When You Can't Make Your Hunger Go Away with Food
You might need to pause and let your feelings flow.
CW: Mention of disordered eating. If this is triggering to you, feel free to skip this essay.
I feel a gnawing inside so I go to the cabinet. I find popcorn or chips and start eating, mindlessly putting my hand into the bag and shoving fistfuls into my mouth. I feel so hungry, yet even as I swallow down the whole bag, my hunger doesn’t go away.
I still feel the feeling, like a pit, and I go to the fridge. There are only healthy foods to choose from, because that’s what we have, but after an apple, some turkey slices, and a yogurt, I still have that feeling inside. This emptiness consumes me, yet my stomach feels full to bursting.
No amount of food will make this hunger go away. It’s not physical hunger, it’s emotional hunger. I wrote about the difference in the essay below.
Why Do You Eat?
Have you ever thought about why you eat? Of course you need food to survive, that's a given. But food can be so much more than that. And if you have any addictive tendencies (and who doesn't?), food can be a problem. Knowing why you eat helps you control your behavior.
Hunger is not a moral failing.
Emotional hunger is why most people think that feeling hungry is bad. Hunger is a normal, natural signal that your body gives to help you know that it’s time to eat. As humans, we need food to survive; you don’t eat, you don’t survive. Unfortunately, diet culture would have us believing otherwise. The more you don’t eat, the more superior you are as a person.
Hunger is not a moral failing, and eating is necessary. Eating foods that fuel your body and give you the nutrients that you need to work, play, love, think, and flourish is necessary and normal.
How you relate to food often reflects on how you relate you yourself. If you feel bad, you will eat foods that feel bad. They may initially feel good, giving you a sugar rush, but then quickly feel bad as you crash. If you feel good, you will eat foods that feel good. It’s easier to eat food for fuel when you are not stressed or anxious, but instead feel calm and regulated.
My history with disordered eating
While I never had a diagnosed eating disorder, I definitely had a disordered relationship with food. I grew up in a household that only had healthy, whole foods. I didn’t discover sugar cereals until the 8th grade at a sleepover. Cereal in my house were Cheerios, Total, Product 19. For awhile my mom bought Cracklin’ Oat Bran, which was really sweet, but when she read how much sugar was in it, she stopped buying it.
This wasn’t a bad thing, from a health perspective, but the lack of balance did a number on my psyche. As did diet culture in general. I learned that certain foods were good, others were bad, and that you needed to avoid the bad foods because being fat was unhealthy. None of that is actually true, and I no longer hold these beliefs, but these were what I knew at the time.
When I was 3, my aunt gave me a chocolate Easter bunny. We didn’t celebrate Easter, and I had never had candy before, so I was confused what to do with it. My aunt told me that I eat it, so I did. I had never tasted anything so delicious before in my life! When people asked me for a taste, I would scrape my fingernail along the bunny and give them a tiny shaving. I wasn’t going to share this exquisite gift from the gods (or my aunt). This was MINE!
In my tween years, I wanted something sweet and I found some baker’s chocolate in the cabine. I ate it. Baker’s chocolate wasn’t reliable though, because sometimes what I found was unsweetened (gag!—although now I am a huge fan a very dark chocolate, 85% and darker). We didn’t have soda in the house, but we had tonic water and I figured that was the same thing. It was NOT the same thing. No amount of added sugar was going to make that taste like soda. And let me tell you, I tried.
Sweets in general were rare in my house. We did occasionally have ice cream or cookies in the house, but it wasn’t the norm. When I discovered that we had something delicious, I would devour it all in one sitting. My scarcity mindset worrying that I wouldn’t have another opportunity for access to this goodness. My mom took to hiding the sweets to prevent me from eating the whole bag/box, so I would spend hours checking all possible hiding places.
I would binge, then feel awful. I had enough psychotherapists in my family to have a vague understanding of eating disorders and that throwing up wouldn’t be a good option, even though I felt full to bursting. I hid in my room and felt the shame, cursing myself for not having better self control or will power.
Thankfully I was active enough to manage the occasional binge, but the feelings kept surfacing. Those feelings of insatiable hunger and emptiness, that hole inside that could never be filled, that I kept trying to fill with food. Later I would fill it with sex, alcohol, busyness, TV, and games on my phone. But nothing could actually fill that hole inside me.
In college I would try all sorts of crazy tactics, like not eating anything with more than 3g of fat (it was the early ‘90s). I knew how to eat healthy and ate well most of the time, but studying required snacking. I would swim, dance, walk, and eventually add weight lifting and running to my regimen.
When I fell into yoga, it was one more thing that could help me feel better about my body and my struggles with numbing my feelings. I am so grateful for starting yoga, as it was the beginning of me learning to love myself.
Healing with Yoga
I was practicing yoga every other day and on the off days lifted weights and ran on the treadmill. Metallica and the Offspring’s Smash album were the only things keeping me running, as I hated it. I noticed that I was so sore from lifting on my yoga days, it was interfering with my ability to practice the way I wanted to. I decided to follow my joy. I stopped lifting and running, and stuck to yoga, practicing 6-8 times a week.
Yoga was different, it wasn’t punishment for eating, it actually felt good. I felt more peaceful when I left the mat each time, and more comfortable in my skin. Yoga, for me, became more than poses on the mat when I explored Pranayama (breath control), Meditation, and Kirtan (chanting). These practices brought me into myself and allowed me to start the process of accepting myself as I am.
After years of self-loathing, feeling not good enough, too much, and imperfect, my mind started to shift. I started to question my beliefs about myself and slowly heal. It didn’t happen all at once, it took about 15 years or more to fully embrace myself as I am, but it all started with my yoga practice.
Yoga taught me compassion for others and compassion for myself. It taught me to listen to my body and love and care for it. Yoga gave me the strength to let go of worrying about what other people thought and embrace my own wisdom.
I remember a time when I was struggling with a problem in my life and didn’t know what to do. I took a weekly meditation class, and during meditation the answer came to me. It bubbled up from out of nowhere and I knew what I needed to do. I learned that sometimes, letting go of trying to figure things out allows the answer to reveal itself to you. I also learned that we all have vast depths of knowledge within us, we just need to be quiet enough to hear.
What does this have to do with eating?
The better I felt about myself, the less I turned to food to solve my problems. I got better at not only having feelings, but feeling them. Giving myself permission to cry, get angry, feel regret or remorse, also gave me the ability to sit with my feelings and let them be.
I got better at noticing when I was turning to food, and instead redirected myself to journaling, yoga, or meditation. These tools help me feel the feelings, rather than eat them, and taught me the power of pausing. I learned to let emotions ride through rather than stuffing them down or attempting to get rid of them in some way.
Awareness, slowing down, and pausing, are all yoga tools that I have applied to my eating. I also allow myself to eat for pleasure, but it is with full intention. I choose to eat the ice cream and I savor every bite without shame. I no longer eat a whole bag of cookies without tasting them, but can eat a few. The more I practice self-regulation the more I can take a pause before going to the cabinet. I ask myself, “am I actually hungry or am I avoiding feeling something?” In this pause, I can feel what is actually true.
I still turn to numbing sometimes, like when I play games on my phone. I am still human and far from perfect. But yoga has given me tools so that I can handle whatever life throws at me, as gracefully as I can. It’s not always smooth, but I do the best I can.
Intentional Eating: Finding Peace and Balance in Your Relationship with Food
If you relate to this essay, join me online to explore your beliefs about food and yourself. Learn to be kinder to yourself, and eat foods that feel good to fuel your body. Learn the yoga tools that I use to have a better relationship with food and yourself. This is a mindset reset to help you feel more in control over your eating without shame, diets, or restrictions.
Click the button below to learn more about this 6 week online program. Limited to 5 people. The next cohort begins Wednesday, October 16th!
Disorders in eating happen from time to time.