Hungry Times, Hungry Days

Some days I am hungrier than others. In the past I have sucked it up and just kept to my calorie limit. The next day I am still hungry and then the next and I feel like I never catch up. Eventually a binge occurs.

Some days I am hungry in the mornings and I am still hungry after lunch. I can wait until 4pm for my afternoon snack, but by then I am ravenous and it hardly touches the sides. By the time I get home for dinner my choices are driven by hunger rather than reason.

Lately I have been eating when I am hungry to see what will happen.

Yesterday I had a hungry day. Instead of sucking it up, I ate 200 more calories than my limit to fill me up. Today, I was hardly hungry at all, and even skipped my afternoon snack because I didn't feel like it.

On the days when I am hungry during the day, I sometimes eat all my food by 2pm. But when I do that I usually make it through the afternoon without any problem and then have a normal appetite for dinner at night.

It is sometimes counter productive to be genuinely hungry and to ignore it. If I try to ignore my body crying out for fuel and wait until the next scheduled meal, I can easily fall into overeating and bingeing.

This is not to say that I don't get a bit hungry while I am trying to lose weight, but I know the difference between a level of hunger that is bearable and a level of hunger that is painful. It is like living with a cranky dragon who thankfully sleeps some of the time, and is restless, bored or unsettled the rest of the time. But when the dragon flaps his wings and breathes fire, I need to take notice because something is actually wrong.