We Are Not Chasing Suppressed Hunger

In today’s quick Friday Five episode, we’re talking about something that causes fear for so many people on a weight loss journey: hunger.

If hunger starts returning, many people immediately assume something has gone wrong — that the medication is failing, that weight regain is inevitable, or that they’re losing control. But hunger is not a problem to eliminate.

Hunger is normal. It’s natural. And it’s necessary.

In this episode, we explore why chasing lifelong appetite suppression isn’t realistic, why grazing often keeps you undernourished and unsatisfied, and how learning to live in harmony with hunger is a key part of long-term weight management.

You’ll hear why hunger doesn’t mean failure, how diet culture taught us to fear it, and what it actually looks like to respond to hunger with trust instead of panic.

We also discuss practical strategies like structured meals, adequate hydration, gentle planning, and why eating full meals — not constant snacks — helps your body feel safe and nourished.

Finally, I share resources that helped reshape my own thinking around hunger, including Words to Eat By and Food and Feelings, along with reminders about accessible support through libraries, journaling, and therapy.

 We are not chasing suppressed hunger for life.
 We are learning how to work with our bodies — not against them.

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

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Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today is our quick Friday episode. I wanted to talk a little bit about hunger. There's one thing that I wish every patient knew about hunger. Do you guys wanna guess? Here it is. It's that hunger is normal. It is normal. It is natural, it is needed. A lot of the times though, you fear it so much because when hunger starts to come back or you're getting hungry more often, you're having higher levels of hunger. You could eat more food at one time. Inside you're thinking, I'm gonna get all that weight back. Everything's going wrong. We are not chasing a suppressed feeling for life. We can't, I'm convinced of this and there's a lot of things I'm willing to be wrong on, but I'm convinced that. No matter how strong the medications and all the things we do, because this is a chronic disease, our body always finds a way to evade it. These things can help, but that they're not a hundred percent that no one's ever gonna struggle with this disease again, I just don't know that can be the case with how complex this disease diseases'cause it truly affects every single organ system. It's a really hard disease. The reason when I say this, it's that. What we need much more is for you to get to a place where you say, I wanna live in harmony with food. When I'm hungry, I wanna eat. I want to make sure I'm hydrated properly. I want to make sure when I eat that they're actual meals. And not all snacks are grazing because grazing is this like constant eating little food throughout the day. And some of you, you make this a personality characteristic and you're really proud of it. And the problem is when you're grazing, no one is grazing on boiled broccoli. That's not what's happening. So they're typically like snacky foods. You have no idea what's happening. You're totally malnourished sometimes because you're constantly getting a little, so, you never really get hungry, but you're never really satisfied. It's a weird zone that you're living in, so I want you to actually have meals where you have all the food groups represented and you actually feel like a human. You have to get hungry for that to happen. No one's wanting to sit there and have a chicken breast and boiled eggs and broccoli and those type of foods if you're not actually getting hungry. Let's just remember, we're not chasing suppressed. It is normal to get hungry. I think what trips most people up is that you've grown up in diet culture. Where it was encouraged, skip these meals or eat these little low fat cookies. I mean, oh my gosh, we've lived through all of it, right? And we kind of know now like all of that is bs, but it's still imprinted on us. What we have to start to do is question some of these things when they're coming up. When we get hungry and we immediately go to fear instead of, Hey, is this normal? Is this supposed to happen? How could I respond in this scenario? There might be things that you need to change in your life, like having food prepared that is on the healthier sides, that you're not having to spend than 30 minutes preparing something. If you're someone that goes from not feeling anything to being hungry really quickly, we might need to do that. We might need to do some scheduled eating because you're, again, you just can't sense it enough. There's a lot that we might strategically do. But you knowing first and foremost, that hunger is normal, necessary, loving, kind, all of it, you have to start with that. Otherwise, none of the strategies that we do are ever gonna work. I bring this up because. Obesity is such a complex disease. The body always finds a way to fight back. Even if things initially really feel like this, like strong clamp effect and however it is that you feel with time, I really always anticipate that will always lift. Even as we get triple agonists, even as we get all these other things, eventually those of us that have more resistant disease feel that again. Some of you are, it's amazing and you, and you never, you're like, oh my gosh, it's been working for you for years. And then other people, it cont you continue to keep the weight off, but you start to get more hungry and different things happen. You are not defective. You can work with this and this does not need to be a problem for life, but we need to rethink about hunger. If you don't get hungry, you don't want certain foods, and it's not a fun place to be. The saddest scenarios that I ever see. Or when there's cancer patients and they do not have appetite, it is the saddest thing in the world. So do not wish for this world where you're not hungry. We want to hope for less food noise and feeling more control around food and everything that goes with that. But hunger is not something that we want to a hundred percent avoid. I just wanted to talk a few minutes on that today. If you wanna go deeper on this. I think a really good book is Words to Eat By. It's pretty old at this point. She gives questions that you can ask before, during, or after eating, and a lot of them actually deal with hunger. One I don't remember the exact words, but I just know that this made a, an impression on me years ago, and I used to bring it into all of my coaching programs and it was, hunger is loving and necessary and kind, and it just had all these ways to describe how hunger is normal. And that was such a, it was such a mind blowing thing for me. This was just very helpful for me to read that. So a book like that can be helpful. She also has a workbook, food and feelings. So if you have a lot of thoughts about what physiologic things are happening, that can be a really nice book as well. And of course there's always seeing a therapist if you're noticing. I just have a lot of angst around food and my body image is tough for me to work through, and there's all these things happening. It is worth it to think through these things. Remember, with therapy, we are going toward a wellness model. We want you to thrive. We want you to be amazing. This is not just illness, rehabbing you, illness, getting you out of depression, things like that. We want you to actually feel better. I see patients that do all aspects of this work make it further, and I know it's not necessarily available to everyone. However, if you have a library card. And you can get the Libby app. A lot of these books are available for rental. A lot of the things I'm saying are very accessible. You can take one sentence that you hear here and you can journal on it daily. Don't let anything be an obstacle to you thinking about this and moving to a new place with it. That's not what I got for today. I hope that you have a great rest of the weekend and I'll see you Monday