A few months ago, I ran a little experiment on myself.
A hunger experiment.
That sounds terrible, I know. Just for a moment though, let’s remove the political heaviness from the term “hunger” and consider how tuning into it might help you make better choices.
Here’s what I mean.
I’ve been a snacker for years. My meal cadence looked something like this:
7a – Breakfast
10:30a – Mid-morning snack
12:30p – Lunch
4p – Mid-afternoon snack
6:30p – Dinner
And that worked great for about a decade.
Then I noticed something interesting…
I get a little panicky at the first sign of hunger.
As soon as I feel even the slightest bit hungry, I drop everything and reach for the snack in my bag or desk. If I don’t have a snack handy, I become a homing pigeon. I scan my surroundings for a suitable source of food and zero in on its location immediately.
My friends and family can attest to my obsession with keeping my blood sugar steady. They also know what happens when I get “hangry.” Not pretty.
For years, I DID feel terrible if I didn’t watch my blood sugar like a hawk. (Or maybe I’m just Type A/high strung sometimes? If you know me personally, I suspect you have an opinion about that. 😉
But when I stepped back and tuned into what was happening with my body NOW vs. a decade ago, I realized that my knee jerk reaction to hunger was just that – habitual. Not only was it unwarranted – 4-6 hours without food is just fine for most healthy people – but it was also causing my weight to creep up.
So I decided to cozy up to hunger.
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When I felt hungry mid-morning or mid-afternoon, I stopped reaching for a snack. Instead, I did what I teach clients to do. I took a deep breath, tuned into my body, and made a decision based on what I was REALLY feeling instead of based on habit.
My mid-morning snack disappeared and my mid-afternoon snack became a small handful of nuts. Or nothing at all.
I learned that I can go a lot longer without food than I thought. Not in a deprivation/starving myself sort of way, but in a “a little hunger isn’t going to kill me and just means that my body is doing its job and will be ready for a proper meal soon” sort of way.
And guess what? Just that small change over about two weeks caused me to drop a few pounds.
So here are my questions for you:
What food habits do YOU have that might be artifacts of an earlier version of you?
Are they still serving you and helping you reach your goals? Do they help you feel like your most vibrant and healthy you?
If not, how can you bring mindfulness to those habits to see what’s really going on?
Try keeping a food diary for a few days. Slow down when you eat and notice how you feel. When you reach for food, pause for a moment and ask yourself if you’re actually hungry. Or are you just eating out of habit?
Write it all down. You may discover just the thing that helps you shift to healthier habits.
Tell me in the comments what you discover!
xo,
