Rediscover The Satisfaction Factor of Eating

Written by Michelle Shelton

November 29,  2023

One of the national dietary guidelines for Japan states, “Make all activities pertaining to food and eating pleasurable.”  In this recommendation, the Japanese have tapped into a fundamental principle of nourishing your body. Food is meant to be pleasurable, to be enjoyed. It nourishes the body and soul. 

In contrast to these Japanese values, in America, we have embraced a very different relationship with food. Far from being pleasurable and enjoyed, for many, eating is fraught with internal chatter about what they should eat, guilt about what they did eat, and anticipation of what they will do to restrict and control what they will eat. There is so much angst over eating, food has lost much of it’s joy and, very often, the eating experience is at the center of an intese internal battle ground. 

Our obsession with weight and health has created a hyper focus on the nutritional value of food at the expense of tast and satisfaction. In fact, many of my clients have shared beliefs that if a food tastes good it must not be healthy and should be eaten with caution. This mistrust in our pleasure response creates mistrust in our body as a whole. Instead of leaning into our cues to guide us, we disconnect from and silence them. 

Another source of disconnection from pleasure may come from our western roots in puritanism, denial of self, and sacrifice. This is further compounded by our diet culture, where foods that taste good are distrusted and sometimes even feared. It’s hard to enjoy food when it comes with a heavy burden of guilt or when we believe that pleasure, in general, is bad.

In addition, lost in our busy lives, eating is often an after thought. We multitask while we are eating to save time, or eat on our way to the next thing. We are so often eating distracted, barely taking the time to sit down, let alone immerse ourselves in the eating experience. We are certainly not connected to our body and the pleasure of eating if we’re paying more attention to the tv or our phones or computers than we are to the actual taste of the food in our mouths. 

Reconnecting with the satisfaction of eating is at the very heart and core of Intuitive Eating. Disconnected, distracted, and consumed with diet culture, we ignore our natural hunger cues and become over hungry, eat until we are uncomfortably full, or eat foods we don’t enjoy because we believe they are “healthy”. This is the very opposite of intuition, and totally void of any sense of pleasure. And because it’s not enjoyable, eating in this way can drive further disconnection from your body. The way out is to reconnect to your body and physical experience, embrace self-care, reconnect with satisfaction in eating.

Fully embracing the pleasure of eating can feel scary. Fears that if it tastes good, it must not be good for you, or that if it tastes good you won’t be able to stop, can make enjoying your food difficult to embrace. The good news is, the reverse is actually true – eating for pleasure satisfies a need. Satisfaction signals that a need has been met. Once a need has been satisfied, the drive for that need ends. If you feel continually unsatisfied, it’s not because you have an insatiable desire that must be controlled. It is because there is a need still waiting to be recognized and responded to. 

Start enjoying your food again by fully tuning into your food experience. Pay attention to what sounds good to you. Then create time and space to sit down and pay full attention to your meal. Notice how the food tastes in your mouth, the flavor, the texture, the temperature. Notice the aroma and the visual appearance. Pay attention to how much you are enjoying it, and notice when your enjoyment starts to decline. This is a sign that you are reaching satisfaction. You’ve found the point where you have had enough and you can finish your meal fully satisfied.