Please Stop Trying to Eat Less: Why Hunger Was Never the Goal

After years of dieting, most of us end up believing something completely backwards. We come to think that being hungry means it is working. That the gnawing, white-knuckled, counting-down-the-hours feeling is the price of progress, and the more of it we can endure, the better we must be doing. I want to gently take that belief apart, because it is the very thing that keeps so many lovely women stuck on the diet merry-go-round.

Here is the honest truth. Being hungry does not mean it is working. It means you are going to crack by Friday. Hunger is not a sign of success, it is a countdown timer. Your body is not a machine you can simply override with grit. Starve it through the day and it will come to collect in the evening, and it usually collects with interest. That is not weakness, it is biology doing exactly what it is designed to do.

I am a volume eater, and proud of it

So let me tell you how I actually do this. I am a volume eater, through and through, and I am proud of it. I eat big, satisfying plates of food, and I always, always eat when I am hungry. That is not me bending the rules. That is the whole point of doing it this way. The entire approach is built so you can eat plenty and still get where you want to go.

The trick was never smaller portions. Goodness knows I tried smaller portions for years and they made me miserable and got me nowhere. The trick was changing what fills the plate, not how full the plate is. I learned to build my meals around foods that are naturally lighter for their volume, and then I could pile them high and eat to my heart's content.

How eating more actually works

This is the bit that feels like magic but is really just simple. Whole plant foods, the vegetables, the potatoes, the beans, the lentils, the whole grains, the fruit, are full of water and fibre. That water and fibre take up loads of room and fill you up properly, while keeping the plate lighter for its size. So you genuinely get to eat a big, generous amount of food and feel satisfied, not deprived.

The things that quietly weigh a plate down are oil and very large amounts of nuts, nut butter, or avocado. Oil is the most calorie-dense food there is, and a spoonful of it carries far more than a great big bowl of veg, with none of the fullness. The day I learned to cook without drowning everything in oil, my portions got bigger and I felt better. That is the opposite of dieting, and it is exactly why it lasts.

And let me say a kind word about carbs and fruit, because they get such an unfair reputation. Potatoes, rice, oats, and whole fruit are not the enemy. They come wrapped in fibre and water, which is precisely what makes them filling and satisfying. Fearing them just leads to more hunger, and we have already established where hunger leads.

Stop fearing your hunger

If there is one thing I want you to take from this, it is to stop treating your appetite as the enemy to be conquered. Your hunger is information, not a flaw. It is your body asking to be fed, and the answer is to feed it well, with plenty of the good stuff, rather than to override it until you snap.

When you eat enough, the constant food noise quiets down. The grazing settles. The desperate nine o'clock cupboard raids fade away, because your body is not running on empty and coming to collect. Abundance, not restriction, is what finally makes this feel easy.

Watch

I once weighed every single thing I ate in a day during a potato reset, just to show how much food this actually is. Several pounds of it. Have a look at How many pounds of food do I eat in a day? and tell me that looks like a diet.

Eat well, eat plenty, and stop fearing your hunger. A full, happy plate is not a compromise, my love. It is the entire plan.

Hungry all the time? You deserve better.

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Topics

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