There are a few things in life you can’t get away from … people making racist remarks in front of you, assuming you’ll be in agreement with them… knickers that have lost all shape and elastication… and hunger.
Hunger, however, is our friend, and not something we need to run from, screaming (unlike the racist berk). We don’t need to eat in anticipation of us experiencing it. We don’t need to instantly stop what we’re doing to go and deal with it the moment it appears. In fact, we don’t need to try and stop it at all. Hunger appears, we eat, it goes away, it appears a few hours later, we eat again and it goes away again, and so on and so forth.
BUT, here’s the thing about hunger. It’s not a static, fixed thing. It’s a movable yardstick. It presents itself to you not in some kind of objective measurement (for if it did, none of us would get chunky in the first place), but based on our current self’s eating requirements.
What do I mean by that? Well, if you happen to be in a phase where nothing but 17 bowls of black bean chilli can “satisfy” you, then you won’t feel like you’ve sated your hunger until you’re shovelling into your mouth the last scraping of black beans from the bottom of bowl number 17. In other words, your hunger levels flex and contract according to what you are habitually eating. They mould themselves around you. So we can’t really take them all that seriously.
And if you want to lose weight and you start to bring down the number of bowls of chilli you’re eating, there’s going to be a period of discomfort as your body’s screaming, WAIT, HANG ON A MINUTE, WHERE IS BOWL NUMBER 17? I DEMAND BOWL NUMBER 17. I’M NOT DONE HERE. I’M NOT FINISHED. YOU BITCH, WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS … moan, wail, cry, sob, shout, scream, blackmail, insult and otherwise be horrible.
But that’s OK. Because while there will be a brief time lag between you reducing your food intake and your body re-calibrating itself to start wanting only this NEW amount, it will happen. And whatever level of eating you stop at will become the new norm. Your body won’t keep howling after 17 bowls of chilli when your new norm is to only eat one. It will start to bring up the drawbridge after one bowl, if that is the new level you have set.
So all I’m saying is, if you experience a bit of hunger every now and again while your new eating habits are bedding in, don’t panic Mr Mainwaring. As long as you are eating enough to be healthy and strong, there’s no cause for alarm. And if you want to make the process as painless as possible, go slow. Don’t go from 17 bowls of night time chilli to 1 bowl.
Hunger gets such a bad rap, like it’s so bad we should do everything we can to avoid it, and if we don’t then we must be trying to starve ourselves and be all weird – quick, somebody call the shrink, enjoying the experience of hunger means we must have gone anorexic. But it’s garbage. We SHOULD feel hunger during the day. It’s the body’s natural and gentle signal to go and find something to nibble on – but it’s a signal only. And we must retain the right to refuse to do as it says – if what it’s saying is go and load up on bowl number 17.
Because at the end of the day, you are the decision-maker in this relationship. You are the one with the benefit of logic and reasoning, and you know whether that signal to eat is for your health and well being or simply the entrails of some unhealthy eating patterns. And if you decide it is the unhealthy entrails of your current self’s crazy eating patterns then you must exert your authority in dismissing them, which you do with a swish of the mind. From ooh I want that to lol, I’m experiencing the thought “I want to eat that” which is creating the feeling of desire in me.
A big distinction, yes?
And I can assure you, you do that? It becomes easy to dissolve the feeling of desire.
See, hunger isn’t your enemy but neither is it your boss, but it’s only once you stake your claim as THE authority in town? That’s when you can you make it your friend.
Photo by fotografierende on Unsplash