Eating dessert when you are hungry is an extremely pleasant experience. Only allowing yourself to eat dessert after a meal (when you are full), may decrease the enjoyment of the dessert. Here are my thoughts on the matter…

Part of having a pleasant eating experience is feeling your body move from hungry to full. If you start a meal full, how does one know when to stop eating?

A couple of our God-given hormones are leptin and ghrelin. When we are hungry, there is ghrelin. When we are full, there is leptin. Our bodies were created with guideposts in place to make how much food we need not a mystery, but instead simply sensations to respond to. If corrupted by a multitude of corrupting things (possibly, objectification of women’s bodies, diets aimed at body change, health goals that have little to do with health and everything to do with becoming thinner), our hunger can move from what it was always meant to be – a helpful cue – to something it was never meant to be – a sensation to suppress.

For a personal tangent on this:

I am such a fan of the MommaStrong program (this relates, I promise). For the first 8 weeks postpartum she has a program called Hazy Days, which is a 5 minutes/day video containing gentle bracing and postures to re-integrate the body after birth. Something she encouraged throughout was, “Just respond.” I found this helpful to keep me in the moment and get less overwhelmed with the constant needs and lack of consistency that comes with a newborn. Instead of trying to figure everything out, just respond.

It is the same with hunger cues. They need to be responded to. If you do not have consistent hunger or fullness cues, reach out to work with me so together we can get them back. It is very confusing to eat blind.

Hunger and fullness help my eating experience. One of the most helpful things in my intuitive eating journey was waking up every morning and saying, “today I will eat every time I am hungry.” I didn’t say, “I will stop eating when I am full”, because if you are eating every time you are hungry…respecting fullness can naturally fall into place. The most important thing is responding to hunger.

Now, back to the title of this article, if you only eat desserts after dinner, you may be missing out on an enjoyable eating experience. I am not against having dessert after dinner (it’s a wonderful thing! I’m not talking bad about it at all), but my very favorite time to have sweeter foods is for breakfast or in the afternoon. Having cookie dough or ice cream when I am actually hungry, like between lunch and dinner, is fantastic. My intention with this post is for it to serve as an encouragement to assess any food rules that only allows dessert type foods to be eaten at the end of the day.

And, if you’ve eliminated the word “dessert” from your vocabulary and all foods are simply either meals or snacks…I support that too. That’s a great way to be.