It Doesn't Have to be a Full Meal -- Snacking is Good

One of the problems that I face on a regular basis, and that I expect anyone who has a family or an active social life will also face is how to wait for hunger when my hunger doesn't occur at the time that everyone else is planning to eat.

There are several options...the first and in my opinion, worst... is to just shuck waiting for hunger and eat with everyone else in spite of not being hungry ourselves. Though this one can be done, it reinforces the disconnection between physical hunger and eating which is in the long term harmful to the new relationship with food that we are trying to build through the intuitive eating process. I have used this one, but do try hard to avoid it.

Another option is to sit with the rest of the family or group of friends while they eat, without eating ourselves. This choice honors our own bodies, our own hungers, and strengthens the new relationship we are trying to build with food. The problem is that families and friends are sometimes uncomfortable with this. Many friends and families do not have the insight that we have gained through our no diet approach and are still approaching food in old ways -- seeing meal time as more of a social event than something to do with satisfying hunger.

A third option is to prepare to be hungry at the time that others will be eating so that you can enjoy the meal and the company of friends and family. For many of us the old diet mentality still persists and intrudes here. We were taught that meals were good and snacks were bad. So when we think of eating we think of eating a meal...

Timing our food intake so that we will be hungry at dinner time or hungry after a movie or meeting when everyone will go out to eat entails being willing to throw aside the idea that snacks are bad and should be avoided in favor of feeding oursleves just the right amount of food to curb our hunger until the time that we will be eating...so that we can be hungry when everyone else is eating.

For example, if I am hungry at 3 but I know that I will be going to dinner with my husband at 5, I will not want to eat a whole meal at 3 because then I will not be hungry at 5. It makes sense to eat something very small to satisfy my hunger -- when this came up yesterday I had about 3 bites of leftover spaghetti about 10 peanut M&M's, a swig of soda which was just the right amount for me to be perfectly hungry at 5 when my husband and I had dinner.

Snacking, though getting a bad rap from many diet gurus and diet plans is actually a very healthy approach and is just one of many ways that we can honor our bodies by giving ourselves just the right amount of food at just the right time.