If You Don't Want an Apple, Are You Truly Hungry?

Have you ever heard of the “Apple Test?”

The basic idea is that if you’re truly physically hungry, you’ll happily eat an apple (or other produce—you know, something “healthy”). 

If you don’t want an apple, you’re probably not actually hungry. 

While I believe its intent is to help you decipher physical hunger from emotional hunger, the messaging behind this diet culture nonsense basically says that:

1/ you can’t trust your hunger or your desires, and

2/ if you want to eat something other than an apple, banana or carrot sticks, you’re engaging in bad behavior and ultimately a bad person.

Mistrust, Question and Judge
Diet culture messes up your relationship with food in many ways, including teaching you to mistrust, question and judge your hunger.

It sounds something like this…

• I just ate breakfast an hour ago but I’m hungry again. I shouldn’t eat so soon after a meal.

• I’m famished! I could have my lunch now but it’s not the right time to eat.

• I feel hungry but I’m probably just thirsty. I’ll have a glass of water.

• I can’t believe I’m hungry already! My appetite is out of control.

• My stomach is growling but I have to wait # hours between meals.

• I’m feeling a bit hungry, but it’s bad to snack. 

• I’m hungry but I shouldn’t eat so close to dinner. 

• What’s wrong with me? Why am I always so hungry?

• I feel hungry but I’m likely just bored.

• If I’m not hungry enough to eat an apple, I’m not truly hungry.

If any of these scenarios sound familiar, you’re not alone.

When my clients and I explore their relationship with hunger, they are often surprised to discover how much diet culture influences how they respond to their body’s hunger signals.

We Know Better Than You
Diet culture tells you that you and your body can’t be trusted, that it knows better than you do when you’re hungry, when it’s okay to eat, what’s okay to eat, and how much is okay to eat.

It makes you believe that you should only eat when you’re really hungry and if you are, you should only eat certain foods. Eating at any other time, for any other reason, is bad, excessive, and a lack of discipline and willpower.

Diet culture says that to be a “good eater,” you must adhere to its external rules instead of listening to your internal cues. 

Eating Isn’t Easy
As you may know very well, when diet culture is in charge, eating feels complicated, stressful and guilt-ridden.

You may find yourself debating every eating decision, white knuckling it until it’s the “right” time to eat, or feeling guilty when you eat at the “wrong” time or for the "wrong" reasons.

You may frequently delay eating until you’re ravenous and then, understandably, need as much food as possible as fast as possible, which usually isn’t a very satisfying experience.

Your Hunger is Valid
A big part of Intuitive Eating is rebuilding trust in yourself and your innate body wisdom. 

This includes, to the best of your ability, learning how to become more attuned to your body’s various hunger signals and honoring its nourishment needs in a timely manner—without any judgment, hesitation or second-guessing. 

Of course, in addition to diet culture, there are other factors that can interfere with your ability to hear and honor your hunger cues, such as stress, sleep deprivation, certain health conditions, medications, neurodivergence, schedule constraints, food insecurity and more.

But let’s start with the pervasive role diet culture plays and with getting clear on one very important thing: your hunger and desires are real and valid even if you don’t want to eat an apple.

How to Deal With Your Trigger Foods

Do you have any trigger foods?

Are you afraid to keep certain foods in your house because you feel like you lose control with them every time you eat them?

There is a very valid reason why some foods feel triggering.

Restriction.

If you’re like most people, your trigger foods are triggering because you are restricting them.

Natural Scarcity Response
Potato chips are a common trigger food, so let’s use them as an example.

Let’s say you love potato chips but you rarely let yourself eat them because you consider them to be a “bad” food and every time you do allow yourself to have them, you feel completely out of control with them.

When you do break down and buy a bag, you can’t stop thinking about them sitting in your cupboard and you keep returning to the kitchen all afternoon for more until the last salty crumbs are licked off your fingers. Once the bag is gone and you’re full of chips and guilt, you decide the safest thing to do is to not eat them at all.

“I can’t be trusted to have potato chips in my house! I’m never eating them again!” you proclaim to your friends who can all totally relate because, thanks to diet culture, they have trigger foods too.

But here’s the thing:

When you don’t let yourself eat potato chips on a regular basis, you create a sense of scarcity and deprivation with them.

The natural human response to scarcity and deprivation is to consume as much as possible of your restricted food when you do allow yourself to eat it.

Basically, your very wise brain is thinking “I never get potato chips therefore I must eat as much as I can right now because I don’t know if I’ll ever have access to them again.”

On top of this, if you’re telling yourself while you’re eating the chips that you shouldn’t be eating them and won’t let yourself eat them again, you are amplifying the threat of scarcity and deprivation, which will further drive you to eat as much as you can right away.

Unconditional Permission to Eat
If you want to stop feeling out of control with potato chips, you need to give yourself unconditional permission to eat all the potato chips you want whenever you want.

This means stocking your kitchen with potato chips and freely eating them with meals, between meals, for breakfast, for dessert, however you desire.

This continuous exposure to your trigger food is called habituation.

The more you eat the potato chips, the more you habituate to them.

In time, their reward value and power over you will diminish and they will become ordinary and neutral—basically, no big deal.

The goal of habituation isn’t to no longer want your trigger foods, but rather to create a trusting and satisfying relationship with them, one that’s free of fear, guilt and shame.

Understandably Feels Scary
Giving yourself unconditional permission to eat your trigger foods can, understandably, feel pretty scary.

It’s so helpful to understand that it’s completely normal to eat a lot of your trigger foods in the beginning of the habituation process because, well, you haven’t habituated to them yet.

This phase of making peace with food freaks a lot of people out, which is why it can be so helpful to get support, whether it’s from an Intuitive Eating counselor, coach, therapist or online community.

When working with my clients, we talk about various strategies that can help them with the habituation process so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming and send them running back to the land of restriction.

Once my clients start habituating to their trigger foods, they start to see that, despite what diet culture wants them to believe, they can trust themselves with any food, regardless of their history with it. And this trust and food freedom is truly profoundly liberating.

Here's what my client Jenny had so say about her experience:

"One of my biggest wins has been being able to have all types of food in my house. Before, I couldn’t have any sweets or baked goods at home otherwise I would just eat them all in one sitting. Having that stuff in my house and not bingeing on it has been a huge positive change. The day I started forgetting it was there was a big day!"

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*It’s important to note that habituation should be approached differently if you have a food-related health condition, such as lactose intolerance. Of course, you should never try to habituate to a food if you have a life-threatening allergy to it or a condition such as Celiac Disease

Why Your Eating Feels Out of Control at Night

Does your eating feel out of control at night?

If yes, you’re not alone.

Many people have shared with me that they feel like they eat “good” all day, yet come nighttime, their eating often feels “out of control.”

There are many very valid reasons why this might be. Here are a few:

1/ Undereating
Most often, feeling out of control with food at night is due to not eating enough throughout the day.

When your nourishment needs aren’t met, perhaps because you’re dieting, restricting certain foods or too busy to eat, your very wise body will do everything it can to make up for this deprivation.

You may find yourself experiencing intense cravings, feeling preoccupied with food, eating faster than usual, overriding your fullness cues and eating in a way that feels binge-like.

None of this is due to a lack of willpower or self-discipline. It’s a normal compensatory reaction; your body’s natural response to physical and psychological deprivation.

2/ Dissatisfaction
Satisfaction is an essential component of the eating experience. If you don’t experience much satisfaction from your meals and snacks, you will naturally seek more food, even if you’re not hungry.

There are many reasons why your eating may be unsatisfying, such as denying yourself what you truly want, a lack of access to the foods you desire, not eating a variety of foods, not having time to enjoy your meals and being distracted while eating.

3/ Pleasure Deficiency
One of the gifts of food is the pleasure it can provide.

As humans, we’re wired to seek pleasure thus if you don’t experience much pleasure during your daytime hours, you may find yourself turning to food at night to fill this void.

This is completely understandable, especially considering how easily accessible and instantly rewarding food can be compared to many other forms of pleasure.

4/ Revved-Up Nervous System
If your life is very busy or chaotic, you may often feel overextended and overwhelmed. The rhythmic act of eating can be very soothing and grounding. It’s a helpful way to calm your revved-up nervous system and center yourself when you feel anxious, stressed or scattered.

5/ Me Time Shortage
Whether it's with your job or your family—or both, if you spend most of your day taking care of other people’s needs, you’re likely short on me time. Enjoying some yummy food, once everyone else is tucked in or logged off, is a way to do something special just for yourself.

Very Valid Reasons
There are always very valid reasons why you do what you do with food and these are just a few of the many factors that might be at play.

By viewing your eating through the lenses of compassion and curiosity, instead of judgment and criticism, you will gain a better understanding of what needs you’re trying to take care of when your eating feels out of control at night.

It's important to also keep in mind that there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating at any time of day or night.

And, despite what our diet culture wants you to believe, it’s totally okay to eat when you’re not hungry, including eating for emotional reasons or for just pure pleasure.