Hunger isn’t always about food

Most people arrive at a nutrition practice with a food question and leave with a life answer. That is not a bait and switch. It is what happens when you look at appetite honestly.

Appetite is the body’s language for wanting. It shows up at the table, and it shows up everywhere else too — in ambition, in rest, in intimacy, in the urge to check your phone at 11pm when you meant to sleep. The mechanism is the same. Something in you is asking for something, and you are deciding whether to answer.

Which is why “eat less, move more” fails so reliably in high-functioning people. It is an instruction aimed at behavior, delivered to someone whose behavior is downstream of a signal they have never been taught to read.

Three questions worth sitting with

What am I actually hungry for right now? Sometimes food. Often not. The 4pm reach for something sweet is frequently a request for a break, not for glucose.

When did I last feel satisfied? Not full — satisfied. They are different states and most people stop noticing the difference somewhere in their twenties.

What have I been feeding instead? Work is a very absorbent appetite. So is achievement. They will take everything you give them and never report back that they are full.

None of this is a reason to stop being ambitious. Appetite is not a defect to be managed down. It is the engine. The question VŌRARE asks is not how to have less of it — it is where you would like it pointed.