting Mentality

If you want to fully regain and reconnect with your hunger cues, you have to ditch external cues, like diets and rules. I know that the idea of quitting dieting can be scary. It won’t happen overnight, but you can start with baby steps. Reassess who you follow on social media and unfollow any diet-y accounts. Begin to focus on nourishment instead of restriction. Get rid of diet cookbooks in your home. Quit getting on your scale (or throw it away, perhaps). When you notice a diet thought pop up, remind yourself it’s normal to keep having these thoughts, but remember that you can choose whether or not you act on that thought. 

Step 2: Start Eating Regularly

Establish regular meal and snack times. This is critical if you have been in a pattern of going long periods without eating (intermittent fasting) or if you’ve been limiting yourself to only 2-3 meals a day. As you begin the journey to regaining hunger cues, I recommend having a schedule of eating, with alarms set to remind you, if necessary. Consistent eating will do wonders to regulate your hunger and hunger cues. Aim for eating every 2-3 hours, with three full meals and 2-3 snacks each day.

Step 3: Tune Into Your Body

Practice mindfulness before, during and after meals. Try to quiet your mind and feel for different symptoms within your body. How does it communicate hunger, satisfaction or fullness?

You can use a hunger and fullness scale, if helpful. It’s a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is sickeningly famished and 10 is painfully full to bursting. As you progress with your hunger signals, you’d like to avoid letting your hunger get down to the 1-2 range, and aim to wrap up your meal when you’re around an 8 on the fullness scale. 

Step 4: Honor Your Hunger

Part of using the hunger fullness scale (and finishing a meal at a 7 or 8, rather than a 9 or 10) is building trust with your body that you will always respond to its hunger cues. Your body may be used to eating beyond fullness because historically you didn’t supply it with food at regular and predictable intervals. As you begin to eat regularly and frequently (see Step 2) your body will learn that you plan to honor its hunger. 

If you notice yourself feeling judgemental or shameful about the amount or frequency of hunger, try to acknowledge those thoughts, but then discard them. Replace them with a self-affirming mantra like “I am honoring my body’s needs” or “I am compassionately caring for myself.” 

Step 5: Seek Professional Support if Needed

If you feel totally overwhelmed by this kind of work, that’s okay! You are not alone. Everyone is at a different place with their relationship with food, and some people will benefit hugely from partnering with a professional.

If you decide to get some outside help, I recommend working with a Registered Dietitian or therapist who specializes in eating disorders, disordered eating and intuitive eating. If you see that they offer “weight loss” or “weight management” services, red flag! Their approach to health and healing contains conflicting ideas.

I would love to work with you on rebuilding trust with your body. You can download my Hello Intuitive Eating free workbook, or read more about my services here. 

Wishing you all the best!

Pros and Cons of Dieting

Defining dieting…

Ah, dieting. To clarify right off the bat that when I say dieting I mean fad diets and trends as a whole.

First I want to say that in the non-diet/anti-diet/screw-diet-culture space I know there can be just as many extremes as the weight loss/dieting side. A lot of what I have been thinking about is bringing the grey into this. That there are not opposing sides, but different approaches. Personally, recovering from my eating disorder saved my life in a multitude of ways and so I am strongly in the camp of f*ck diet culture. At the same time, I try to hold lots of space for those that aren’t as strongly in that camp. My mission is to help repair people’s relationships to their bodies and the foods they eat. I want to help people to see what is going on biologically when it comes to binging, weight gain and other situations that chronic dieting and having and eating disorder can lead you to. So I want to talk today on the pros and cons of dieting from my perspective.

(Side note: I am obviously going to be biased which I feel like was the point of what I was writing above. But in that bias, I want to be realistic and open-minded where I want to approach it from a less harsh place than the messaging can sometimes come across. Because first and foremost I want to say that I employ the non-diet approach because I am against diet culture but I am NOT against those who diet. If I was against dieters, I would be actively shutting out the very people that I want to be available to if they want to try something new.)

Pros and Cons of Dieting

Dieting Pro: You feel a sense of connectedness. This could be with fellow people that are also on the same diet, or with just people in general. Since dieting and weight loss are so common if you throw out the phrase “I’m trying to be good, I just started a diet.” you will likely be overwhelmed with camaraderie by people who are also trying to diet. Words of encouragement and empathy are common. Also the pursuit of weight loss is seen as the “healthiest” thing you can do for yourself, so if you say you are trying to lose weight, you will likely be met with praise. (I just want it noted that I do not agree that weight loss is the golden goose of health.)

Dieting Con: You think that if it doesn’t “work” for you, that you are broken. There is no proven effective method for weight loss in the long term. This is because our bodies are still primal, weight loss could mean death. Also, our bodies don’t keep up on the latest beauty standards so it is not going to be on board with altering the shape of your body in ways that are unnatural to you just because you want it to. It’s trying to protect you from dying. You are not broken, dieting is just not natural.

Dieting Pro: You pay more attention to food. As a dietitian I’m going to think this is cool. Being interested in what we are eating, what foods we are purchasing, holding companies accountable for their ingredients, preparing meals for ourselves and others can all be positive things.

Dieting Con: To follow up to the point above, the problem is it can go too far very quickly. There is a point with food where I think too much knowledge hiders us rather than helps us. I see it all the time where people cross the line into being so stressed about eating the “right” thing that I have to stop them and say “when did stressing about food become okay when we know that stress in general does not do ourselves any good?” Marketing is always going to want to give you a solution to a problem. In my opinion, diet culture created the problem where they made us think we don’t know what to eat. So then they can come in with names like “perfect bar”, “smart pop”, “enlightened ice cream” and create commercials where perfect looking individuals are eating their products and you think “oh, if I eat that, I will be perfect too!”

Dieting Pro: Sometimes the starting intentions are good. You want to be healthier. You want to be able to run around with your dog. You want to set a good example for your kids of a balanced diet. You want to do right by yourself and your body.

Dieting Con: Dieting further disconnects us from listening to our body’s internal cues and needs rather than brings us closer. Even the diets that try to use their marketing to say otherwise (cough Whole30 cough), I often see having the opposite effect because at the end of the day, if you are restricting, it will lead to adverse effects. Sometimes the health goals that we start off with become less and less about true health and what that means to us as individuals.

Dieting Pro: The answer is simple, and it is weight loss. Go to the doctor for knee pain - weight loss. Tired? Weight loss. Sad? Weight loss. Lonely? Weight loss. Poor body image? Weight loss. Inflammation? Weight loss. Asthma? Weight loss. The answer is simple so it feels like you *know* exactly what you need to do to have your wildest dreams come true. In a life full of uncertainty, this level of “knowing” is very intoxicating.

Dieting Con: Again, to address the pro above - unfortunately this idea that weight loss can be the answer to everything is too, a lie. Happiness, health, overall well-being, positive body image, confidence - these are actually all very complicated that will not be something you will ever “arrive” at. They will be daily practices that will not have simple solutions. I want to recognize that thin-privilege is very real and I am not trying to say that it isn’t. But the answer is so much more complicated than ‘anyone that does not have that privilege should lose weight and all will be okay’. Think of all the other ways that one might have privilege and think what the “simple” solutions others would have to do in order to have those privileges. That’s the point, that’s why is is called a privilege. Thin-privilege should be thought of in the same way because we have a generic blue print of what size our body is going to naturally be. Sure we can go to extremeness to alter it, but if weight loss is one of those extremes, it might not actually be possible because of the ways our bodies are designed. So holding space to accept all body shapes and sizes allows people to exist just as they are, without having to kill themselves over pursuing weight loss.

Katy Gaston Nutrition

Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA. Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body. If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below. If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!

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Eating As Self Care

Self Care, the Latest Buzzword?

First I would like to start on what I think the definition of self care is because I think that it can get a little lost, especially now that companies have picked it up as a marketing buzz-word.

To me, self care can be anything that recharges you. Everyone is a little different so it could be exercise, sitting in the park, painting, getting you hair done, swimming in the ocean, gardening, playing with your dog, building something, etc. I think there is also an element of rebellion that can come with self care. In this western society there is a culture of hustle, individuality and perfectionism. To which rest, vulnerability and being a human can be rebellious acts. This is where I think eating can come in as a rebellious act of self care.

So how does eating play into this?

When we think about it, eating should be the most instinctual thing we do. Along with sleeping, drinking fluids and practicing safety measures (ie. not getting hit by a car or eating poisonous mushrooms) it is the thing we do every day to keep ourselves alive. So why is it so confusing and sometimes so hard to do?

Because we humans are complex creatures with emotions, memories, social influences and preferences. We have seemingly endless access to overwhelming amounts of information and opinions. Along with all this information, there is $$$ to be had. Each time that a company, magazine article, program, etc can plant a seed of doubt that you don’t know how to feed yourself, they can come in with The Answer. I also want to pause for a second and point out that this is coming from a dietitian, a profession where I literally learned all about how to nourish a human body. If eating is so instinctual, why should you need me, a dietitian, to tell you what to eat?

First I would like to say that this is a major misconception about what I do. I actually don’t want to tell you what to eat. I am more interested in helping you facilitate a relationship with your body so that you can listen to those instincts. Where I do use my degree is when I’m working with people with disease states like allergies, kidney failure, diabetes, etc because there are important food and nutritional components to that. When I think about my work with eating disorders and disordered eating I think of it as a way to help people weed through the noise of nutritional marketing and fear mongering and provide the actual science. So much more of it though is giving permission. Permission to eat when you are hungry. Permission to have your favorite foods. Permission to gain weight. Permission to listen to your body.

If we think about the typical meals, we usually feed ourselves 3 times a day, maybe with some snacks in between. When did this concept become so radical and so out of the norm? To me, it is when weight loss became the gold star indicator of health (which it’s not) and the fear mongering that is the “o*esity epidemic” that was deemed to be running rampant throughout the US (which was wildly misrepresented). Starving ourselves, “hacking” our internal body cues, cutting out entire food groups like carbohydrates or fats, taking laxatives, throwing up after meals, drinking water instead of eating lunch, exercising three hours a day (when we aren’t professional athletes); when did this all become the norm?

I will have to admit, sometimes I get self-conscious about giving up on diet culture. Usually I can ward off remarks about what I am eating or my body with comments like “I am a dietitian that works with eating disorders so actually I don’t really follow the diet trends” or “I don’t know if I’ve lost weight, I don’t track that.” People will comment on if I am eating a salad “Oh you’re so good!” or if I am eating chocolate “Wow, the dietitian eating candy, didn’t think I would see that!” I have to admit sometimes it gets tiring. It feels like I am swimming upstream all the time because not engaging in diet culture is going against established norms. But then I remember that every time I eat when I am hungry, I am standing my ground. Every time I eat a donut or a salad because my body is telling me that is what I need, I am engaging in self-care. Every time I go for the full fat yogurt or the vegan ranch dip because that is what I want vs what I think I should have, it is self care.

Feed yourselves, I give you permission.

I won’t even say that you deserve to eat, because that shouldn’t even be in the conversation. You ALWAYS deserve to eat, no matter the circumstances. Eating is as fundamental as breathing. If we were on “oxygen deprivation cleanse” or working towards taking less breaths in a day, people would look at us like we were in a cult. Eating is no different. Eating when I am hungry, trying out a new baked good recipe, discovering a new favorite restaurant are amongst the things that bring me joy. These are my self care.

Though sometimes it is hard, I will continue to stand my ground that I will always and forever, deserve to eat - and you do too.

Katy Gaston Nutrition

Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA.  Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body.  If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below.  If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!

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When You Want to Stop Dieting, For Good

I have been thinking lately how so much of our lives are leaps of faith and really it is more the norm than we think. We really have much less control than we want to believe, something that can be both scary and exhilarating.

Where does this concept come into play with healing from disordered eating, eating disorders or just repairing your relationship with food and body? I say it all the time, society and its constructions as we know it are very anti-recovery. We have normalized disordered eating patterns, disliking and disconnecting from our bodies and the never-ending quest for weight loss. So when people come to me and say “I can’t do this anymore, I want to stop dieting.” They are taking a huge, brave, leap of faith. They want new, positive patterns with the way that they eat. They want to be able to exist in their bodies without constantly feeling ashamed. They want to stop this toxic cycle of pursuing weight loss that is only causing them to misunderstand and hate the way their body functions.

So much of the work I do with clients is to show another side, another idea. Another way to both pursue health and accept yourself just as you are. To have compassion for yourself and create sustainable routines. But this all takes lots of leaps of faith, both large and small.

When we are in the midst of an eating disorder or disordered eating our relationship and connection with our bodies is either severed or misunderstood. To learn to trust our bodies again is to learn to trust ourselves. This trust looks like being able to tune into hunger and fullness cues with neutral curiosity. It looks like allowing ourselves to enjoy the foods that taste good without guilt. To be able to have routines with less rigidity and more adaptability. But to get there takes a leap of faith because everything around you will tell you to not trust yourself. To use external factors like Calories, portion sizes and timing to control your intake. A scale to determine if you give a gold star or punish yourself depending on what it says in that moment in time. The camaraderie that dieting with your friends and family provides. The familiarity of this cycle of “failing” a diet, starting a new one with pronounced gusto to have it “work” for awhile and then “fail” again.

What I ask of my clients is something I have had to experience myself. To wade into unknown waters of unconditional permission to eat food and re-learn how to approach helpful things like eating vegetables and exercise but not from a disordered place. A leap of faith to give up this pursuit of weight loss and the fallacy of perfection, guaranteed love and ultimate happiness that it provides.

It feels like the world will crumble at your feet. It feels like you are clinging to a life raft in the ocean with people standing on the shore yelling “Let go! You’re safe now, you can swim to shore!” but that feels terrifying. I get it, it is really really hard. But when you do, when you take those first little mini leaps of faith that probably feel more like teeny baby steps, it will grow. The fire inside your soul. Who you are outside of this need to control the world around you. Your creativity, passion and joy. That is what I see happen before my eyes when I work with my clients, and it is incredibly powerful and beautiful. Because you are incredibly powerful, beautiful and brave to take that vulnerable leap into something new.

Katy Gaston Nutrition

Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA.  Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body.  If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below.  If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!

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How To Respond To Diet Talk

We are still very much in the midst of a global pandemic…

As we go into a time where we are seeing more of our friends and family there can be a lot of diet talk. If you are trying to recover from an eating disorder or seeking the path of a non-diet life, how do you navigate these comments and questions?

First I just want to say that it is a weird time right now in general. Here in the US and especially in California, life is starting to “open up” again. We are starting to come out of our houses, go back to the office, see groups of friends and family, and go to events. This can be nerve-wracking and an adjustment just like when we were going into lockdown (and all the changes that happened inside of that.) As part of this adjustment, we might be seeing people in person that we haven’t in a long time and we might be more self-conscious because we have gotten used to being on video from the comfort of our homes.

How do I respond to diet talk?

Since we all have varying comfort levels depending on our mood, personality and context I have included categories of “soft” and “bold” responses, but one is not better than the other. You need to protect your energy first and foremost.

Comment: Wow, you look great! Did you lose weight??

Soft: Thanks, I’m not sure, I don’t track that.

Bold: I’m actually healing my relationship with food and my body that doesn’t include monitoring my weight so maybe that is what you are noticing!

Wow, you are eating so healthy, good for you.

Soft: I try to eat a little bit of everything!

Bold: Actually when I changed my mindset in knowing no good or bad foods it opened me up to so much variety! I’m craving a salad right now and definitely going for dessert later because it looks delicious.

Do you work out? If I ate like you I would gain so much weight.

Soft: Mmm. [changes subject] So how has the new dog been?

Bold: I’ve healed my relationship with my body and food so I enjoy joyful movement when I want. I’m not afraid of weight gain because I trust my body will figure out what weight it needs to be. I also know fear of weight gain is ingrained in us but I’ve been working on un-learning fat-phobia instead.

My friend just lost a bunch of weight on this new diet! Let me send you the book title, I think it could be good for you.

Soft: I’ve actually stopped dieting for a bit, thanks though.

Bold: I know that I tried a bunch of diets in the past that didn’t work but it turns out I actually needed to heal my eating disorder instead!

Someone looks hungry, what a big plate!

Soft: Yep.

Bold: Funny, I didn’t feel the need to comment on your plate of food.

Come-on, finish off the mashed potatoes! I don’t want them to go to waste.

Soft: Thank you but like I said I’m really full.

Bold: Definitely won’t go to waste, I’ll take them home with me because I am too full right now.

Ugh my thighs are so big, diet starts on Monday for sure.

Soft: I had parts of myself that I haven’t liked either but I’m choosing to send them some love instead!

Bold: We are some smart, passionate and funny ladies, isn’t there something else we could talk about besides what we hate about our bodies and dieting?

Navigating diet talk might seem like a never-ending battle. But like I said always put your energy first and see what you have the energy for. You are also not alone <3.

Katy Gaston Nutrition

Katy is a registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Katy Gaston Nutrition based in San Francisco, CA.  Katy is passionate about her work in eating disorders and disordered eating (AKA dieting) and wants to help people heal their relationship with food and body.  If you would like to work with Katy in counseling sessions, she is available virtually via her services page below.  If you are unable to be a client at this time but would like learn more, click here for a free introduction into intuitive eating workbook!

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