LISTEN TO YOUR BODY – The Hunger Game: want to learn to play?

Have you ever consider the difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger?

If you think about it, these two contrasting sensations affect you in many ways.

Emotional hunger means you turn to food either to avoid uncomfortable emotions or to heighten pleasurable ones. It says you eat based on how you feel instead of what your body needs.

Examples:
– Eating for comfort out of loneliness or sadness
– Eating from boredom
– Consuming to try to soothe anxious or depressed feelings
– Eating to fill an aching heart

Physical hunger means you eat when your body signals to you that you are in fact hungry. That also means that you stop eating when you are satisfied and before you are uncomfortably full.

Examples:
– Stomach growls and gets that hallow hungry sensation
– Body feels weak, and energy goes down
– Blood sugar gets low, and you feel shaky
– You feel lightheaded or faint

So what will learn to listen to my body do for me?

It will free you from being a slave to food.

You get to feel more in control of your eating and less dependent on food to “help” your moods and emotions.

By listening to your physical hunger signals, you can determine how hungry or full you really are.
With practice, you’ll be able to pinpoint where your body is at any given moment.

By doing so, you will train yourself to stop eating BEFORE you are too full and to not turn to food when you are not actually hungry but are in fact bored, upset, anxious or depressed.

The Hunger Game

If we don’t pay attention to this essential factors, we will be victims of a vicious cycle that I call “The Hunger Game.”

It’s interesting knowing how our body-mind machine is well designed, and it’s intriguing when we can take control of our emotions. Fear, disappointment, that sense of guiltiness, insecureness, with awareness we can get to the point where we realized how to control these feelings. And it’s fun that we can get to play to ourselves.

You can decide to take control of your moods, and in this specific case, you can do it by yourself or even in a busy restaurant.

Here some example:

– See if you can be the slowest eater at the table.
Our brain plays itself an important role here. It takes around 20 minutes to have that feeling of fulfillment and satiety. If you intend to not binge, this is a simple trick you can use to fool your brain. By slowing down, you can still enjoy your delicious meal and savor all the tastes. You are also giving to all your senses a pleasurable experience plus you get to that sense of being satisfied and not requiring more food.

– Periodically check in with yourself throughout your meal and honor when you are energized and gratified by completing the meal.

– Use an end-of-meal ritual, like putting your cutlery
over your plate or ordering hot tea to symbolize the completion of the meal.

How to recognize the two types

Learning to tell the difference between emotional and physical hunger is crucial to not exceed with your meals in your everyday routine. This is a fundamental notion that during my Health Coaching sessions is always discussed. Together with my patients, we come up with a plan to help them identify the difference so they can lose weight naturally if that’s the case and double the energy.

If you think you may be engaging in emotional eating and you don’t know how to change it then click here now to schedule a time for your FREE CONSULTATION https://360healthforsuccess.com/contact/

It is never to late to take care of ourselves. Starting from our body, listening to it and having the sense of a deep connection is magical. We can avoid physical troubles, illnesses, and general disorders as soon as we start communicating with our system and receive its signals.
Having a sense of appreciation and not being hard with ourselves is the perfect mood to start caring. With professional help, if we can’t do it alone, we’ll succeed in our best Lifestyle.

In Good Health!
Annalisa