ice cream is a legitimate survival strategy
...on coping with food, fullness, and discomfort in this heat wave (plus making an "I can't deal" menu)
The past few days have brought a big heat wave through the northeast (we’re in Maine for the summer, if you missed that update!). I’ve been struggling myself with the discomfort of my body feeling like an actual air fryer, and my clients have been expressing their own difficulties with eating as they cope with being hot and exhausted.
Regardless of whether or not you have a complicated history with food, extremely hot weather can make eating feel hard.
For some folks, heat messes with their appetite and hunger cues. For others, it adds confusion to what sounds appealing, especially if the usual suspects aren’t sounding good. And for many of us, it is simply frustrating (if not downright intolerable) to cook when the temperatures are sticky and stifling.
This is not a failure of “discipline,” nor is is a sign that you don’t need to eat. This is your body trying to stay regulated in an environment that is not designed for ease.
From a physiological perspective, there are several reasons why appetite can go quiet during a heatwave.
Hot weather changes fluid needs and impacts hormones that regulate hunger and fullness — ghrelin, leptin, even cortisol. Digestive function might change. Blood gets rerouted to help you cool down instead of support the work of eating.
But on top of all that, heat affects our sleep, our mood, and our overall sense of capacity. It can make us feel sick, tired, and overwhelmed. With heightened fatigue and a stressed body, enthusiasm for food can diminish altogether.
So if eating has felt harder lately, you're not broken. You’re in a body that’s doing its best in a season that demands more than it gives.
But here’s where things get sneaky…
When appetite softens, diet culture can get louder.
You might hear the familiar whisper:
Maybe I just don’t need as much today.
I’m not really that hungry, so it’s probably fine to skip this meal.
I’ll eat something later…(and later… and later.)
You may hear others around you commenting: “it’s too hot to eat,” which only adds confusion to an already confused brain and body.
And if any part of you has ever felt like eating is something you have to earn — through hunger, performance, comparison, or productivity — this quieting of appetite can easily turn into a familiar kind of restriction.
But the truth is, like a car with a broken gas light still needs fuel, so too does a body that isn’t super inspired by eating.
In fact, our body is actually working overtime to support us when the temperatures rise — helping us regulate, hydrate, cool down, and keep going, even when everything feels slower and sweatier and harder.
Consider this: Would you advise your child or pet to skip their meals and snacks just because it’s warm? I’m guessing you wouldn’t, because most of us recognize how crucial and kind it is to feed those we love, and would never withhold that.
My original plan with this newsletter was to explain the impacts of heat on appetite, and remind you that you deserve food anyway. But something was pulling at me to go deeper, so I decided to get to the heart of the specific hardships of hot weather.
I posed this question in my Instagram stories:
“When it comes to eating in the heat, what do you struggle with the most? What is hardest?”
Here are the most common replies…
“I’m already uncomfortable in the heat, and feeling full just adds to that discomfort.”
“It's too hot to cook anything.”
“My body is confused about what it wants, so I can never figure out what to eat.”
“My hunger cues go silent.”
“Even if I’m hungry, nothing sounds satisfying to me.”
“No appetite, so I put off eating, but then I am suddenly ravenous…it’s awful.”
“I’m exhausted and sticky and annoyed, and that makes me not want to deal with food.”
“Being really hot makes me feel sick and nauseous, so food doesn’t sound appealing.”
None of these statements are failures. They’re symptoms — of heat, of fatigue, of disconnection, of a culture that’s taught us to second-guess our needs and assume that less eating is always better eating. These feelings are also deeply human. And if any of them resonate, I see you.