(cw for food quantity/eating/weight gain+loss discussion)
Something that I feel needs to be acknowledged in discussions about healthy attitudes to food/eating is that the physiological feedback loop for hunger/satiation varies dramatically between different individuals to a degree which I think is wildly underestimated by those who sit within a range that leads to normative social and health outcomes.
I often encounter people who will describe earnestly how they forget to eat, how they hate “having to think about making sure they eat enough food”, who will be unable to continue to eat a meal after consuming what to me seems like a fairly small portion. These are often the same people who will talk about the importance of intuitive eating, of obeying hunger cues, of the idea that any form of dietary restriction is potentially disordered.
And broadly maybe those are good ideas to believe for most people. But I’m also just not sure those people are prepared for the amount that I would eat if I let myself follow my body’s hunger cues until I reached natural satiation. I know, because I lived that life, and combined with an inactive lifestyle and seemingly slow metabolism it lead me to continuously gain weight through uncontrolled overeating for most of my 20s down a path that was leading to catastrophic social and health consequences. I managed to reverse course solely through access to GLP-1 agonists, that I expect to be paying for at an exorbitant cost for the entirety of the rest of my life, solely so I can bring my hunger response within shooting distance of what seems to be the standard range for many of those around me.
Even now if I let myself eat without thinking I’d easily be topping up to approaching twice the typical food intake of some of the people around me. The filling meals that some eat would barely take the edge off what my body wants from me, “forgetting to eat” is anathema, food is a constant magnetic pull. I have to put considerable effort in to prevent constant snacking, to buy low calorie (at even more cost!), to hold back on impulse eating throughout the day just to tread water at around energy replacement levels. It sucks and it’s hard, but unfortunately I’ve learned that it’s necessary to a certain extent, in order to maintain my current life and lifestyle.
And so it galls me when somebody shakes their head and tells me I am exhibiting unhealthy and harmful behaviors, when they will happily go out their day without thinking about food after eating a small sandwich at lunch and a little curry for dinner, when their body has stayed within the socially normative range without effort their whole lives. Don’t you tell me what’s healthy or good for me if that’s been your experience.
(It’s been even harder since I was forced to switch to less good meds. Constant mental battle. I might need to look into even more options to curtail hunger honestly)
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