I hope you are well. I wanted to talk about the confusing topic of hunger. In this intuitive eating and eating disorder recovery journey, you are going to bump into all kinds of hunger.
Hunger because you need to renourish; this happens to people of all weights.
Hunger because you haven’t let yourself have you want in 10 years.
Hunger because it’s been so long since you let yourself eat when you were gently hunger; you might have only let yourself eat when you nearly pass out hungry.
Emotionally hungry.
Let’s look at this at all the levels.
On the food level, ANY restriction of food from dieting or food restriction, is going to prime your body for food seeking behaviors, like obsession and compulsive buying, shopping , researching, giving our power away to gurus.
If you have or still have even a little residual guilt over eating what you truly want or fear it will be taken from you, you might eat a little extra. It’s okay. If you can make it less a bad thing, it WILL lose it’s power.
Maybe you are hungry physically but you also may be hungry for more play, more connection, more satisfaction in your work, play or relationships. Food can take on a dual role.
What do you do about any of these hungers?
1) Remember your body’s feedback is your guidepost, not another human. If you eat to heal the deprivation of past restriction and feel fine, great! Keep going til you actually reach the place where you can take or leave just about anything.
If you don’t feel good eating cake for breakfast hungry or not, is it because you feel guilty (emotions do have an impact on your digestion; the best thing we can do is learn to be at ease with our food choices as far as digestion goes) or you feel fine about it but just have heartburn? Discern if it’s the food itself or you need a different meal mix
2) Start looking more deeply into your life about what is and isn’t working and see what feels doable to change and what you need more support in untangling what you are or aren’t ready to do.
3) So many more experiments we can do to discern what you are hungering for and how to get that need met!
From a below the foods needs level, ALL of our fear about full freedom from food and weight worries contain something.
Maybe you hunger to…..
Be seen as not just a body to form an uneducated opinion about but a SOUL who belongs here just like everyone else.
Hungry to go to the doctor and have them say, we don’t know. Instead of, just lose weight, as if that’s a magic cure for everything. All that advise does is make them feel less like a failure bc their education taught them to have an answer, not to connect with you.
Fulfill the appetite to provide something of value to this world through our parenting, our work, our talents and not be judged by what we look like or eat.
For me, my restricting and binging and perpetual flight or fight was because I was hungry for a mother who could feel deeply with me and a father who could tolerate my sensitivity and accept me. They were and are good and loving but just cannot feed those hungers so I have to allow it for myself where it IS there for me.
So as you see, our hunger are on the surface, actual primal hunger to not be restricted again and feel safe NOT to be starved again AND something deeper.
Our jobs is to decode what the eating is about so we don’t have to continuously chase diets or feel shame for binges to contain the hunger.
Bottom Line: Remember make room for primal hunger; that’s to be expected at this stage, even when you feel physically full
Our job is to decode what the eating is about so we don’t have to continuously chase diets or feel shame for binges to contain the hunger.
If you need help getting to the root of what is hungering in you, whether you eat or reject eating, I am here to help and not lose another day with food or weight worries taking your brain space or precious life.
We can chat free here at : http://meetme.so/TracyBrown
To Peaceful Eating and Satisfying all of our Hungers
Tracy
PS: here are a couple of videos that might help deepen this for you
https://www.facebook.com/tracybrownrd/videos/1879028375460847/
and
https://www.facebook.com/tracybrownrd/videos/1803940629636289/
PSS:
Next week, I really need your input. I will be discussing nutrition and need to know what your burning gentle nutrition questions and health concerns are. I will be sharing some personal and client questions and answers. If you want to share, email me at tracybrownrd@gmail.com
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