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.

What Food Peace Looks Like

I talk a lot about making peace with food.

While you may have a sense of what I’m referring to, I thought it would be helpful to give some examples of what it actually looks like. 

You know you’ve made peace with food when…

• You stop judging your day and yourself as good or bad based on what you ate.

• You no longer feel anxious, bad or guilty about your food choices and eating behaviors.

• You don’t feel preoccupied with food and obsess over every morsel you put in your mouth.

• You stop adhering to food rules and letting diet culture dictate your eating.

• You eat whatever sounds satisfying, tastes satisfying and feels satisfying in your body.

• You no longer think you have to make up for your eating by exercising more, eating less at your next meal, or going on a cleanse or diet.

• You trust yourself to keep previously off-limits foods in your house because you’re no longer afraid you’ll lose control with them.

• You no longer feel your eating requires self-control and willpower.

• You're excited to attend social events again because you’re no longer worried you’ll blow your diet.

• You order what you truly want at restaurants rather than basing your decision on what you think you should eat or what your companions are eating.

• You stop believing you have to earn the right to eat something by exercising, skipping meals or being “good” all day.

• You no longer eat in secret because you aren’t ashamed anymore of your desires. 

• You have much more time, energy and headspace for more fulfilling, meaningful and fun things.

• You just eat and move on.

I could list more examples, but I think you get the idea. 

I encourage you to reflect on what food peace would look like for you. How would it change your life?

It's Worth It, Your Worth It
Of course, making peace with food doesn’t happen overnight. 

For most of us, the road to food peace is long, winding and rocky. 

However, no matter how bumpy, scary and challenging your journey may be, the freedom, ease and peace you’ll discover along the way are so very worth it. You're worth it.

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