Think about trying this for a day: see how many times you can make your stomach growl. Don’t eat until your stomach growls. Then eat a small amount of food (like 1/2 or 1/4 of a regular/healthy size meal). Then wait until you’re hungry again and repeat.

Most of us binge eaters have a hard time knowing when we’re truly hungry. We “feel” like eating all the time, but we don’t really ever feel full and we don’t usually wait long enough to feel hungry.

Interestingly enough, this is all learned behavior. My wife and I have new twin girls, and I can promise you they know exactly when they’re hungry and when they’re full. The signs are clear.

As we grow up we somehow lost these signals or were trained to misinterpret the signals we do receive. What worked for me though was realizing that “my stomach is growling” is a pretty good indicator that I need to eat.

Some people feel weak when they’re hunger. I feel more tired and irritable when I’m hungry, but unfortunately “tired” and “irritable” are also caused by other things. Maybe I didn’t sleep well (or enough). Maybe my workout was difficult. Maybe my boss yelled at me. It’s important to recognize and monitor how you feel when you are hungry, but it’s also good to develop a clear signal.

Given the uncertainty of my other feelings, my signal is now “my stomach is growling”. You could enhance this further to “growled twice”, but the point is that nothing besides true physical hunger causes your stomach to growl. It’s a true sign that it’s time to eat.

I will warn you that this is probably going to be an uncomfortable experience for you for a while. Most binge eaters I know, including myself, are overly sensitive to hunger. We hate even the thought of being hunger. We eat preemptively, meaning we’ll eat a meal before we leave the house just in case we’re out shopping and get hungry. Heaven forbid we actually get hungry and have to find food on the spur of the moment? Oh the horror!

If you practice experiencing true physical hunger and then meeting your body’s needs you will slowly but surely develop healthy eating strategies that will serve you well. The next step in the process then will be to determine when you are done eating (not full, but satisfied).