Eating only when hungry

I graze extensively when I’m at work. I feel like I’m constantly eating. It seems easy. I go as far as cutting bananas in half. At home I eat regular meals. I feel like it’s a lot harder at night to stay within calorie goals. I try not to eat anything until dinner. I get hungry a lot at night and I worry about going over.

I more or less eat when I'm hungry, but I also count calories. I'm not hungry all the time and, thankfully, I don't always have to remind myself to eat. I definitely don't have a specific times when I eat though, save for when my breakfast is more or less dictated by my schedule.

For example, today I ate lunch at around 1pm. Tomorrow I might eat lunch at 2 or 2:30. My window for dinner is anywhere from 5-8:30pm.

Stress and hormones affect my appetite, which is why I use mfp. My appetite never seems to match my actual needs. I'm either never hungry or starving. I'm currently 3 weeks postpartum, breastfeeding, and can eat everything in the pantry in one sitting. I count my calories to stay in a heavy range.

I only do it for breakfast, I wait to eat it until I'm a little bit hungry. For the rest of my meals, it wouldn't work. I would feel deprived if I had the calories and wanted something and didn't spend them on it, which leads to rebound overeating. I also tend to need more food and it takes longer for me to feel full if I let myself get too hungry. I eat when I'm hungry, when it's meal time, when I'm craving something, when I'm socializing, and when I just feel like munching on something. Doing it any other way would make it feel too restrictive and joyless (which never works out in my favor).

It's a balancing act and it works best for me. If I'm having a hungry day I focus on satisfying that hunger and tell my other needs "later" Sometimes I even plan a maintenance day and even that barely satisfies my hunger. If I'm having a low hunger day I eat for more than hunger and eat more hedonically, or save the calories for another day if it also happens to be a low appetite day and it would feel like a waste of calories to force myself to eat.

I'm pretty much hungry (as in happy to eat, not ravenous) at regular meal times (in the morning before work, around noon or 1, and when I have dinner, which tends to be around 9). I am often somewhat hungry before dinner (late afternoon when I planned to stay at work late used to be my danger time for mindless snacking, usually to procrastinate), but if I am I know dinner is only a few hours away so I just wait and it goes away if my mind is on something else. If I have an extra hard (from a calorie burning perspective) workout I might eat something outside my normal plan if feeling extra hungry, but generally not. I don't force myself to eat when not hungry, but that normally happens when I am sick or occasionally if I have to leave before I get hungry and then I might just skip breakfast and eat lunch earlier (and usually more for lunch). But really my appetite is pretty in tune with my regular meal times (and tends to adjust to when I normally eat).

I know it works for some, but the idea of eating based on when I'm hungry makes me think of walking around thinking "am I hungry?" "am I hungry yet?" "hmm, I might be a little hungry, am I hungry enough to eat?" or "hmm, hungry! must ditch my dinner plans later and eat right now!" All that thinking about it seems too much for me, I like just eating at mealtime (and eating less if I'm not really that hungry, maybe). I'm probably overthinking this, but then I'm prone to that, which is why the "am I hungry?" thing wouldn't work for me.