I hear some version of this from my clients, often: “This week was such a failure because I was SO HUNGRY. Maybe because I exercised a lot this week, or had some kind of hormonal fluctuation…? But man, I was way too hungry.”
We’ve been led to believe that hunger is bad. That *stupid hunger* is the thing that derails our weight loss efforts.
Hunger is actually a loving, protective signal from your amazing body. One of our most primitive survival mechanisms, when your body cues up a hunger signal, it’s because it’s looking out for you. It wants to make sure you’re okay; fuelled sufficiently and ready to tackle the heavy work of being a human.
Now, many folks I work with come to me with “broken” hunger singling. They feel hungry all the time, rather illogically since, for the most, part we’re pretty sedentary beasts who have ready access to food at all times — most of us aren’t actually starving. So I help my clients start by getting their hunger singling to normalize, then I ask them to quietly listen, trust and love that when you feel hunger you ought to answer it. That is your JOB. The body cues up the signal, and you go out and fetch the appropriate input. This is how we get back into rhythm with our beautiful bods.
Time and again, once my clients get to that point where they’re metabolically woke and can trust their hunger signalling again (or, perhaps, for the first time ever), this fear/hatred of hunger comes creeping into the conversation. “Ugh — HUNGER! Always ruining my weight loss plans.”
I have ZERO judgment about this language by the way, because as far as I’m concerned, hating hunger has been programmed into you by diet culture. Experiencing real disappointment of your own body’s elegant signalling system. Feeling as though the only way to “succeed” is to white knuckle it and DIET HARDER has been practiced into you for generations.
Hunger is not to be feared, hated, repressed, or white-knuckled through. It’s to be trusted and answered.
Can you imagine your life with a LOVE and APPRECIATION for hunger?
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