Hunger is messy and imperfect. It shows up at the wrong times, in the middle of a meeting, or when your calendar is packed. It comes when you don’t think it “should,” or when no one else around you is eating. It’s sometimes loud, sometimes quiet. It can be helpful, and it can also be frustrating—but that doesn’t make it the enemy. That makes it human.

Our bodies have a rhythm older than us, older than culture, older than the spreadsheets of rules we’ve been taught to follow. Hunger is simply asking for attention, for fuel, for care.

For so long, we’ve been taught to fight it, doubt it, silence it. But what if we flipped the script to see it as one of the clearest ways our bodies communicate what we need?

Because despite what diet culture says, hunger is honest. It doesn’t judge. It doesn’t keep score. It doesn’t care what the clock says.

Yesterday on a “live” Substack, I had the chance to talk to my wonderful friend Deb Benfield about why hunger is not something to outsmart or ignore—and how learning to listen can be an act of radical care for yourself.

We also get into childhood experiences of food shaming, reasons we might not have strong hunger cues, and ways to rebuild trust in our appetite after years of thinking it’s “too much.”

Thank you to everyone who joined our live video! These are a fun way to connect, and I hope to keep doing more of them if you enjoy tuning in.

xoxo, Abbie

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