Updated: December 12, 2023
Episode 132: Why Only Eating When Hungry is Hard
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Guideline To Losing Weight
- Eat when you are hungry.
- Stop when you are satisfied.
Such an easy guideline to lose weight yet most people can’t do it.
Why is that?
There are two main reasons:
- You’ve probably been eating when you are…
- Bored
- Celebrating
- Tired
- Driving around
- At a party
- Relaxing
If you are only going to eat when physically hungry you have to learn to do all of the above WITHOUT food.
2. You fear being hungry.
- Whatever you think about hunger is going to DICTATE if you are going to wait to feel it.
In today’s podcast, I teach you all about understanding why you are eating WHEN YOU AREN’T HUNGRY. Click here to listen to Why Eating Only When Hungry is Hard.
This will make losing weight easier.
How To Control Hunger:
- Weight loss comes down to: can you be hungry.
- How do you be hungry?
- How do you stop when satisfied?
2. You have to experiment with yourself to find what works. You can’t fix anything till you know what is actually broken.
- You are not broken.
- The process is broken.
- Nothing is wrong with you.
You’re not a bad person, there are things you’ve learned that you need to relearn. This opens your mind to believe you might be able to change, that you might be able to fix it.
Stop Shaming Yourself:
Emotional eating is one of the reasons why you’re eating.
- Get out of shame mode
- Stop judging yourself so you can solve the problem.
If you’re overweight, you’re an emotional eater.
“I’m not an emotional eater, I just love food.” Love is an emotion. You’re trying to find love, entertainment, peace, happiness from what you put in your mouth.
- Look at the reasons why you’re eating and question them.People often eat when they’re lonely because they’re looking for companionship and find it within the food.They eat when they drive because they have stress and worry and the food helps them take their minds off of it.They eat at work to get through a project. They blame their boss for why they have to eat.They eat for comfort.
- People often eat when they’re lonely because they’re looking for companionship and find it within the food.
- They eat when they drive because they have stress and worry and the food helps them take their minds off of it.
- They eat at work to get through a project. They blame their boss for why they have to eat.
- They eat for comfort.
They eat to relax. This one is big for me. I had to work hard to not plan my meals to relax. I also have a habit of eating in bed. I’m working on it.
It’s been 15 years and I still have to work on it.
You have to continue to be aware of your patterns:
People feel like they’ll lose all their weight and they’ll be fixed and happy, but there will always be issues to work on.
The work doesn’t stop and that’s okay. Once you start seeing the work you have to do and the things you need to do, you almost get excited or accepting of the next thing.
You have to evaluate if certain habits are worth keeping.
Just because I still have things to work on, it doesn’t mean I’m broken. I will always be working on myself.
The moment you decide to be ashamed will be when you try to hide it. When you hide it, you can’t find the problem to solve and just feel broken overall.
Being ok with being hungry:
Some people think that if they don’t have a snack in the afternoon, they won’t get a break. It’s okay to take a break without food.
Why am I not willing to be hungry? We start thinking about our judgments or what we’re worried about.
For Kathy, she’ll often snack before coaching calls. She frequently does this to escape the thought “what if I suck?” If she skips the snack, then she has to stop and deal with the fears and anything else she’s covering up with the food.
When you’re actually hungry, dopamine (the feel-good hormones) doesn’t come into play.
The first reason why it’s so hard to eat only when you’re hungry is
- All of the emotional things we’ve tied to it.
The second reason why it’s so hard to eat only when you’re hungry is because
- We don’t have a good relationship with hunger.
Most people think about the diets that left them super hungry and deprived.
- They remember suffering when hungry.
- They also remember being hungry with a colonoscopy.
- They associate hunger with crisis situations: stuck in the hospital for hours with a loved one, working through lunch to deal with a work emergency.
Finding it hard to eat only when hungry:
This is because of…
- Emotional reasons.
- You don’t have a good relationship with hunger because it’s a miserable experience and you’re afraid to be hungry.
I have a friend that will never eat (even if hungry) if she’s dealing with negative emotions again. She waits until she can do it from a place of love. She doesn’t want to eat unless it’s from a place of truly loving herself.
You wouldn’t keep force-feeding a baby food because you love it so much. You love it so much, so you feed it appropriately.
You need to eat from your best self, from the version of you that wants to feel amazing and live amazingly. If you’re not eating from that place, ask yourself if you can wait 10 minutes to eat until you can mentally get to that place. You have to break the cycle on purpose.
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