Intuitive Eating in Sport Series Principle 2: Honour Your Hunger

Hey hey hey! Week two here of my Inuitive Eating in Sport Series. My name is Rebekah De Couvreur. I am a Registered Dietitian specialising in sport, Intuitive Eating, and a little diabetes. My practice specializes in providing sport nutrition advice to people of all ages and abilities. I strive to provide this advice in a way that fosters food freedom, healthy relationships with food and body and overall, enjoyment.

If you are new here, pause and read my first post in the series.

Let's dive in.

The second principle of Intuitive Eating, "Honour Your Hunger," emphasizes the importance of listening to your body's natural hunger cues and responding with nourishment. In the context of sports nutrition, this principle plays a crucial role in ensuring athletes fuel their bodies adequately to maintain performance, enhance recovery, and prevent burnout.

Honouring your hunger means recognizing when your body is signaling a need for energy, whether it's before, during, or after a workout. For athletes, ignoring hunger can lead to decreased performance, lack of energy, and even injury. By responding to hunger in a mindful, compassionate way, you support your body’s energy requirements, which are heightened due to physical activity.

It's important to remember that Intuitive Eating is not the "eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full" diet. Intuitive Eating encourages recognition of all types of hunger:

Physical hunger: The actual grrr in the belly. When you feel hunger pains in the stomach or other symptoms of hunger such as fatigue, poor mood, headache or consistent thoughts of food.

Emotional Hunger: food and emotion can be strongly linked. Whether it be a special dinner out to celebrate or ice cream when you are feeling sad. Food can provide comfort, consolation, and happiness.

Taste Hunger: When you see or smell something and feel the desire to have some. Your mom made you some of your favourite cookies - you may not be physically hungry but you love them and decide to have a couple.

Practical Hunger: Eating to ensure ideal nourishment or avoid discomfort. If you are out for a long run, you aren't necessarily hungry when you fuel up, but you do it because it helps your body perform.

In sports, you experience all these types of hunger and navigating them and the advice you receive about them, can be tricky. Here are my quick tips about hunger and navigating hunger types:

• Fuel your body when it is hungry! Do not ignore it. Your body needs nourishment and it should not be ignored.

• As an athlete, there may be many times you need to fuel when you aren't physically hungry: prior to a workout, during a training session/event, or right after a workout when your appetite is down.

• If you are craving a food, enjoy it and move on... It's normal to want to enjoy foods that may not be as nutrient-rich. Cookies, ice cream, chips, etc. When we give ourselves permission to enjoy these foods when we crave them, it removes their novelty factor, allowing us to include them in your life in a balanced and nourishing way.

• It is NORMAL to enjoy foods in response to emotion. Food is so ingrained in our cultures, our traditions, our families. If you are using food to cope with emotion, this is also OKAY! If this is something that happens consistently, then it may be time to consider how to implement new tools to help you navigate difficult emotions.

By honouring hunger and eating in response to your body’s cues, athletes support both their physical and mental well-being, ensuring that they’re fueled and ready to perform at their best.

Are you ready to take the next step in your nutrition journey? Book your FREE DISCOVERY CALL or jump right in and book your FIRST SESSION.

I can't wait to meet you!

Talk soon!