Taming Hunger is Key

If I could assign percentages to the difficulty of making significant changes to eating habits, I would give calorie counting a 10% compared to 90% for fighting the temptation of hunger and cravings. Maybe even 5% to 95%. I think it’s because the first part is the mental part where all you have to do is use your brain. I have a pretty analytical side and like things that are structured and regulated. Keeping lists and checking things off is part of who I am. In fact, sometimes I write things down that I’ve already done, just so I can check it off.

The really tough part is the mind over matter part, as I wrote about last week. Here’s the scenario: a protein packed breakfast, fruit for a morning snack, salad for lunch and a dinner of lean meat and veggies. Most calories are accounted for, dinner dishes are washed and then it’s time for me to watch my family continue to snack. I have to smell chicken tenders or look at a piping hot pepperoni pizza. Sometimes it’s brownies or Nestle Toll House cookies. And on a night when I don’t see and smell sugary, greasy food, I have to watch footage of it on TV commercials. A person can only take so much before caving in.

Ask someone who has conquered the weight battle what their secret magic trick is and you’ll learn that it is always some variation of “eat less, exercise more.” But if that’s so simple, why is eating well so hard? The answer is hunger.

In an article by Psych Central on hunger, the author states: “In order to identify hunger, you must first understand what it is. This is not as easy as it seems. Many of you may never have let yourself experience true hunger, only a feeling of discomfort. Not knowing exactly what it was, you may have been eating past hunger for such a long time you can no longer differentiate between hunger and the feeling of anxiety, stress, boredom, or any number of other emotional or circumstantial stimuli. You haven’t allowed yourself to go without eating for a long enough period of time to have felt true hunger; you may not have experienced it since childhood.”

Now the reason it’s a challenge becomes more clear. Our body has a powerful ability to tell our brain that we NEED to eat. Logically, you know at the end of the day that you will not starve to death if you’ve consumed 1200 calories of healthy, nutritious food but your brain will use every trick in the book to convince you that you must eat more between dinner and bedtime. Once you learn that it is beneficial to go to bed “hungry” (remember, this isn’t really feeling hunger as much as unsatisfied) you will truly start to conquer your battle in letting food get the best of you. Visit my blog at www.wellnesschallege2013.com to learn about how eating the right foods can help you feel full all day long.

This week’s challenge: after dinner, stop eating for the night and learn to let yourself move past the feeling of wanting to continue to eat. As with all changes, it will get easier over time and you’ll get a great satisfaction for winning at this.