According to Osho, yes: eat only when real hunger arises, not by the clock or habit. Most people eat without the body asking; they stuff food in, training the body to comply. Waiting for genuine hunger restores taste, joy, and sensitivity, and prevents overeating. Mechanical routines—like fixed mealtimes—dull awareness; responsiveness to the body’s actual signals is the right discipline, not imposed schedules.
Don’t eat because it’s mealtime; eat when your body truly feels hungry.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, does the same apply to food too?
The Quakers hold meetings that are silent. In their meetinghouse they gather at the appointed time and sit quietly. There is no preacher—because a preacher will always come prepared. Friends sit; darkness deepens. Then a happening: if someone feels moved to say something, he says it. Many times months go by and no one says anything. People sit and depart—“today there was nothing to say, so nothing was said.” Then if someone feels there is something to say, he stands up. No introduction, no identity, no formalities. He simply stands and says, “This is what I feel; this I want to say.” There is only one condition: no one should ever come prepared. What the Quakers have collected from three hundred years of such silent meetings is worth seeing—words that seem to come straight from God; from utterly ordinary people, sometimes such words arise. But the more education and the…
You can fill this belly unnaturally, even insanely. And it is not only the belly; here the belly is symbolic. Every sense has a belly; each sense has its own stomach. And you can stuff each sense beyond need. We see more than needs to be seen. We hear more than needs to be heard. The result is strange: the more we hear, the less the capacity and sensitivity to hear; therefore no satisfaction. When there is no satisfaction a vicious circle is born—you think, Perhaps if I see more I will be satisfied; if I eat more I will be satisfied. The more you eat, the more the natural hunger is suppressed and destroyed—and only it can be satisfied. When it is suppressed, destroyed, forgotten, the hunger of habit remains; it can never be satisfied, it has no end. We constantly hear that desires are endless.
You have said that you eat when the body is hungry, and you sleep when the body needs rest, but I have heard that you exactly follow the clock for your bath, food, sleep, etc. Please explain.
This has been a long experimentation. I have eaten almost all sorts of things, and then by and by I eliminated all that was not suiting me. Now whatsoever suits, I eat only that. Vivek is in trouble, because she has to cook almost the same thing every day and she cannot believe how I go on eating and go on enjoying it. Eating is okay -- but enjoying it? If it suits, you can enjoy the same thing again and again. It is not a repetition for you. If it doesn't suit, then there is trouble. It happened: One Thursday night Mulla Nasrudin came home to supper. His wife served him baked beans. He threw his plate of beans against the wall and shouted, 'I hate baked beans!' 'Mulla, I can't figure you out,' his wife said. 'Monday night you liked baked beans, Tuesday night you liked baked beans,…
Osho, I had said something about fasting. People have asked: Are you opposed to fasting? Don’t the senses grow weak through fasting, bringing detachment? Didn’t Mahavira, Buddha, and others do their sadhana through fasting? In this way, many questions have come related to fasting.
The body is an amazing mechanism. The flesh and fat stored in our body are not without purpose. If we stop eating, the body starts digesting its own fat and flesh—a kind of carnivory. We begin to eat our own meat. That is why your weight drops. If you don’t eat for a day, a pound can drop—you’ve digested a pound of your own flesh. The body has to work every day and needs to digest flesh; ordinarily you supply it from food and all goes on. If you stop eating, the stock of flesh you carry begins to be consumed. Within four or five days, the body drops the habit of taking new food and starts digesting its own tissues. You must have seen frogs—they almost come alive in the rains and spend the rest of the time almost like dead, buried in the earth; they dry up and…
Osho, here the urge to eat becomes very strong.
Yes. It is the very craving to eat that makes eating unbalanced. How much food is actually needed is put aside, and the relish of eating becomes more important. Very few of us feed the body; most of us feed the tongue. Taste is not a requirement of the body; taste is the mind’s lust. And because of taste we overeat. If you act a little consciously, this won’t happen. Be a little more aware and keep the simple remembrance that what you eat should be beneficial for the body as well as agreeable to the mind; it is not as difficult as we imagine. And if the desire to eat more arises, it is better to chew much more. Then you will eat for a longer time. After all, what pleasure can there be in eating for half an hour? For half an hour one keeps experiencing taste. So…