5 reasons why you´re always hungry
One of the most common things I hear from people when I tell them to start trusting their hunger is “If I trusted my hunger, I’d be eating all day long”.
And I can totally relate to that…
If you had told me 12 years ago to “just trust your hunger and follow your intuition about what & when to eat” I would have told you that you were out of your mind.
Trusting my hunger did not feel like an option, unless I wanted to turn into a sumo fighter, which wasn´t exactly on the cards at the time (nor now for that matter).
I was convinced that the only way I could remain slim, and maybe shed that extra padding around my belly, was by FIGHTING my hunger and NOT giving my body food when it was asking for it.
And to a certain extent, I was right. Because I was hungry often. Like 99% of the time.
But fighting my hunger was exhausting because it required discipline & willpower, both of which are finite resources.
I would be “really good” for a while but then, sooner or later, I would get tired, find excuses and give up the fight. I would give into my hunger, eat more than I needed, maybe even binge and then feel terrible and ask myself why I couldn’t be more disciplined when it came to food.
Sounds familiar?
The diet industry thrives on people like us because they make us believe that weight loss comes at the expense of discipline and that the reason you can’t lose weight or you put on weight is because you “lack discipline”.
But this is exactly why diets don’t work. NO ONE has enough discipline to spend their life fighting their hunger and for good reason: Your hunger is stronger than your mind.
And thank God for that! Or else we might not be here today!
You can’t fight your hunger more than you can fight your desire to breathe.
So what CAN you do?
You can reprogram your body to reduce your hunger.
Really? You can do that?
Yes you can and here is exactly how.
Take a hard look at WHAT, WHEN & WHY you eat by asking yourself the following questions:
Are the foods you are eating making you hungry?
Or are you eating foods that fill you up?
I used to mainly eat foods that were low in calories and low in fat. But in doing this I never truly felt satiated.
I was more focused on the calorie amount of foods than on their quality so I would sometimes succumb to processed foods because they were “low in calories”.
But processed foods often fail to fill us up the same way as real foods do. They can also cause a toxic form of hunger.
This is a concept developed by Dr Joel Fuhrman who was one of my lecturers at the Institute For Integrative Nutrition.
I´m always amazed to see how many people are affected by this without even realizing it.
They just think it’s normal to be hungry all the time. But it’s not. Getting rid of toxic hunger is definitely what helped me reduce and finally start trusting my hunger and it’s the same with most of my clients too.
Are you eating out of hunger or habit?
It´s 7 o´clock and this is generally the time you have your breakfast, but are you truly hungry? Or are you eating out of habit? Providing your body with fuel when it’s not asking for it can make your hunger increase because it´s easier for your body to turn food into glucose (energy) than to convert stored fat.
Are you eating because you are bored, tired or stressed?
Or because you are truly hungry? We all sometimes let our emotions guide us towards food but the more mindful of this we become, the better. In my work with clients I help them identify the emotions that make them eat and then we find ways of dealing with them that don’t involve food.
Are you eating to fill a void?
It’s common knowledge that our bodies need fuel but did you know that our minds and our souls need fuel too? Oftentimes we feel like there is something lacking in our life and instead of dealing with it, we eat.
It’s easier to eat a tub of ice cream than to deal with your lack of fulfillment in our careers or love life. When we pursue our purpose, when we are happy in our love lives and when we challenge ourselves in sports, we experience a form of nourishment that fills our hearts, our minds & our souls.
This type of “food” is what I refer to as “primary food” because it´s as important, if not more important, as the food on our plate. And this is exactly why the work I do with my clients isn’t just about the food on their plate but with helping them find nourishment for their mind and soul too.
Curious to find out how this could apply to you?
