By: Kelsey Pukala, registered dietitian/nutritionist at Nourishing Minds Nutrition

If you’re at all familiar with Intuitive Eating, you’ve probably heard about the hunger and fullness principles. Honor Your Hunger is the second principle of Intuitive Eating and Feel Your Fullness is the sixth principle. Both are equally important! The problem emerges when we turn Intuitive Eating into the “hunger/fullness diet.” That can happen when we only eat when we feel hunger and always stop when we feel full. It’s a great thing to eat when we are hungry and stop when we are full… but when this becomes a RULE, we have a problem! And just another diet to follow. And we know diets don’t work.

As a Dietitian, I get this question from clients during the recovery process all the time, “Do I need to eat even if I’m not hungry?” And the answer is that it depends! If you’re at a place where you feel freedom with food, you’re getting a regular period and you haven’t been restricting calories, then I would say these hunger/fullness signals are probably pretty accurate and can absolutely be trusted!

However, if you’re struggling with restricting food or food groups, over-exercising, not getting a regular cycle and/or feeling anxiety around food, these fullness signals may not be accurate and it may benefit you to eat even if you’re not feeling hunger pangs. Hunger and fullness signals are affected by restriction and stress and a LOT of other things, so if your body isn’t in a state of healing and freedom then eating when you’re not hungry can actually be a HUGE step towards recovery and food freedom. When we restrict foods for any reason, our hunger hormones can get bumped out of balance making it unreliable to depend on feeling that hunger pang before eating.

The good news is that there is hope! The body is extremely resilient and the hunger/fullness signals can be repaired and re-trusted. This is usually accomplished through regular and adequate eating. Most often, this looks like 3 meals and a few snacks throughout the day, but this can look different for everyone. Once the body is no longer in a starved state, those hunger and fullness signals become accurate again and can be trusted. Woo!

So, to answer the initial question asked about eating when not hungry… Yes, it’s actually important to eat when you’re not feeling hungry if you’re in recovery from disordered eating, an eating disorder, hypothalamic amenorrhea or chronic dieting BECAUSE this is how we rebuild trust with the body.

There are also fun reasons to eat when not hungry. For example, going for ice cream with friends or eating the breakfast your kids cooked for you… you don’t have to be hungry to enjoy food! Hunger isn’t the only reason to eat. We eat for a lot of reasons and that’s normal and, in my opinion, healthy! When we only eat when hungry and stop when full, food becomes solely our source of energy and nothing else. Energy is obviously good! But food is SO much more than fuel.