Do you ever have those days where it feels like you are never full? Your stomach is a bottomless pit for food and beverages, and there’s nothing in the world that will satisfy your hunger for long? Oh man, tell me it’s not just me. I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s not just me; that I am not alone in having the occasional hungriest person in the world type days.

Because this week I had one of those days.

It was almost two or three of those days, but at some stage, I reached satisfied and stopped eating. Thankfully. But there was one day, an entire day from when my eyes opened to when they closed that I could have fed every step of the way. A hungry day.

There’s a trainer at my gym who says “hungry is healthy” which is a reframe for someone like me who grew up fat; told I wasn’t hungry when I knew very well I was. Hungry is healthy; okay, sure. I can get on board with that. This week I was taking care of myself in a stellar effort to wash away the sins of August. I’ve been cooking, working out, drinking more water than is probably advisable and getting more sleep. As well as the whole eating everything that wasn’t pinned down thing.

At one stage the guys I work with took up a collection of muesli bars for me to snack on. They found three, and some sultana biscuit cracker things; true hunter-gatherers that lot. And I ate them all, at intervals throughout the afternoon with a large helping of water. I was unstoppable and they, as men, didn’t even bat an eyelid that I was hungry. One of those days,  they said.

For them, hungry days happen.

The idea that they, as men, shouldn’t eat in front of people or appear to be insatiable isn’t a thing. Men are told to eat, so they grow big and strong. For men eating is a natural solution to being hungry. No brainer. If you’re hungry, you eat. You eat your lunch, wait a while and drink some water and you’re still hungry, you eat.

For girls, especially for fat girls, it just doesn’t occur that way for us. We’ve always been told to stop, to hold back, to hide our hunger and to ignore the cues from our body in favour of what’s deemed right by others. Eating is set up to be and therefore considered to be a greedy and shameful process.

Consider that for a moment.

How out of touch with our bodies we must be when we stop looking to it to decide when enough is enough, what we need or when? The world taught us that, and it’s something we need to UNLEARN as soon as possible. I don’t want to live like that anymore, and I refuse to. I’m going to start listening to my body. There’s nothing for it but to eat when I’m hungry and find the way to relearn how to be satisfied and full.

I’m not going to be not hungry anymore. 

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