How to Integrate Intuitive Eating Principle 2: Honor Your Hunger

The second principle of intuitive eating is: Honor Your Hunger. If you began implementing the first principle introduced in the previous blog—reject the diet mentality—then you are ready to dive right into this concept. When you chronically diet and restrict foods or calories, you most likely expect to feel hungry at times—maybe even after eating. This just is not a sustainable way to be with food. 

When you restrict and ignore/suffer through your hunger, at some point your brain will override your attempts to not eat and you find yourself ravenously overeating. This is a biological drive to survive, we need to eat to sustain health, and when you don’t honor your hunger, you may find yourself creating dangerous patterns of overeating and possibly developing an urge to binge eat.

When you honor your hunger, you are engaging with mindful eating. Honoring your hunger requires that you are fully present while eating. Honoring your hunger requires that you pay attention to your body and its individual wants and needs. This is mindful eating as its core, being present with your food and listening to your body. When you honor your hunger, you are able to practice eating when you are hungry and tuning into to your body to determine what it truly wants and needs.  

One of the most valuable elements of mindful eating is the concept of nonjudgment. When you are eating mindfully, you continue to pay attention from moment to moment with this nonjudgmental awareness. When you don’t judge your hunger, your body or your food, you can be more fully present and in tune into your body in a deeper way. This allows you to determine—without judgment—what foods are satisfying, satiating and provide the energy, nourishment and pleasure that you deserve to receive from your food. When you practice nonjudgment of your food you allow yourself to let your food just be food.

If you have been engaging with the dieting yo-yo for a while, honoring your hunger may feel awkward, if not foreign to you at first. In my book, Wholistic Food Therapy: A Mindful Approach to Making Peace with Food, I offer the following hunger scale to help with practicing this principle. When you practice using this scale consistently to assess your hunger, you make the process of honoring your hunger feel much more doable. The more you practice tuning in, paying attention to your hunger cues and listening to your body during mindful eating, the more intuitive you become. Eventually you won’t need to consult the hunger scale, but in the beginning, it can be a very useful tool.

Hunger Scale:

0= no hunger present

1= slight hunger present

2= mild hunger, could eat a snack

3= fairly hungry, stomach may be growling, ready for a meal

4= very hungry, stomach growling, possible headache, may be getting irritable or shaky

5= beyond hungry, full on hangry

I recommend that you practice with the scale at least one time per day. When you have one meal or snack per day that you can dedicate to mindful eating you will grow in your comfort with honoring your hunger. Have a journal and writing utensil handy. Limit your distractions. Tune into your body and notice where you are on the hunger scale. Write it down along with the signs and signals your body is sending you in relation to how hungry you feel.

This feedback is so valuable and will allow you to see your own progress over time. It also allows you to identify and work through emotional and stress eating patterns. If you find that you are eating and you are not hungry, you can work through the Pause, Reflect, Release process to help change these patterns.

Practice eating slowly, mindfully, and engage all of your senses. After practicing this process daily for the week, you can review your notes and begin to see your patterns and any challenges with this principle of honoring your hunger. You will also begin to see where you are making improvements with trusting yourself, becoming more intuitive with your body, your food and more deeply in alignment with how you want to feel as you begin to make peace with food through intuitive and mindful eating practices.

How to Strengthen Your Mindset Muscle

If you have ever tried to build muscle at the gym, then you know that only lifting weights once in a while simply won’t cut it if you want to get stronger. It’s through consistency and repetition that you begin to build your muscles and feel stronger over time. The same is true for building your mental muscles related to your mindset and creating the opportunity to change your own patterns.

Think of building your mindset as if it’s strengthening your mental muscles. Each time you practice strengthening your mindset you become stronger. If you take a long break from this practice, most likely you will have to start small and rebuild one repetition at a time in order to regain your strength.

Mindset is what you focus on with determination coupled with consistently following through. Mindset is the muscle you strengthen that supports the process of change through taking consistent action. Each time you practice engaging your mindset, you become far more likely to follow through on the action steps needed to create the change you desire.

When you have a strong and focused mindset you are able to work through the mental noise and take control of the mental gymnastics that can derail you. We all have an inner self-saboteur. When your mindset muscle is strong, you’re ready to deal with that saboteur part of yourself. Through strengthening your mindset, you are prepared to remain strong in the face of the internal saboteur—usually experienced as convincing excuses— that usually arise from fear or shame.

Fear and shame are two emotions that can keep you living small, keep you feeling stuck and out of alignment with your vision for your life. The trick is that you must experience and understand these emotions, allowing you to feel and recognize the fear and/or shame and get curious about why it’s there. The shame plays off of the fear by way of reminding yourself how you maybe didn’t follow through in the past. The shame will then try to convince you that you won’t follow through based on these perceived failures from the past. This inevitably makes you feel so crummy about yourself so that you feel safer feeling the fear of change rather than taking the action YOU KNOW would move you closer to your vision. The mind is so tricky to conquer. The good news is that with consistency and practice you can have a greater understanding of your patterns and where the fear and shame are just an old narrative that you DO have the power to change.

Setting the foundation to build your mindset and strengthen your mindset muscle begins with knowing what you want and why you want it. When you can connect to your vision for your life and set goals, you have your future self to route for you and support you through the change process. The process from there really comes down to putting in the effort and using the energy of your hope for and belief in your future self to create a plan and then to take decisive action—consistently.

As always, it’s most effective for long-term sustainable change when you start small and develop your own inner trust muscle. You have to trust yourself; you have to believe in yourself. That is where you have to face—and at times wrestle with—the discomfort of any lingering experience of fear or shame. If you haven’t believed in or trusted your own abilities in the past, then it will try to come back and convince you that it won’t now either.

Setting up your plan based on your vision for your life and the goals that support your vision with action steps gives you a roadmap to follow. You want your goals and action steps to be simple, specific, doable and desirable. You build on these steps over time as you begin to trust yourself and believe that you not only can, but that you WILL follow through. For example, if you want to move more, you might begin with putting on the clothes you want to move in and wearing them for the time you want to move. The next time, wear the clothes and move for 5-10 minutes. Plan each detail such as the days you will do this and specifics of what you will do for the week. Review at the end of the week and check in with what happened when you did follow through and what happened when you didn’t. Understanding your own pitfalls, blocks and inner saboteur as well as what motivates you gives you valuable information about how to move forward. Self-reflection and self-awareness will guide your process. You can apply this process to anything you’d like to integrate, change or do.

When you do this consistently, week to week, you will be strengthening your mindset muscle, which will draw you closer to your vision for your life. If you are someone who prefers step-by-step specifics, try the going through these steps below to begin strengthening your mindset today.

1.    What do you want?

2.    Why do you want this?

3.    What will allow you to get what you want?

4.    When will you do the action that allows you get what you want?

5.    What fear or shame comes up for you around taking this action?

6.    Where can you start small and put these actions into place?

7.    Now create your plan.

8.    Now reflect on how it goes and learn from your struggles and from what motivates you.

9.    Practice, be consistent!

10. Re-evaluate.

If you go through these steps to strengthen your mindset muscle so you can align yourself with your vision for your best life, I would love to hear how it goes. If you’d like a refresher on the 10 steps to create a life you love, you can revisit the full overview HERE or go to the blog and read about each step in depth. Change is challenging and yet necessary for growth. The stronger your mindset is through the change process, the more alignment you will experience with your vision for a life you love. Practice strengthening your mindset muscle and you will feel the impact within your life in so many positive ways.

5 Morning Rituals to Set Up Your Quarantined Days For Success

For so many of us, this time of social distancing and living in quarantine has our normal routines all out of sorts. Whether you are now working from home, temporarily not working, have become a home-schooling parent or a combination of all these, any routine you once had has most likely been thrown far out the window.

I know the first week I was working solely from home I felt super out of sorts. I like the structure and routine of getting ready for work, my commute time and settling into my office for the day. Now that my commute is from one room to another and my schedule has become quite different, it’s been challenging to create a new normal. I also know that my motivation has been impacted by the uncertainty and anxiety of all that is going on and a resistance to getting used to a new routine that is hopefully just temporary.

Having a daily routine is one of the most effective ways to set yourself up for success. Typically, having a schedule and a plan creates more opportunities for feeling productive. Motivation can be different when you are away from your typical routine as well. Here are five morning rituals you can integrate right away to begin to set yourself up to ease into your day, to establish a mindset of positivity and way to embrace your “new normal.”

1.   START YOUR DAY WITH GRATITUDE

When you begin your day feeling grateful, you set yourself up for feeling positive, calm and with a mindset of abundance. When you are grateful for what you have, focus on what is going well and feel the impact of gratitude, you remain free from anxiety.

Start the day using a gratitude journal and write down two or more things you are grateful for in this moment. They can be super simple, like waking up in a warm bed, feeling grateful for someone you care about, or for your health. Anytime you find yourself anxious or feeling a sense of lack or desperation, reflect on past days from your journal and notice the impact.

If journaling is not your thing, you can wake up and start the day simply by saying “Thank You.” You can express gratitude for your food before you eat or just silently state to yourself what you are grateful for in this moment. Beginning the day with gratitude creates an attitude of receptivity, positivity and hope.

2.   USE A DAILY CENTERING PRACTICE

When you use a centering practice such a meditation, deep breathing, mindfulness, prayer or reading something inspiring, you create an opportunity to release yourself from any anxiety, stress or other mental and emotional discomfort. Whatever practice feels the most comfortable for you, dedicate 5-30 minutes to this. When you feel centered and grounded, you are more likely to feel resilient and focused throughout your day.

Simply connecting to your breath, meditating, praying or reading something inspiring creates a connection to the present moment where you are free from anxious thoughts about the future and feelings of regret about the past. When you can stay grounded, centered and focused in the present moment you create a feeling of true freedom and an opportunity for joy. Don’t we all need that at this time—and really all of the time! This is a powerful way to begin your day.

3.   MOVE YOUR BODY

Dedicating a period of time to move your body in a way that makes you feel good in the morning helps to create energy for the day. This could be something very simple, like a 10-minute full body stretch, or something more complex, like a 45-minute workout. It could also be something in-between, like a 20-minute brisk walk.

Whatever you choose, let it be something that you enjoy, that makes you feel energized and builds momentum to make it through the day. If you are used to exercising at a different time of day, still take a few minutes to stretch or get your blood flowing in the morning. When you are working from home you are less likely to get in the amount of movement you would if you were commuting to work or taking your kids to school. This extra movement first thing in the morning helps to build and grow your energy while burning off stress.

4.   CREATE YOUR ACTION PLAN

When you create a plan of action, you set yourself up for success. When you do not have a plan, you might feel more scattered and disorganized. If you have a plan you will most likely be more productive. More importantly, having a plan creates a feeling of control and mastery. During these uncertain times, many people are feeling out of control due to all of the unknowns. This anxiety is toxic and can cause stagnancy.

When you create an action plan, you provide yourself with structure. This structure allows you to feel in control as you are leading yourself to where you want to go. This plan also creates a focus and a feeling of mastery. It feels really good to check things off of your to-do list! Every time you check off an action that was completed you are sending yourself a feeling of being rewarded. This builds confidence and motivation to keep plugging away at your action plan.

5.   MINDSET VISUALIZATION 

The last ritual is mindset visualization. When you put your action plan onto paper, take a moment and visualize yourself completing each item. When you place something into your mindset you are 90% more likely to get it done. This visualization is like a pre-rehearsal; therefore, your mind will be less resistant to it once the time arrives to get it done.

As you go through each item on your action plan and really see yourself completing it, notice any resistance you experience in that moment. How will you push through and ensure that you get it done? When you tackle any possible resistance early in your day while setting your mindset, you will be astounded by how the resistance dissipates and allows you to get more done.

Try implementing these five morning rituals and see how they help impact your day. These simple tools will become a habit as you practice integrating them daily.