Hunger! What in the heck is it? If you’re a woman who is struggling with dieting, most of the time you’re walking around convinced that you’re always hungry. After all, you may say, “There’s always room for more” That’s because we have become so detached from our bodies and live our lives surrounding so much drama and busyness that we’re just not aware of how all that stress affects our bodies.
The idea of eating in response to your hunger may seem absolutely ridiculous. This is because the voices in your brain may always be screaming, urging, egging you on to eat that cupcake, dive into the open bag of Cheetos, have an extra helping at dinner or supersize it at the drive thru. Over the years as your weight has gone up, you’ve probably come to think of yourself as a bottomless pit of hunger, fearing that if you wouldn’t have a diet to keep you under control, you’d lose your mind and never stop eating.
The diet organizations thrive on your fears and spend billions of dollars keeping you afraid of your hunger, urging you to fill up on foods that block your awareness of being hungry. You’ve been feeling pretty deprived. Haven’t you? And the natural reaction to deprivation is an exaggerated sense of hunger.
There are so many reasons that we have the urge to eat that have nothing to do with satisfying our physical hunger. These are some of the culprits that have been pushing your hungry buttons:
- habits or conditioning makes you think that you are hungry
- programmed eating times like breakfast, lunch and dinner keeps you focused on food
- seeing others eating around you
- seeing food on television, looking at pictures in magazines
- driving down the highway and passing all the fast food restaurants
- being in a supermarket surrounded by food
- smelling popcorn at the movies
These are all examples of food triggers that push you to want to eat when you’re not hungry. Diets don’t effectively teach you how to deal with the constant temptation of wanting to eat. You’re left alone to walk the tightrope between wrestling constant thoughts of food and feeling hungry all the time. Deprivation is the culprit that fools you into thinking your hunger is bottomless. It’s not. It might feel to you like you have an emptiness inside and it makes sense to fill it with food.
That emptiness you feel is actually the unresolved emotions that you are dealing with in your life. Your frayed emotions are the real driving force behind your seemingly never-ending urge to eat food. Food triggers everywhere fool you into thinking you’re always hungry. Seeing food, smelling food and thinking about food is enough to cause you to start salivating. Before you know it you’re fantasizing about eating crispy fries and double cheeseburgers whenever you pass your favorite burger stop.
Food marketers are brilliant at driving your urge to eat. With a single photo, video, commercial or radio ad, they can make you feel the urge to buy whatever they’re selling.
That’s the deprivation from dieting at work. When you don’t think you can eat something, you’ll pursue it until you get it. You may feel like it’s impossible to walk past your favorite bakery without buying a donut, piece of cake or loaf of bread. Starbuck’s? Is a Mocha Frappucino in your plan? But if you knew you could eat these foods anytime you wanted, they would not be a big deal.
It’s probably not hunger driving your urge to order a quickie. It’s your nerves on edge sending you a message letting you know your stress has gotten out of hand. that you need to deal with in order to stop the constant urge to eat. Diets don’t teach you how to handle your emotions.
Diets imply that if you had more willpower, got tougher on yourself or were more disciplined, you would lose weight. But willpower wasn’t meant to work over the long term. It’s only useful as long as we’re actively thinking about the goal reached, then our unconscious habits take over.
Our stomachs are just about as big as our fist and can only hold about 2 cups of food. After reaching capacity, our bodies send signals for us to feel satisfied. But if you are on a diet or restricting the food you eat you are likely dealing with a sense of feeling deprived and therefore your urge to eat has gained in intensity. Diets inhibit our awareness of our bodies signs.
Diets have lulled us into thinking that we must rely on the regimentation of the diet and our ability to resist our desires in order to lose weight. We’re told that we can’t trust ourselves and eat whatever we want.
If you’re a woman who’s lived your life around dieting, you probably understand the perpetually empty hungry feeling you fight on a daily basis. You may be upset with yourself because even after a big meal, you could still go for a little more to eat. You may never have felt satisfied enough to walk away from a meal without getting anxious or overstuffed. As much as you’d love to always eat your favorite cookies and treats, the idea of keeping them in the house is terrifying because you’re afraid you’ll keep eating them until they’re all gone.
Fighting a constant urge to eat, your struggle is so real. Food and restaurants are everywhere. The diet industry and your past history with food has convinced you that your hunger is bottomless.
You might be able to relate to feeling like you’re fighting a never-ending battle with food. You may feel overwhelmed by constant obsessive thoughts of food and all the things you do in the name of satisfying your urge to eat.
All the time spent watching cooking shows, looking up recipes, scrolling social media for ideas of what to eat, planning upcoming meals. You might be feeling so frustrated as you sit down to lunch and find yourself thinking of what to eat for tomorrow’s breakfast, It’s exhausting thinking planning and wanting food all the time. Isn’t it?
Wouldn’t it be nice to find an alternative to dieting?
Wouldn’t it be great to stop the food insanity, and eat the foods you love as you slowly and gently end your food and weight obsession?