1. Truth: My hunger/eating schedule doesn’t fit the norm. I like a light breakfast around 5-6 am, a bigger breakfast around 9-10 am, and lunch around 2-3 pm, which means sometimes I don’t want dinner, or “dinner” is more like a snack. For a long time I forced myself to to eat on a “normal” schedule, and ended up eating when I wasn’t hungry or not eating even though I was starving because it wasn’t “time to eat,” (I also did lots of weird things where I had to earn what I ate, or what I ate was a punishment, but that’s a whole other truth).

2. Truth: I don’t need to eat as much as I used to. After decades of disordered eating, starving and stuffing myself, and then a period of crazed eating because I was finally letting myself eat and was allowed to eat whatever I wanted and after years of deprivation I was always hungry, I finally feel like my hunger is starting to even out.

3. Truth: I can feel my body. I know that this statement is so strange to some that you might wonder what it even means. What I mean is for years I denied and ignored my body. I lived my entire life in my head. My physical body was mostly an inconvenience, an irritation. I was a hungry ghost. The other day, I was walking across campus, and I realized I could actually feel my body. I was aware of it entirely — feet, legs, torso, lungs, arms, hands, all of it. I also feel where it hurts — that’s the bad news.

One wish: May we honor our hunger no matter when it comes or in what shape. May we honor our fullness, and stop when we’ve had enough. May we honor our body, giving it what it needs, feeding it and letting it rest. “Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move,” (Osho).