Diets just don’t work! Have you ever noticed that when you are on a diet, you tend to think about food all the time. There’s a reason for that. When you fast or restrict your food intake, your body gets the message that it is starving and it will turn on all the neurological switches in your brain imploring you to eat!
That means that a binge is right around the corner. Your tendency to give in and eat is not a question of any lack of will power on your part, rather, it’s actually a biological urge that has been tapped in your body. When you’re on a diet, and your body is not getting the nutrition that it needs, your body’s signals get crossed.
Your body actually thinks that it’s being starved and a biological fuse is activated. This turns on your hunger drive and activates it at two levels, physically and psychologically. That is because our hunger drive is a mind/body connection.
According to authors, Evelyn Tribole M.S., R.D. and Elyse Resch M.S. R.D., who co-authored the book, “Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works” Here is the normal progression of how hunger manifests in the body:
Biological signals trigger the desire to eat, the brain gets the message that you are hungry. The nerve cells of appetite are located in the hypothalamus region of the brain. The brain then gets a message from the body regarding what specific type of nutrient is needed to supply the biological need, Through a complex system of chemical and neural feedback, the brain monitors the energy of each of the body’s systems. Then our brain makes specific and emphatic chemical directives as to what we should eat.
I’m going to leave the technical info to the experts. All in all, it seems that our bodies know better than the diet organizations how we can best nourish our body/mind and keep that connection as healthy as possible for a long time. If you’re interested in ditching the diets, and learning new ways of munching mindfully, visit me, The Juicy Woman.