What are your eating habits?

[Sam W]

When I was growing up, and to a certain extent this still happens, people would comment on how much food I ate. I think this had/has a lot to do with the fact that I am both small (so am perceived as not needing to eat) and a woman (people seem to think that women don't eat that much). It always struck me as odd, because I have a HUGE appetite. I love food, I love eating, I love cooking. But in spite of that love, I spent a long time feeling like I needed to restrict how much I ate because clearly my appetite was somehow bigger than it was "supposed" to be.

The thing is, our appetites and food needs vary from person to person, and from day to day. And, especially for adolescents, the needed calorie intake is way higher than people assume it is (2,000-3,000 calories per day is the advised intake). So, I want to make this space for y'all to talk about what your eating habits are, and maybe show each other that it's okay to be hungry and need to eat. When are you most hungry? Do you feel like you spend a lot of time being hungry and trying to ignore it, or do you feel like you feed it when it signals you to? What factors do you think might influence how much you eat?

(Caveat: Please do not make this thread into talking about how great X diet is and how it helped you lose 10 pounds).

[Heather]

From the department of I Wish I Had Known Then What I Know Now with this, I can pitch in that due to a combination of abuse and assault, poverty and working too much in general, I went without eating a lot growing up and through my 20s. In a word, I basically learned to dismiss feelings of hunger, in part because I really had no choice, but also in some ways where I did have a choice.

And what I found out is that that actually had pretty big impacts on my long-term health, stuff that really put me in danger, cost me money I didn't have, and also created habits that have been VERY hard to change. I still literally forget to eat a LOT, only remembering when I get a bad headache or am basically half-dead on my feet from hunger. I have to work very hard to remember to eat -- that always sounds so twisted, but it's my reality -- and I still feel like despite a lot of efforts, progress with that has been very slow for me.

The good news is that I, too, really love food and I love to cook, and because I primarily work out of or very near my home, cooking is much more within my reach as a regular practice than it has been at other times in my life. Having the money to pay for enough food also sure helps, as does not having anyone around me or in my life trying to control me through food or diet bullshit.

If I could turn back time, there are a couple things I would have done:
• I'd have learned to recognize sooner how much other people love to push their own eating and body issues unto other people, especially people they want to control in some way, or make feel bad in some way.
• I'd have done more work earlier to find ways of eating that worked for me. Like, for some bizarre reason, chewing food early in the day doesn't leave me feeling good, nor do heavy meals during the day. Now I know that I can work with that with juices, shakes and smoothies, and by just knoshing little meals throughout the day, rather than trying to eat two or three bigger meals each day.
• I'd have asked a healthcare provider for help with this, and recognized earlier that some of this is a form of disordered eating.
• I'd have taken more time earlier to learn ways to feel the way I did when I was very hungry. Hunger often produces a certain sharpness of mind at a given state, and because I spent so many years hungry so often, I basically learned to do a lot of creative work using those feelings. So, in learning new ways of going about things, I found I often was resistant to my own efforts because there was something about the state of energy or mind hunger produced I was attached to and didn't know how to find otherwise.

And good gravy, I'd have learned earlier -- I learned pretty early on the curve of things, but still not early enough, IMO -- that an average sized body is not a problem, nor something that anyone should be putting great efforts to "maintain." I am the smallest person in my family, but most of my family is still all pretty much average-sized, yet the women often have a lot of worries and concerns about fat, or "getting fat," which resulted in all of them spending a whole lot of time in their lives on fad diets, and wanting others on them, too. Sadly, those fad diets destroyed the long-term health in some big ways of some of those family members, so they all found out way, way too late what impact they can have. That's never been me, but that did have an impact on me that could have been mitigated earlier if I'd had the kind of information about healthy eating and a healthy relationship to food that is much more available today.

Maybe we can also all pitch in with favorite meals/ways of eating? For me, for instance, I always feel especially satisfied with a meal made mostly of fresh vegetables -- raw or steamed -- combined with legumes, nuts and berries. (I'm vegan, and dairy-allergic, so meats and dairy just aren't in my wheelhouse). Something about that kind of combo just always hits all the right physical and emotional points for me, which I imagine has something to do with that kind of meal being very complete nutritionally and also being very sensorially appealing per how it looks, tastes and smells. I think when something is that healthy and bright, it also just makes me feel very well cared for.