How to deal with Extreme Hunger while on a Meal Plan

My brand new course Extremely Hungry to Completely Satisfied is HERE! It’s your step-by-step guide to overcoming extreme hunger and finding true satisfaction. Consisting of video presentations, lessons, worksheets, scientific resources, and TANGIBLE action steps, my course is the all-in-one resource I wish I had while navigating this terrifying part of recovery.

Before creating my course, I polled my followers on Instagram, asking what questions they had about extreme hunger. EVERY question I’ve ever received about extreme hunger, weight gain, and everything in between is answered in my Extreme Hunger Course, but one question I wanted to answer in this post specifically is: how to deal with extreme hunger while on a meal plan?

If you’re dealing with extreme hunger while you’re on a meal plan and you’re feeling hungrier than what’s on your plan, you need to eat more food than what’s on your plan.

I know this can be VERY difficult because our meal plan gives us structure, and in a sense, it pleases our eating disorder because it provides us with a safe little box…we think that if we’re staying within the “lines” of our meal plan, it ensures we don’t eat “too much”. But there’s NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH FOOD IN RECOVERY. If you are feeling like you want more food than your meal plan and don’t allow yourself, you are restricting and you are ultimately allowing your eating disorder to decide what you eat.

Your eating disorder will come up with excuses (hence the fact that you’re reading this!) such as: “my meal plan was put together by a professional” and “and it’s already way more food than I used to eat”, but here’s where you’ve gotta be brutally honest with yourself. The only way to fully recover is to allow yourself unconditional permission to eat. So, ANY kind of restriction, even if that’s disguised as strictly following a meal plan, will act as a barrier for you reaching full recovery.

One of my favorite quotes is that a box is a structure, but a structure is not a box. A meal plan has it’s time and place and can be super helpful when it comes to recovery and regaining your hunger cues…but it’s also the bare minimum! Just think about how you WANT your life to look like: do you WANT to be restricted to a meal plan? Or do you want to be able to honor your body and eat freely? That’s a decision you get to make RIGHT NOW! The ONLY way to achieve food freedom and ultimately full recovery, is to start breaking the mental rules you have set for yourself, no matter how difficult that may be.