Ask Virginia: Am I Snoring Because I'm Fat?
Plus: Eating while pregnant and is it a failure to feel "too full?"
Q: I'm in the middle of my first trimester with my second baby, and for the first time in a while, my relationship with food feels truly wonky. In my first pregnancy, I was lucky to avoid experiencing any nausea or many food aversions and so my relationship with food overall felt pretty stable. I definitely did a lot of work with the feelings of restriction that came up around the foods/drinks you aren't able to have while pregnant and also to honor the increased hunger signals at all times of the day, but overall it was a season of huge growth in my intuitive eating journey and relationship with my body.
But this time around I feel both extremely hungry and very nauseous most of the time, and it's really throwing me off in my relationship with food and my body. It seems like no matter how much I try to honor my hunger and cravings freely, I still end up misjudging signals and end up overly full, overly hungry, or just dissatisfied half the time. Do you have any advice on how to give myself grace in this season while also not allowing these challenging experiences to send me backwards in all the progress I've made to find food freedom and body peace?
I think the most important thing we can do here is reframe this feeling that you end up “misjudging signals.” I can see why it feels that way when you eat something and it doesn’t sit right, and then you’re super full or super hungry or just… not happy about it afterwards. But the thing about pregnancy, especially a pregnancy with a lot of nausea, is the signals are just haywire. A food that sounds appealing in the abstract is revolting on the plate; what feels like wildly intense nausea turns out to be hunger and vice versa. There really is no getting it right. There is only survival.
Diet culture teaches us to take full responsibility for how we feel after a meal. If you feel “too full” (and how do we even define that amorphous concept?) you are supposed to interpret that as failure and plan to atone for it with a more restrained form of eating in the future. But we simply cannot always predict how our bodies will respond to a meal, and that’s especially true during pregnancy. Even if we could predict, sometimes you want to keep eating past hunger because something tastes so good, or because you need a little extra comfort. Or maybe you’re so focused on the conversation at the table and pay less attention to what you’re eating, and honestly, how delightful does that sound, to be enjoying a conversation that much? How much less fun would food be if we all ate every meal with some kind of barometer finely tuned to catch the precise moment when we reach “full enough?” I know proponents of mindful eating will defend that concept and say no, no, no, that one square of chocolate tastes all the more amazing when you take 30 minutes to fully savor it. But I can’t actually think of anything more boring. The narrative around “fullness” as a pass/fail concept turns intuitive eating into the Hunger/Fullness Diet. But, feeling full—even too full, even Thanksgiving-dinner-stuffed— is not a failure. It’s just a sensation. Sometimes, a really nice, satisfying sensation. Sometimes, an uncomfortable one. Either way, it’s temporary and your body knows what to do with the food.
We should also talk about the pregnancy-specific pressure you’re facing around food. Because our culture grades pregnant people constantly: Are you meticulously taking your prenatal vitamins? Just saying no to wine and sushi? Getting enough protein, leafy greens, prenatal yoga? Good work, Mom! We talk about “building a healthy baby” as if we’re actually assembling them like so many Mr. Potato Head toys. All of these messages about the importance of prenatal core workouts and birth plans are ostensibly about empowering women, so we feel ready and able to withstand the rigors of pregnancy, childbirth, and presumably, parenthood itself. But pretty much as soon as that line appears on the pregnancy test, they become an impossible set of standards that we use to judge each other. And there is no power there.
A better way to move through the next months of your pregnancy might be to give yourself full permission to eat what sounds good (letting go of whether it’s “balanced” or perfectly nutritious) and also full permission to not feel great afterwards. To be clear: It’s frustrating as hell that you have to feel miserable so much of the time in order to make another human. If cis men had babies, well, our entire society would be different and better but also they sure as hell would have spent $50 billion figuring out pregnancy nausea. But none of that is your fault, or your body’s fault.
And if that doesn’t help and you’re still struggling with intrusive thoughts around food, I’m also here to say, you deserve professional support. Here’s a list of anti-diet, Health At Every Size and intuitive eating providers who specialize in disordered eating recovery. Sending you good thoughts and all the Extra Toasty Cheez-Its and Diet Coke (my own personal pregnancy survival strategy).
Editor’s Note: A wise reader pointed out that the language in this post was not gender-inclusive. I have corrected “Because our culture grades pregnant women constantly” to “pregnant people,” and added the all-important “cis” to “If men had babies.” (Trans men having babies happens all the time and nobody is figuring out their pregnancy nausea!) Thank you for holding me accountable and helping me learn. —VSS