Why Ignoring Hunger Backfires (and What to Do Instead)

In this fifth episode of our deep-dive series on hunger, we explore why fighting your body's hunger signals never works long-term. Think ignoring hunger will help you control your eating? This episode reveals why that approach always backfires and what to do instead.

What You'll Discover:

• How your brain responds when you don't give it enough fuel
• The common patterns that keep you stuck in restrict-binge cycles
• Why occasional hunger vs. chronic hunger dismissal are completely different
• How to work with your hunger instead of against it

If you've ever tried to push through hunger or convince yourself you shouldn't be hungry, this episode will show you why that approach keeps you trapped and what actually works instead.

Want help re-establishing trust with yourself and your hunger? Schedule a Breakthrough Call today. 

Catch up on the series:

• Episode 1: What Is Your Relationship With Hunger?
• Episode 2: Your Relationship With Hunger Begins in Childhood (with Lisa Smith)
• Episode 3: What Is the Difference Between Physical and Emotional Hunger?
• Episode 4: I Don't Get Hunger Signals - What Should I Do?

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Join me for the Binge Eating Breakthrough Book Experience. Find out more here.

Want to know why you struggle with food and what to do next? Start watching The Food Freedom Mini Series today. 

Transcript

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Think ignoring hunger will help you control your eating? Think again. Today we explore why dismissing your body's hunger signals always backfires, physically, mentally, and emotionally. And we'll also talk about what to do instead to work with your body rather than against it. Welcome to Binge Eating Breakthrough, the podcast to help you stop feeling out of control around food and build trust with your body. If you've tried everything but still feel stuck, you're not alone. I've been there too. I'm Jane Pilger, and I'm here to help you see binge eating in a new way so you can finally break free. Each week you'll get the tools and insights to create peace with food and your body. Your breakthrough starts now. Hello, trusted listener. I consider you a trusted listener because I trust that you're ready to understand why fighting your body's signals never works long term. I trust that you're willing to examine the ways you might be dismissing your hunger. And I trust that you're open to a different approach, one that honors your body's wisdom rather than trying to ignore it or override it. So today we're going to dive into why ignoring hunger always backfires, and more importantly, what to do instead. So if you've ever tried to push through hunger, to try to convince yourself that you shouldn't be hungry or use willpower to override your body's signals, this episode will help you understand why that approach keeps you stuck and what actually works instead. So let's start with this. Your brain's primary goal is survival. It is the number one job of your brain to make sure that you survive, you stay alive. And when you don't give yourself enough food to survive and thrive, your brain will do whatever it needs to do to get food. It's not being dramatic or unreasonable. It is doing exactly what it is designed to do, which is keep you alive. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about this in relation to how ignoring hunger backfires, starting with what happens physically in your body. If you don't feed yourself enough food throughout the day, your body will force the food in some other way. It will make sure it gets the food that it needs. And so often when that happens, the food that your body seeks out, if you're not giving it enough, is high-density, high-calorie foods. Because your body is also storing up for what it perceives as another upcoming famine. So think about this. Think about a bear that hibernates during the winter. During the warmer months, that bear eats a lot of food to have enough stored energy for the famine of hibernation. And if you do a lot of restricting or ignoring your hunger signals, your brain interprets that as a type of famine. So many of these diets that you have been on in the past, your brain sees them as a type of famine. So when food finally does become available, either because you simply can't ignore your hunger any longer, or food is available. It's there and you find ways to eat it secretly. Or you simply find yourself eating large quantities, even though you don't want to. What's happening is that your body is trying to get as much as possible in now because it doesn't know when the next period of restriction or famine might begin. Now, this also impacts you mentally. It doesn't only impact you physically, it impacts you mentally through increased focus on food. Your brain will send up a tremendous amount of food chatter in an attempt to get you to eat. You'll find yourself thinking about food constantly, planning meals, looking at recipes, maybe even having vivid dreams about food. I know for me, the one area that still shows up sometimes is unintentional restriction. I get really busy, I'm doing a lot, maybe I'm doing a lot of exercise, whatever happens, and what I have eaten for the day is less than what my body actually needs. One of my first signals, my first signs is that I start, I have increased thoughts and focus on food in a different way. It's like, ah, that's one of my signals. Now, this isn't a character flaw or a lack of willpower when you have a lot of food chatter, when it feels like you are so focused on food. This is your brain doing exactly what it's supposed to do. We know this from research, like the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, where participants who were put on restricted food intake became completely preoccupied with food. Now, these were people who were very healthy beforehand, psychologically healthy. They had no previous with issues with food or with a weight preoccupation. No previous issues at all. And after a short period of time where their food was restricted, they were completely preoccupied. They talked about recipes constantly. They chewed gum excessively, and they thought and talked about food all of the time. If you don't know about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, look it up. It is fascinating to see what happened with these people in a very short period of time. And my guess is that you are going to find yourself and previous diets in as you read about it. Now, when you're not feeding yourself enough, you are also not likely to have the cognitive energy and capacity that you need for your day-to-day activities. Your brain uses and needs about 20% of your daily energy comes and is necessary for your brain. And when that energy is compromised by not eating enough, everything feels harder. It makes decisions, focusing on work and being present with the people you care about really challenging. Now, ignoring hunger can also disrupt your sleep. When you don't eat enough during the day, you might actually wake up at night seeking food. Literally, your body is seeking food. Your blood sugar drops, and your body needs fuel to maintain basic functions while you sleep. And let's talk about mood and emotional regulation. Hunger also affects our blood sugar, which directly impacts mood stability and your ability to handle stress. When you're running on empty, everything feels more overwhelming. You are more likely to be irritable or anxious, and you have less emotional resilience. There's a reason people call it hangry, when you are a combination of hungry and angry, because you are more likely to be irritable or anxious. Then there's decision fatigue. When your brain is constantly focused on food restriction and trying to ignore or suppress your hunger signals, it has less energy available for other decisions. Everything from what to wear to important work decisions becomes more difficult because your mental resources are being used up by the internal battle around food. I can't tell you how many people I talk to who tell me there is so much of their mind, what they think about on a day-to-day basis, it's all about food. There is no space for anything else. Now, I want to share some of the most common patterns I see with people who chronically ignore hunger. So the biggest one is not eating very much during the day and then eating a lot at night, from dinner until bedtime, or even waking up after others have gone to bed to eat more. And this makes a lot of sense when you understand your body is trying to get the nourishment it was denied all day. So this might be somebody who skips breakfast, who's trying to intermittent fast, who drinks coffee all morning, whatever it is, or really is afraid to eat too much. Now, another pattern, having two to three days of what someone calls being on track, followed by one or several days of binging or overeating. Now, what happens with this one is that often a person's definition of on track actually means ignoring or suppressing hunger signals. Actually means not eating enough food. So those quote unquote good days are actually setting up the quote unquote bad ones. And then there's the pattern that we talked about last week on the podcast: repeated suppression of hunger signals until the body stops sending them all together. When you consistently ignore or dismiss your hunger, your body eventually learns to stop communicating with you about its needs. Now, I want to make a really important distinction here. Occasionally, missing hunger cues is completely normal, especially when you're focused on something else, a big project, an upcoming deadline, or an exciting event. I remember so clearly the week before my wedding, there were several times where I truly forgot to eat. And I remember it felt so foreign to me because I could never imagine I would be one of those people who would ever forget to eat. I would hear people say that they got so busy they forgot to eat. And I was like, ha, yeah, that would never happen to me. That has never happened to me. And then it did. Because I was usually so worried about food and eating preemptively. And here was the situation where I was so focused on what needed to be done, so excited about the upcoming wedding, I truly missed the signals that my body was sending me. But this is very different from chronically ignoring your signals intentionally. If you notice your hunger signals, but you're questioning them, you're thinking they shouldn't be there, or you're trying to make them go away by drinking water or caffeine or chewing gum, you're truly dismissing what your body is trying to communicate to you. One of the worst things we can do in any relationship is to invalidate what someone is feeling. And that's exactly what we do to ourselves when we ignore our hunger or we think it shouldn't be there. Now, I want to share some of the common justifications I hear for ignoring hunger, suppressing hunger. I'm too busy. Or I just don't have time to eat. But here's the thing: when you don't eat, you actually become less efficient and less productive. Taking time to nourish yourself makes you more capable, not less. Here's another one I hear. If I don't ignore my hunger, I will always be hungry, and then I'll just gain weight. Now, this is based on the misconception that hunger is endless or unreasonable. But when you consistently honor hunger, it actually becomes more predictable and manageable. Here's another one. I ate so much yesterday, or I ate earlier, so I shouldn't be hungry. But your body needs regular fuel. Just like your car needs regular gas consistently. Yesterday's binge does not fuel today's activities. Here's another one. I'll eat later when I have time to make something healthy. This is perfectionism around food choices leading to delayed eating. I have definitely experienced this one. Well, I can't really eat what I want to eat right now, or I can't eat, you know, that kind of like ideal food choice. So I'm gonna wait, I'm gonna push it off until I have time to really eat that thing that I know is going to be better for me. But what often happens is that you end up getting so hungry because you keep pushing it off that then you end up eating a lot more later and whatever is available quickly. It is rarely that kind of perfect choice that you had imagined previously when you kept pushing it off. Here's another one. If I start eating, I won't be able to stop. Now, this fear actually comes from a history of restriction. When you consistently honor your hunger before it becomes extreme, eating feels much more controlled. And this does take time to develop the new neural pathway, but it's so possible for anyone. Here's the last justification I hear. The only way to have the body I want is to be hungry and to not allow myself what I truly, really want to eat. This belief keeps you trapped in a cycle of restriction and overeating that actually makes it harder to maintain a stable weight. So I want to tell you a story about a client of mine who really illustrates how this pattern works. She had been on some sort of diet for most of her life, which had been a very many, many, many decades because she was in retirement. She was so used to ignoring her hunger and always trying to eat as little as possible. And of course, she would end up thinking about food constantly, sneaking off to the pantry when her husband wasn't looking, and overall feeling like something was wrong with her. And we worked on her relationship with hunger and truly allowing herself to eat foods that she enjoyed on a regular basis without fear, but with a focus on connection to her body. And the transformation, the change in her was remarkable. She no longer sneaks off to the pantry or eats behind her husband's back. She has so much more trust and connection with her body and her hunger signals. And she sees herself in an entirely new way. Not just as someone who needs to lose weight and who's afraid of food and afraid of going out to eat, but as someone who is worthy of nourishment and care, and someone who can connect with their body, can go to a restaurant, can go celebrate an anniversary or a birthday and be able to do it with enjoyment and move on. So you might be asking, what do you do instead of ignoring hunger? All I know how to do is ignore or suppress my hunger. First is to tune in. Instead of automatically dismissing your hunger signals, get curious about them. Respect and respond instead of question and deny. Get curious about what you're hungry for. Is it physical nourishment or might it be emotional hunger? Reference back to our episode on the difference between physical and emotional hunger. Both are valid, but they might need different responses. And get curious about your own relationship with hunger. If you haven't listened to that episode, make sure you check it out. All of the episodes on this series on hunger are in the show notes so you can easily access them. Conduct an experiment where you become the scientist of your own hunger. What do you notice about it? How do your signals vary throughout the day? What foods impact your hunger levels and frequency? How does ignoring hunger versus honoring it affect your overall food chatter and your experience with food? Learn to work with your hunger rather than against it. And remember this: every time you ignore hunger, you are breaking trust with your body. And every time you honor it, you're rebuilding that trust. Your body is always listening to how you respond to its signals. When you consistently dismiss hunger, your body learns its communications aren't valued. But when you start responding with curiosity and care, your body learns that it's safe to communicate more clearly. And this connects to everything we've been talking about in this series. Ignoring hunger keeps your nervous system in a state of stress and survival. It breaks down the trust between you and your body. It sends the message that your body's wisdom can't be trusted. But when you start honoring your hunger, you're sending the opposite message. You're saying, I trust you. I'm listening. I care about what you need. And this is how you rebuild a relationship with your body that restriction and dieting may have damaged. So this week, I invite you to notice your relationship with your hunger signals. When hunger arises, what's your first instinct? Do you question it? Do you try to make it go away? Do you feel frustrated by it? Or do you get curious about what your body might need? Try this experiment for just one day. See what it's like to honor your hunger signals as they arise rather than trying to override them. Notice what happens to your food thoughts. Notice what happens to your energy levels. And notice what happens to your relationship with food throughout the day. Remember, your body isn't trying to sabotage you when it sends hunger signals. It's trying to take care of you. It's trying to give you the energy and nourishment you need to live your life fully. What you focus on expands. If you focus on fighting your hunger, that fight will expand and take up more and more of your mental energy. But if you focus on working with your hunger, on listening to your body's wisdom, that trust and connection will expand instead. Now, next week, we're going to explore that hunger that no amount of food seems to satisfy. Another crucial piece of understanding your relationship with hunger. And until then, remember that your body is always communicating with you, and hunger is one of its most fundamental forms of communication. The question isn't how to ignore it more effectively or how to make it go away. The question is how to listen more carefully and respond with respect. If you want help re-establishing trust with yourself and your hunger, I invite you to reach out and schedule a breakthrough call to see what it would be like to work together. You don't have to figure this out alone, and I would love to guide you in this process. That's what I have for you today. I'll see you next video. If you're listening to this episode live in the fall of 2025, check out the Bing Breakthrough book experience in the show notes. And if you're listening to this at a later time, that same link will take you to my book where you can dive deeper into everything we talked about today and start creating your own breakthrough with it. JanePelker.com forward slash.