Summary

Let’s talk about hunger and how it affects weight loss. Here are some of the questions that you might be asking yourself especially when you experience hunger: 

1. What happens when you feel hungry on your plan?

2.  If you get really hungry should you listen to your body and go off your plan and eat something?

3. Or should you stick to your plan no matter what? 

4. Should you even be on a food plan in which you are hungry all the time?

5. Or is that a normal part of weight loss?

 You might be surprised at some of the answers I’m going to offer today. 

In this episode you’ll learn:

• 3 specific proven solutions for hunger

• Thoughts to think when you’re hungry

• A tool for gauging when you should eat and when you should stop

Podcast Transcript

Hi, welcome to the Mindful Shape podcast. My name is Paula Parker. This podcast is for those of you who have been struggling to reach your goal weight and you are starting to suspect that there must be more to it than just diet and exercise. There is, and it’s learning to use the power of your own mind to develop self-mastery to not only get you there, but hold onto your success. So let’s talk about hunger and how it affects weight loss. Here are some of the questions that you might be asking yourself especially when you experience hunger. For example, what happens when you feel hungry on your plan? If you get really hungry should you listen to your body and go off your plan and eat something? Or should you stick to your plan no matter what? Should you even be on a food plan in which you are hungry all the time? Or is that a normal part of weight loss? You might be surprised at some of the answers I’m going to offer today. These types of questions can cause a lot of confusion and overwhelm for people so we’re going to go through all one by one. And by the end of this episode you’re going to walk away with specific guidance on how to handle hunger now while you’re in weight loss mode and later for when you’re maintaining your weight loss and are at your natural weight.

So keep in mind, our bodies naturally want to be at a healthy weight.

So if we are overweight - we have extra fat on our bodies, it’s simply because we’ve eaten more than what we’ve needed for fuel. Our bodies have stored that extra food as fat on our bodies. 

Unless you have a medical issue, that's how it works. Most of us eat when we're not hungry and that is the main problem that causes any of us to overeat, and that is the main problem that causes any of us to be overweight. I’m going to do another episode on emotional eating because it’s such a big topic - it for sure needs a whole episode. 

But today we’re focusing on physical hunger because before you can start dealing with the emotional reasons behind why you overeat, you first need to learn how to identify physical hunger and know how to respond. 

So first, what is physical hunger?

Physical hunger is a sensation in your body. It's different from an emotion.  It's a physical feeling that starts in your body and travels to your brain unlike an emotion which starts in your brain and travels to your body.

Basically, you need to get tuned in to what is hunger in your body before you can know how much your body needs. Master Coach, Brooke Castillo created a hunger scale, which I love to share with my clients.  It helps you gauge what’s going on in your body. It has negative 10 all the way to 0 and then 0 to positive 10. The idea is zero is neutral. When we’re exploring hunger, we’re on the left side of zero, so negative 1 is the beginning of hunger. By -4 your getting very hungry and -5 is really, really hungry. Lots of physical symptoms here. 

I recommend only eating when you feel a -4 and stop when you’re at a +4. It’s really important you get to know this feeling so you can identify when you are in fact truly hungry and not eating for other reasons.

It is so important to be able to separate out what is literally physical hunger and what are the symptoms of physical hunger versus emotional hunger. 

So to play with this, here’s an experiment you can do.

Stop eating at 8pm on a Fri or Sat night and instead of having breakfast right when you get up, wait to see how and when hunger naturally manifests in your body. As an experiment, allow your body to get to -5 before you have something. If you’re worried this will cause anxiety or a binge, have a meal planned and ready to go.  It is perfectly safe and actually very healthy to allow yourself to go 10 or 12 hours without eating. Some of you may be able to go 14 hours, 15 hours, 16 hours before you really experience what it's like to be hungry. 

The longer you allow yourself to go without food, the further on the left you're going to get on that hunger scale and you're going to explore what it feels like to get physically hungry. It's an important sensation to get to know because it is for many people a fluid sensation, so it comes in waves. It comes and goes. If you are not sure if you're hungry, just wait a little bit longer and you'll be able to experience it in a way that really becomes clear. 

Hormonally, it’s really important to allow our bodies to get hungry before we eat rather than constantly having food to digest. If you are someone who eats all the time and stays, say at a zero on the hunger scale, eating anytime you’re not full. It will be more of a challenge to allow yourself to get to a -5 on the hunger scale. Most likely a lot of drama will come up and I’ll get to that in a bit. 

Now, if you can't allow yourself to get to negative 5 on the hunger scale without freaking out, then that's really going to be our first step. If this is you, your job is to work on eating that minute you are hungry - at like a (-2) and stopping the minute that you've get full (+3 or 4) . This is like baby steps for learning how to eat when you're hungry and how to stop when you're full.

It can be helpful to think of any challenge or problem as having two types of solutions that you can apply together: External (environmental) and Internal (thought work). Organizing information in this way provides structure. It gives your brain some direction - way easier to be solution-oriented vs problem-finding, which is our default when you’re using this systematic way of thinking. So if hunger is our challenge here, let’s go over the external or environmental solution first. Then we’ll talk internal. 

3 specific environmental solutions for hunger are:

1. Drink more water - especially 20 minutes before you eat. When you are hydrated you’ll be less hungry and you’ll be more satisfied with less food. This is partly because the hunger hormone ghrelin senses the weight in your stomach and will stop producing so you won’t be as hungry. 

2. Eat more vegetables period. Veggies should make up the bulk of your diet. Some of my clients have told me they have an aversion to vegetables, so if that’s you - trust me when I say you’ll learn to love them as you start eating them more (and the scale starts going down). And at first you can make them more palatable with sauces, dips and dressings. The more veggies you’re getting in, the more fibre, water and nutrition you’re getting, so it’s worth it, even if you’re pairing it with a fatty dressing. If it’s a healthy fat like avocado, coconut oil, tahini or olive oil, all the better.  In the words of registered dietician Illana muhlstein, Water first, veggies most. 

3. Get enough sleep. This also helps control ghrelin production. If you’re not getting enough rest, you’ll just be hungrier throughout the day. It’s not uncommon to eat up to 30% more food than you would if you had had a good night’s sleep the night before. 

Okay, so that’s the external. Now let’s talk about how to change your thoughts around hunger. This is where the real magic is. We do this in 2 ways: with our language and with self coaching. 

Let’s look at some of the language that’s really common.

Like, “I’m starving” or “I’m famished” As we know, what we say is meaningful. Our unconscious brain does not understand exaggeration. If at some level you believe you’re starving, you’re going to eat like it! 

So examine how you’re talking about being hungry and substitute those extreme expressions with gentler ones. So instead of saying, I’m starving. Say, I’m hungry or I could eat. Language is powerful so use it to your advantage. 

Next, take notice of any thoughts you have when you start feeling hungry.

Your mind might start serving up panicky thoughts about what to eat, or about when you’re going to be able to eat. Lots of mind drama. 

The self-coaching is reminding yourself that nothing bad is going to happen if you feel hungry. Even if for whatever reason, you can’t get food when you’re hungry and you start feeling extreme hunger - still nothing bad is going to happen except the discomfort you are experiencing in that moment. Your body is designed efficiently. It will use the excess weight on your body for fuel. That’s a great thing. 

So, manage your hunger thoughts. And if you are someone who gets really panicky about not eating. I even suggest taking the time to write out what you will tell yourself in those moments. Practice thoughts like, “It’s only hunger. Nothing is going wrong. I’ll be eating again at dinner.” 

Plan in advance, instead of being on the default thinking and behaviour that put the weight on in the first place.

This goes for thinking thoughts ahead of time and planning out your actions. For example, if you’re feeling a -2 or -3 on the hunger scale between meals, have a couple of glasses of water until it’s time to eat and you’re at a -4.

So we’ve covered what physical hunger is, how to use the hunger scale -4 +4, solutions to hunger, now let’s get back to the questions from the start. 

Q1: What happens when you feel hungry on your plan? 

Use your external and internal solutions. Drink more water and eat more vegetables. Change your language around hunger and remind yourself that you will not die if you feel hungry. Nothing is going wrong. It’s temporary and it comes and goes. It’s discomfort. That’s all. Practice your pre-planned thoughts and actions. 

Q2: If you get really hungry should you go off your plan and quote - listen to your body and eat something? Or should you stick to your plan no matter what.  Let’s say your plan is three meals a day and no snacks and you get hungry at 4pm. Should you go off your plan? 

You need to make that decision for yourself. My job is not to tell you what to do, it’s to help you make decisions. And what’s kinda great is that there are no wrong decisions. Because what makes something a wrong decision is only you deciding that it was a wrong decision. Think about that for a second. Like, there are no wrong decisions unless you decide that something was wrong. And I encourage you not to do that, because it’s unlikely to serve you in making decisions confidently in the future. So when deciding whether to go off your plan or not, I suggest you use the information we’ve covered so far. Is it true physical hunger? A -4 or -5. Could you be drinking more water? Could you be eating more vegetables? And then make the best choice at that moment. What we are aiming for here is no drama around food. So this doesn’t have to be a big deal. Having a healthy snack or deciding not too - either one is great. How your clothes are fitting and the number on the scale will be your indication of whether you’re on track or not. 

Should you even be on a food plan in which you are hungry all the time? Or is that a normal part of weight loss? 

When you begin your program, you will likely have more physical hunger than you’re used to, even when you’re eating enough to fuel your body. If you are taking in less calories than your body is accustomed to getting, you are likely to feel some hunger and that’s okay. That’s a healthy response and it’s a good thing. You want your body to get hungry because that’s a properly functioning signal. 

Use the hunger scale to help you know when it’s a suggestion that you don’t need to take seriously and when it’s truly time to have a meal. That’s also why it’s important to drink enough water and eat veggies, so you’re not hungry all the time. 

And especially if you’re used to snacking all the time, your body is conditioned to expecting that so it’s in the habit of producing ghrelin. For example if you get into the habit of having a snack at 10am, your body will start to produce ghrelin as it gets close to that time so you’ll feel hungry whether you actually need more food or not. So it’s a bit of a challenge at first while your body re-calibrates and a balancing act in figuring out how much your body actually needs, deciding how much and when you’ll eat and then managing hunger that comes up. Again, water and veggies are your friends here. 

So I hope this helps. If you still have questions in relation to hunger please feel free to DM me on instagram at mindful_shape, I would love to hear from you. And if you are interested in private coaching, you can contact me there or visit my website mindfulshape.com and fill out the contact form, telling me a little about you and what you’re going through. 

In private coaching I walk you through my process of how to work with your brain so that when you reach your natural weight, it’s effortless to stay there. If this sounds interesting to you, head over the mindfulshape.com using the link in the show notes and I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.