‘Because Your Body Told You So’

Its great to see you again!

Welcome back to this week’s edition in healthy living and how best to take care of your temple.

Last week we discovered the importance of drinking water and all its many functions and benefits.

This week, I would like to discuss how eating in response to our body cues, goes a long way in a healthy lifestyle. The key to limiting overeating, is to reduce how many times we eat.

Reducing our meals should not be a conscious decision, but a decision we make in response to our bodies, by eating only when we are hungry.

Finding Peace With Food-Get To Know Your Body Cues

We all think we’d be happier with our bodies if we weighed less. We probably would, not necessarily because we would look better, but because we would feel better. Overeating leaves us feeling bloated, lethargic, and uncomfortable. If we paid attention to our bodies, we would be able to avoid the painful effects of overeating.

Listen To Your Body, It Knows When Your Hungry

Hunger is a nudging feeling in our midsection that indicates that it is time to eat. Whether we eat at this signal or not does not really affect us much because our body breaks down stored energy to get the fuel it needs. A few disadvantages of eating when we are not hungry are:

• Eating when already fueled
• Eating when your body does not indicate that it needs fuel or is experiencing true hunger, makes us pile on added fuel to an already filled tank which makes it just store it as access body fat. Weight gain is a result of added fuel piled on overtime.

Personally, when I was led to this concept, I did not understand how I could distinguish between being hungry and being HUNGRY!? Surely there is only one kind of hunger and this hunger happens every hour, right? However, over some time, I began to understand the difference lies in whether we are feeling really hungry or just peckish.

Below are a few tips on how we can identify true hunger:

1. You cannot miss it- hunger may come and go but it will always come back.
2. Hunger is so subtle- it is not this ravenous state where you want to eat everything in sight.
3. True hunger is not incredibly uncomfortable- it is a gentle nudging feeling. The natural signal our body gives us, like sleeping because your body needs to rest, and going to the bathroom when your body tells you need to.

Learning to eat when you are hungry is extremely important. It teaches you to condition your meal intake, but also how to listen to your body – what it needs and when it needs it. The benefits of eating when hungry are:

• You begin to genuinely enjoy and appreciate your meal.
• Makes healthy food more appealing.
• Can help you meet your health and weight loss goals.

This is a process that takes commitment and needs you to be open to applying the change in your daily routine and structure. I encourage the Reader to set realistic expectations rather than setting yourself up to fail. Start small and work your way up. Every step no matter how small is further than yesterday. I have listed a few ways that may prove to be effective in helping you track your hunger and progress:

• Compile a tracking sheet of your eating times, it will help give you an indication of when in the day your body starts to give you hunger cues.
• Determine what time you realistically expect to feel hungry.
• Assess how you feel before mealtime and see if they are any changes you may need to make.

• Do this again as often as possible until you begin to feel and see the difference.

We need to be kinder to ourselves. Exploring and understanding our body’s signal is the key to taking care of our bodies. Let’s learn to listen and respond to our bodies, instead of overloading it unnecessarily.

Drop in next week as we uncover more holistic wellness approaches to living a healthy and happy life.