Eating Healthful Food Without Hunger IS NOT Healthful

Eating really healthful foods, when you are hungry and crave them is great.

But I hear a lot of people express how “healthfully” they eat without any consideration of when and how much of that healthful food they eat.  It is as if they believe that the more healthful food you eat, the healthier they will be.

But that is not true.

Eating an organic avocado when you are not hungry is not healthful.

Eating an organic avocado when you are hungry and crave it, is.

That difference may not seem enormous to you, but it is.   In the first example, eating something “healthful” is a higher priority than  listening to your body to know if your body needs food.

And if your body doesn’t need food, then eating, not matter what it is, is not in harmony with your hunger.  And that disrespect of your body’s voice is not the way to build a healthy Thin Mentality that will bring you to your ideal weight, and a peaceful and stress-free relationship with eating and your body.

And there is some research out there that points to the value of giving your body a break from eating.  For example, instead of eating a lot of small meals, eating less often.  Interestingly, my healthy thin mentality has brought me to this kind of eating.  I go for longer periods of time without eating than I did when I was a dieter.  But please understand this very very important point:  this behavior is in complete harmony with my own unique hunger rhythms.   Whatever your unique hunger patterns dictate, respect them, whether your hunger demands that you eat less or more frequently.

As always, the moral of the story is to respect your body’s voice and these principles:

• Eating healthful food without hunger does not foster your healthy Thin Mentality
• It isn’t eating “healthful” food that gives you a healthy body in your ideal weight range, it is eating food in response to your unique energy and nutrient needs that does.
• You can eat all the healthful food you want, but if you don’t connect eating with hunger, your relationship with food will not be stress free, permanently slimming and…fun.

Oh yes, fun matters.