When Food Feels Different
Learning to listen to what your body might be trying to tell you
Have you ever noticed that some days food barely crosses your mind and other days you can’t stop thinking about it?
Our bodies aren’t designed to be the same each day
Some days your breakfast satisfies you and others, you’re looking for a snack mid-morning. Some evenings you can eat dinner and feel completely satisfied and other times you’re searching the fridge or the pantry for something else.
What I’ve really come to understand is that these signals aren’t random. They’re your body’s way of communicating what it needs.
Our bodies are constantly responding to what’s happening around and within us.
They don’t have the same energy requirements every day.
They don’t need the same amount of food every day.
Just like we don’t sleep the same every night or feel the same every morning, our appetite isn’t designed to stay exactly the same either.
The problem isn’t our body, it’s that we’ve stopped listening
The challenge is that many of us have become better at listening to rules than to our own bodies.
We listen to diet-talk, experts, social media or what friends are doing.
We eat because it’s lunchtime.
We ignore hunger because it’s ‘too early’.
We question ourselves on a day we wouldn’t normally eat a snack.
Over time, it's easy to lose confidence in signals that were never actually the problem.
Add to that, most of us are so busy getting through the day, that we don’t get the opportunity to stop and notice our body’s signals, or what our body might be trying to tell us.
For many of us, years of dieting, busy lifestyles, emotional eating, food rules and juggling busy lives, have gradually disconnected us from our body’s natural signals.
But when we do stop and start to tune in, it’s actually really interesting how much our body tells us.
What happened when I got curious
A few weeks ago, I noticed something interesting. I had a week where I was hungry. Much hungrier than usual! I was ready for breakfast earlier than normal. I found myself genuinely needing a mid-morning snack. And by the afternoon, I was hungry again.
The old me would have ignored it. I would have told myself I didn’t normally eat this much. I would have tried to push through. I might even have felt frustrated with myself.
But now, I’ve learned to get curious instead. Rather than pushing these feelings aside, I stopped and asked myself, What’s different today?
It didn’t take long to see a pattern:
- A longer than usual bike ride
- Several nights of poor sleep
- I’d been more active than usual
None of those things surprised me once I’d noticed them.
My body wasn’t “playing up.” It was responding. It needed more energy than it normally did.
Suddenly those extra snacks didn’t feel like failure, they made sense. Maybe my body had been making sense all along!
A question worth asking
Next time you notice that food starts to feel different, rather than judging yourself, get curious and ask, ‘What's different today?’
- Has anything changed?
- How did I sleep?
- Have I eaten enough?
- Has my stress been higher?
- Have I been rushing around all day or more active than usual?
- Has my exercise changed?
One simple practice I encourage my clients to try is this.
The next time you eat, just pause for a moment and ask yourself, ‘ What’s different today?’
You might then notice things like:
- I only slept 5 hours last night
- I’ve been rushing around all day
- I exercised more yesterday
- Work has been particularly stressful
- I’ve eaten lightly today
- I’ve been worried about mum
You don’t need to change anything.
You don’t need to judge yourself.
You don’t even need to find the ‘right’ answer.
Simply notice.
Learning to listen again
Perhaps the goal isn’t to make your appetite the same every day. perhaps the goal is to understand why it changes.
Because awareness is where rebuilding trust with your body begins.
The more we notice the patterns, the less we need to judge them.
And sometimes, that’s where everything starts to change.