An exhaustive guide on how the fuck to exist as a person with Color One Digestion In This Day And Age
This page is to become a definitive, all-encompassing, bible-esque work on how to function as a human being with the oft-seen-as-disastrously-primitive Digestion Type “Appetite” in Human Design.
It is not a guide on what to eat and how or why, that is not something anyone can answer for you. If at times it seems like this is exactly why I am doing, please remember that I am just one person trying to universalize my (7-year) experience as best possible using the general laws that do overwhelmingly seem, from my observation and research, to apply to all bodies somewhat.
As you can see, this page is free to read, free to print, etc. This is possible because I directly export the HTML from iA Writer and plop the resulting file straight into my webspace. The webspace and domain of course cost money. If you would like to help cover those costs, you can buy me a coffee.
If you’d like to print this out to read (don’t we all!!!), you will at some point be able to buy a pdf version for the price of €5, print-ready and pretty. If you prefer an e-reader version, that will be available too. Sign up for news here if you want to know when it’s ready!
You can leave anonymous feedback and questions here. Maybe I will update/answer future versions based on your input. (maybe not)
Last updated: 21.01.2026
Table of Contents
In the Human Design world, famously, this is “the hardest” determination one could possibly have. When I was new-ish to the Facebook discussion groups on this and other topics, people would frequently complain that they have it worst, they can’t eat anything, and I was absolutely one of them. “I’d love to trade with you haha” they/we’d say to people with Direct Light who were struggling with their determination FOR NO REASON AT ALL, they could everything they wanted after all, yes????
One thing is whatever your brain views as one thing. For me, one thing has been: sauerkraut with bacon and onions and spices and salt and butter. It’s been ground beef cooked in broth and absolutely nothing else added. It’s been a chunk of butter or four apples or a burrito with only my favorite fillings.
Most Appetite evangelists will probably say, NO, the HORROR, a processed food? well, to learn about your appetite, your body must be nourished, and sometimes that means force-feeding it by the most humane means possible. for your body to work as it’s meant, it must be strong, and to be strong, it must be fed, and to be fed adequately, it really must know what it needs, but after years of living in... society, it most likely does not know that, and until it does, sometimes one must use the tools of the enemy for one’s own gain. that means drinking a protein shake here and there when you have no specific appetite for anything else. the danger here is displacement. do not do this if you are addicted to sweet foods. get that in check first - ditch everything sweet for a week (even sweeteners), then try a piece of fruit, and see how you feel. if you are observing that you would at some point basically just live off protein shakes, no, bad sign, back off. if for a couple of days you are intensely focused and simply don’t have the TIME and muße for anything else, have at it, but have the decency to put some frozen berries in your liquid meal, eh? though of course this is a grey zone for many appetite people too. mixing dairy and plants can feel this or that way to me, too. sometimes i want it that way, sometimes i don’t.
Certain things foods or food groups grow your appetite for them at the expense of others.
Once, my son and I kept snails as pets/houseplants. When you learn about keeping these creatures alive in an indoor environment, one of the big things most experienced snail owners will impress upon you is to NOT FEED THEM CUCUMBER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Lettuce can be fed occasionally, but is almost as bad as cucumber.
Why??? Snails snack on all kinds of veggies and plant matter, no? Well, with cucumbers it is like cocaine, to snails, the internet wisecracks say. Snails find cucumber so yummy that eating anything else is seems pointless. But this is a trap for the poor snail, because, idk if you knew, but they cannot put on fat, and cucumbers contain almost nothing that nourishes them. So eating cucumber makes them 1. addicted to cucumber and 2. thus not want to eat anything else, so, logically 3. get no nourishment and, in the end, tragically, 4. die from malnourishment.
It is not quite so extreme with humans, but arguably because of that more dangerous, because it can be so subtle. The main difference is that we can put on fat as storage for bad times, which basically happens when our bodies are a. not burning any meaningful calories above what they need to stay alive, aka when we are not really doing much other than sitting or laying around (but there are exceptions) and b. when we are taking in a quality of food that is so sparse in nourishment that our bodies basically get the message that we are in famine mode and must save all the energy we can extract from the little nourishment we are getting.
(c) Esther Olschowy 2026. All rights reserved.