this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
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Not sure what you mean by “system,” so I’m just going to answer a thing I wish someone explained to me much earlier.
Not everyone feels hunger cues, so “just eat when you’re hungry” is bad advice.
I learned about anorexia nervosa as an eating disorder in middle and high school. People worried about me because I was thin and didn’t eat a lot, but I didn’t try to stay skinny and I ate when I was hungry, so I knew I didn’t have that. Ironically, learning about EDs made me sure I didn’t have a problem.
In college I took a class that defined anorexia as “a lack of appetite,” identifying it could be a drug side effect, from stress, or just how someone’s body is. It differentiated “anorexia” from “anorexia nervosa.” That opened my eyes that I did have disordered eating, but it was from physiology, not psychology.
I trained myself how to eat enough, but I still have to be careful not to fall back into old habits since I don’t have normal hunger cues. It’s constant work that might have been easier if I started building these habits from a younger age.
I am definitely one of those people who follows the "only eat when you're hungry, and only until you aren't hungry" plan, and it's helped me lose over 100 pounds, while literally eating anything I want (in moderation), so I'm a believer.
We tend to dismiss underweight as a high-class problem that can be easily solved with a sandwich, but your perspective is a reminder to not be flippant. I still think it is sound advice for MOST people, but you have definitely made me aware of exceptions, and to be sensitive about it.
You're slender, so I doubt I'd be offering the advice to you anyway. Not that I'm going around pitching it to random fat folks I see on the street, that would be weird, and an entirely different problem.
I appreciate your openness to thinking about this differently!
As an adult, my BMI has been as low as 16.1. Stress suppresses my already-weak appetite so it’s often a factor when I’m severely underweight. People saw me meeting society’s beauty standards, but not that I was extremely unhealthy physically and mentally.
It’s been over a decade since my low and I still float around the edge of underweight BMI, but I’m much healthier now (lots of credit to my partner for keeping me eating regularly!).
I think my struggles on this side have given me a ton of empathy for people who overeat or struggle with their weight. A lot of people dismiss weight as a simple matter of willpower and can be so unkind and judgmental.
Yeah mine is a medication side effect so that's been fun to navigate. But honestly I find it better than my previous issue of eating constantly all the time and feeling like I had no control over it. Turns out I was dopamine seeking. Ugh ADHD lol.