Quick answer
Hunger is a built-in supervisor: the laborer works because his own mouth demands it, and the proverb regards the arrangement without cynicism.
Read both lines
Appetite presses a man out the door on mornings when nothing nobler would, and the sages found the mechanism good: hunger keeps the sluggard's fate at bay and turns energy into bread, asking no heroism, just response. Paul turned the same fact into policy: "If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10). God built the motivation into the body, and a man who lets his hunger drive him to honest work is cooperating with the design.
Related: Ecclesiastes 6:7 · 2 Thessalonians 3:10–12
New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved. Full copyright information. Scripture provided by API.Bible.
Go Deeper
If this verse has been used to put weight on you that it was never carrying, ask about it directly.