CHAPTER 2

TRUST YOUR BODY WISDOM

Kurt began nearly every day determined to master his body.

I know I’m supposed to eat breakfast but I am not that hungry in the morning. Besides, last night was a disaster—again! The day started out fine. I had to be in to work early for an international call, so as usual, I just grabbed a large black coffee at the drive-through. My call ran long so I was running late for my next appointment. Luckily someone brought in bagels, so I ate breakfast in the car around ten o’clock. I worked through lunch and picked up another large coffee on my way to my late afternoon meeting on the other side of town. I was in a bad mood and I got a monster headache in the middle of the meeting. Needless to say, the meeting didn’t go well.

I was as grouchy and as hungry as a bear by the time I walked in the door at seven. I popped open a beer, reheated some chili, and collapsed on the couch to relax and eat my dinner in front of the TV. Things went downhill from there. I had a second bowl of chili and opened a bag of chips—big mistake! Almost a whole bag of chips and two beers later, I fell asleep with the TV still blaring. When I woke up at 2:30 and stumbled to bed, I thought, “Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

Emotional eating, yo-yo dieting, negative body image, and other influences may have disconnected you from the information your body feeds to you at all times—your body wisdom. Reconnection with this powerful source of information is crucial for resolving binge eating, responding to your needs without turning to food, and healing your relationship with your body.

It may be difficult for you to fathom the possibility that you can learn to trust yourself. That’s understandable; many of the people we’ve worked with feel that their body has betrayed them—or that they have betrayed their body. In fact, you may already know more information about nutrition, exercise, and what you “should” do to take care of your body than does the average person; after all, you’ve tried everything. But wisdom is not just knowledge. It is experience. This chapter will guide you through the process of getting back in touch with your body and learning to trust it again.

WHEN DO I WANT TO EAT?
Physical Hunger

The next four chapters are devoted to the “When” part of the Mindful Eating Cycle to help you respond mindfully whenever you feel like eating. Being in charge starts with learning to tell the difference between wanting to eat and needing to eat so you can decide how you’ll respond.

AM I HUNGRY?

The sensations of hunger and satiety are the simplest, yet most powerful tools for reconnecting yourself with your instinctive ability to know what your body needs. When you’re hungry, eating is more pleasurable and satisfying—hunger is the best seasoning! Learning to recognize hunger before you’re famished can help prevent overeating. Besides, it’s easier to stop eating when you trust that you’ll eat again when you are hungry.

Hunger is helpful because your body needs a lot less food to meet its fuel requirements than it takes to calm you down or escape from uncomfortable feelings. Think about it. If you aren’t hungry when you start eating, how do you know when to stop? The only way to feel fully satisfied with food is to eat because your body needs it. When you’re mindful of your body’s signals of satiety, you enjoy feeling comfortable instead of miserable after eating.

By relearning how to trust your body wisdom, you’ll discover your own internal guide for when, what, and how much to eat. Our goal is to help you lose your obsessions with food, dieting, and your weight without giving you a long list of rules to follow. This should come as a relief.

It may feel scary too. You may be asking yourself questions like these: “If I don’t have strict rules about eating, won’t I lose control? If an outside ‘expert’ doesn’t tell me, how will I know what to do? How will I know when to stop?”

These thoughts stem from the fear of losing control. But remember, you don’t need to be in control; you need to be in charge. As you learn to trust yourself, you’ll gain the skills and confidence to make decisions no matter what the circumstances. In other words, you’ll gradually become an expert in you. After all, it’s your body, your mind, and your life. Aren’t you the best person to make decisions about how you should eat? That starts with learning to use one of your most important tools: hunger.

Hunger Is a Primitive Instinct

Hunger and the instinctual drive to satisfy hunger are essential for survival. Hunger is a primitive yet reliable way of signaling the body’s need for food and regulating your nutritional intake. Hunger and satiety are caused by complex biological pathways, but simply put, hunger is your body’s natural way of telling you that you need fuel.

Consider a newborn baby. Within hours, she lets her caregivers know she’s hungry by crying. When she’s fed and her tummy is satisfied, her cries are soothed until she gets hungry again and the cycle repeats itself. Obviously, a baby also cries for many other reasons, but if you try to feed her (instead of changing her, holding her, or warming her), she’ll spit out the nipple and turn away from the food. Soon, her attentive caregiver learns the meaning of her different cries and tries to satisfy each of them appropriately.

As a baby grows and begins to eat solid food, she lets you know when she’s full by turning away from the spoon—or spitting the food back at you if you force the food in anyway. As a toddler, she seems to be in perpetual motion exploring her new world. She barely stops long enough to eat a handful of crackers here and a few slices of banana there. She never stops to ask the question, “Am I hungry?” yet somehow manages to eat enough to grow and maintain and thrive.

MINDFUL MOMENT: If you aren’t hungry when you start eating, how will you know when to stop?

If food is readily available and she’s able to eat when she’s hungry, she trusts she’ll get what she needs. At the same time, her body trusts that there is enough fuel around, resulting in an active metabolism that burns energy freely as needed for survival, growth, and activity. Besides, she’s too busy exploring and playing to bother thinking about food and eating until hunger tells her to.

As she grows she is gradually given more responsibility for what she eats, but she continues to use her instinctive signals to tell her when and how much to eat.

How You Lost Touch with Your Body Wisdom

Internal and external influences may have caused your natural system of regulating your food intake to go haywire. Whether you’re aware of them or not, past experiences and associations strongly affect how you eat in the present.

For example, parents want to meet their child’s basic nutritional needs, but their beliefs and customs may lead them to feed her in a way that doesn’t respect her instinctive ability to know when and how much to eat. This can set the stage for eating problems in the future.

If well-intentioned parents insist on feeding their daughter every time she cries, she learns that eating can soothe any discomfort. Once she’s old enough to sit at the table, they serve the amount of each food they think she needs because they want her to eat a balanced diet. Then they urge her to eat everything, telling her to “be a good girl and clean your plate.” This teaches the child to ignore the physical discomfort of being too full in favor of winning her parents’ approval. Sometimes pressuring children to eat certain types and amounts of food backfires, and the dinner table becomes a battleground of intense power struggles.

The child who doesn’t get dessert unless she finishes all her dinner learns that sweets are an incentive to eat more than she was hungry for. “Eat all your dinner or you don’t get dessert” translates to, “You have to overeat so I’ll reward you by giving you more to eat.” Of course, bribes work because children have a natural liking for sweets. Using certain foods to reward good behavior or as a prize for finishing their meal causes children to believe these foods are special, so they want them even more.

Children and adults may also learn to eat in response to environmental and emotional triggers. For example, have you ever suddenly felt like eating when you walked by doughnuts in the break room at work? It’s common for people to confuse this sudden urge to eat with true hunger, but environmental situations often trigger “head hunger” whether your body needs food or not. These triggers develop when certain activities, people, or places are paired with eating so often that they become linked in your mind: one automatically goes with the other.

Examples of environmental triggers include mealtimes, holidays, advertisements, entertainment, social situations, friends and family members, restaurants, and even certain rooms in your house. The abundance of highly-palatable foods in increasingly larger portions has become a significant problem for people in many cultures.

You may have also learned to use food to express, hide, or cope with your emotions. Everybody has emotional connections with food including celebrating special events, showing love, or finding comfort in Grandma’s apple pie. As one person said to me, “Food is the background music for my life.” Emotional eating becomes destructive, however, when it’s the primary way a person deals with such feelings as loneliness, boredom, anger, stress, or depression.

Dieting further disconnects you from trusting yourself and knowing what your body really needs. Ironically, many diets force you to eat on a schedule so you never get hungry—as if hunger is something to fear! Sometimes you’re forced to ignore your hunger signals in order to follow the diet rules about when to eat.

Diets can also create fear of not having enough points or calories left when you get hungry. Of course, most diets focus on what you eat, not why, so they don’t work long term. The feelings of frustration, deprivation, guilt, and failure can be so powerful that just thinking about starting another diet or weighing yourself can become triggers for overeating. Kurt had never been on a “real” diet but describes how he got disconnected from hunger and fullness.

I think it started after college. I don’t really think of myself as an emotional eater, but I played college football so I was in the habit of eating these huge meals at the training table and partying during the off-season. When I got my first sales job, I spent most of my time behind a desk, but I was still eating like I had in college. I put on some weight so I started skipping meals during the day to try to get it back under control. Now it’s easy to see that I let myself get way too hungry and then I overcompensated when I got home. It seems like such an obvious concept but somewhere along the line I guess I forgot that food is fuel. If I’m honest with myself, I’m under a lot of pressure to make my sales quotas and eating at night seems to take the pressure off for a while too.

Relearning to Respond to Hunger

Can people who are out of touch with their hunger signals begin to recognize and once again use hunger to guide their eating? Definitely! Hunger is a natural, innate tool, and the skills for using it effectively can be relearned. In fact, at times you may already be eating according to your hunger signals. This process will help you strengthen that skill. In fact, many people we’ve worked with who said they couldn’t remember what hunger felt like discovered that not only could they begin to feel hunger again, they get excited about it!

A remarkably simple but powerful way to become more mindful of your body’s cues is to pause and ask yourself, “Am I hungry?” whenever you want to eat. This important question will help you distinguish an urge to eat caused by the physical need for food from an urge to eat caused by other triggers.

What Does Hunger Feel Like?

It’s very common for people who have struggled with food to be disconnected from the physical sensations of hunger. They simply don’t recognize, pay attention to, or respond to the signals.

Perhaps you feel like you’re hungry all the time. Wanting to eat isn’t the same thing as needing to eat and it’s unlikely that your body needs food constantly. Could you be misinterpreting other physical symptoms and sensations like thirst, fatigue, or nervousness for hunger? Do you confuse emotional or environmental triggers, cravings, and appetite with hunger?

Maybe you never feel hungry. Could you be missing the signals of hunger because you don’t really remember how hunger feels or you’re too busy or distracted to notice? Have you learned to ignore hunger because of dieting? Or maybe you really aren’t hungry because you’re eating for so many other reasons.

Before reading ahead, stop and think for a moment. How do you know when you’re hungry? What does it feel like? What are all the signs your body gives you to let you know when you need to eat?

Do you recognize any of these common hunger symptoms?

•Hunger pangs

•Growling or grumbling in the stomach

•Empty or hollow feeling

•Gnawing

•Slight queasy feeling

•Weakness or loss of energy

•Trouble concentrating

•Difficulty making decisions

•Lightheadedness

•Slight headache

•Shakiness

•Irritability or crankiness

•Feeling that you must eat as soon as possible

What Causes Hunger?

What do all these symptoms have in common?

They are physical. They’re not thoughts, feelings, or cravings. To become more aware of these physical sensations, it helps to understand what causes them.

Hunger symptoms are caused by a combination of your stomach’s emptiness or fullness, your body’s need for energy, and various hormones and other substances in your body. We’ll focus on your stomach and blood sugar, however, since they cause the most recognizable symptoms.

Your stomach is composed of muscle-like tissue that squeezes food to break it apart, mix it with digestive enzymes, and move it into your intestines. When your stomach is empty, you become aware of the muscular contractions, which cause the growling or rumbling you may feel or hear when you’re hungry. You may also experience an empty or hollow feeling. Since the stomach produces small amounts of digestive acids even when there’s no food there, some people get sensations of gnawing or queasiness.

At the same time, you may notice symptoms of your blood sugar (called glucose) dropping. Your body and brain primarily use glucose from your bloodstream for energy. As your blood sugar falls, you may notice your energy level begin to dip and find it harder to concentrate and make decisions. When you’re extremely hungry, you may develop a headache or feel lightheaded and shaky.

Hunger can also trigger mood changes. Many people become irritable, impatient, cranky, or short-tempered when they’re hungry (hangry).

Hunger symptoms are initially subtle then become stronger until you reach a point when you feel you absolutely must eat. If you wait any longer you simply won’t care what you eat as long as you get something into your stomach. That’s why waiting to eat until you’re ravenous often leads to mindless food choices, overeating, and bingeing.

What Happens When You Eat?

When you eat, your digestive system breaks down and absorbs the food, causing your hunger symptoms to subside. Food and fluids fill your stomach, and as you eat or drink more, your stomach begins to stretch. You’ll begin to feel a sense of fullness, discomfort, or even pain. You may be tempted to loosen your belt or unbutton your skirt to make room for your expanding stomach.

When you eat, energy is drawn to the digestive system. That’s why your mother told you to wait for thirty minutes after you ate to go swimming. When you eat a small amount of food, you won’t even be aware of the digestive process going on. However, if you eat a large amount or heavy foods, you may notice that you feel drowsy or sluggish and it may be difficult to concentrate and be productive.

The type of food and how much you eat determines how long the digestive process takes. After the food is broken down, your body will use the energy for its activities and store any extra fuel until it’s needed. When your stomach is empty, your body is ready to process more fuel and the cycle of hunger continues.

BODY-MIND-HEART SCAN

A Body-Mind-Heart Scan will help you become fully present and aware of what is happening in this moment. We’ll focus on the Body part of the scan first because some of the sensations of hunger are subtle and can easily be missed if you’re not used to noticing them. In addition, tuning in to your body will help you identify other physical sensations and information. Remember that the purpose is awareness. Anything you feel is fine so just notice it without judging it. Try not to use judgmental terms like “terrible,” but rather descriptive terms, such as “tingling sensation,” or “burning from the base of my skull down to my shoulders.”

Please don’t just read about this scan and set it aside. When you learn a new skill, it is essential to practice it over and over until it comes naturally. Practice checking in every few hours, even when you don’t feel like eating. This will help you increase your awareness of yourself and allow you to get in touch with the hunger signals that you can easily miss when you’re distracted by your daily activities. It will also help you learn to recognize hunger before you are overly hungry and therefore have difficulty making mindful choices.

Focus your attention. When you’re near appetizing food, it may be more difficult to tell the difference between wanting to eat and needing to eat. Move away from the sight and smell of food so you can focus, calm yourself, and pay attention to what your body is telling you. To minimize mixed signals, try to move away from any place or situation you associate with eating. This might be the kitchen, dining room, break room, or even the living room, bedroom, or car if you’re in the habit of eating in any of those places. If you’re going to eat at a restaurant, do a Body-Mind-Heart Scan before you go inside. At a party, you can step outside and admire the backyard for a moment in order to tune into your signals.

Focus inward. Once you’re away from food and any food associations, find a comfortable place where you won’t be disturbed and close your eyes for a moment if possible. If you can’t get away from the food or situation, just try to tune out your surroundings for a few moments. One woman said, “God won’t mind if I add a few seconds to my mealtime prayer for a Body-Mind-Heart Scan!”

Take a few deep breaths and calm yourself. Be aware that being near food or thinking about eating might cause you to feel excited or anxious, making it more difficult to identify the signs of hunger. By taking a few calming breaths, you’ll reconnect your body and mind so that it will be easier to focus on important sensations and feelings. If your attention drifts away, gently guide yourself back to where you left off.

Body: Focus on your physical sensations. Slowly move your focus to the top of your head. It might help to visualize a ring of light moving downward around your body to help you focus on each part.

Notice your physical sensations as your attention travels over your forehead, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, jaw, throat, and neck. Does your head feel fuzzy or lightheaded? Are you aware of any tension? Discomfort? Pain? If you have discomfort or pain, can you describe it, for example, as stabbing, dull, or achy?

Proceed in this manner down your arms to your fingertips. Scan your torso, noticing your breathing and your heartbeat. Turn your awareness to your stomach by placing your fist over your upper abdomen, just below your ribcage. Picture your stomach like a balloon. It’s about the size of your fist when it’s empty and can stretch several times that size when it’s full.

Ask yourself, “Am I hungry?” What physical sensations can you identify? Are there pangs or gnawing sensations? Is there any growling or rumbling? Does your stomach feel empty, full, or even stuffed? Perhaps you’re neither hungry nor full; as a result, you don’t feel your stomach at all.

Continue to scan downward over your abdomen, hips, buttocks, legs, and down to your feet. Notice other physical sensations. Do you feel edgy, lightheaded, or weak? Are these signals coming from hunger or from something else? Are you thirsty or tired? Are you aware of any tension, discomfort, or pain elsewhere? Scan back up to your head.

Mind: Focus on your thoughts. Quite often, your thoughts will give you clues about whether or not you’re hungry. Notice whether you’re thinking something like “I deserve this.” Remember, hunger is a physical feeling that comes on gradually, not a thought that appears suddenly. If you find yourself rationalizing or justifying, “It’s been three hours since lunch so I should be hungry,” you may be looking for a reason to eat.

Heart: Focus on your feelings. What emotions are you experiencing at the moment? Let go of any negative thoughts or feelings you’re having about eating; just notice what’s there.

We’ll build on the Body-Mind-Heart Scan in future chapters but for now, use this opportunity to become more mindful of your body’s signals and start to reconnect with your inner self.

So, it’s really pretty simple (though not always easy). Whenever you feel like eating, ask yourself, “Am I hungry?” and do a Body-Mind-Heart Scan to focus on your physical sensations, thoughts, and feelings.

THE GREY AREA

ACCEPTING YOUR BODY

Recovery from binge eating is not just about healing your relationship with food. You must also heal your relationship with your body. As you learn to listen for the information your body is offering you, you’ll begin to realize that your body is not an object to be admired and adorned—or despised and neglected. It is a precious gift that deserves your attention and appreciation.

It may be difficult to imagine accepting yourself as you are right now. In our programs, we’ve worked with many people who were highly successful in their careers or personal lives, but because of their feelings toward their body, they still felt that they were somehow inadequate. They wasted a tremendous amount of energy beating themselves up for this perceived fault. When you begin to accept and even appreciate your body, you can invest your energy in building relationships, accomplishing other meaningful goals, or simply enjoying your life. After all, you only care for the things you care about. But where do you start?

Start with acceptance. Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment without judgment, including accepting your body as it is right now. You may fear that if you accept yourself as you are, you won’t make any changes. Generally, just the opposite is true. Harsh and judgmental attitudes toward yourself ultimately drive your Overeating and Binge Eating Cycles. Accepting your body as it is right now allows you to make decisions about caring for yourself in the present moment, which is after all, the only moment you have any influence over.

Live for today. There may be some things you wish to work on, but when you get caught up in body hatred, you might delay practicing self-care, waiting until you feel that your body is more deserving. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. For example, avoiding social activities and isolating yourself can lead to emptiness—a void that is filled with food. Instead of putting your life on hold until you meet some arbitrary definition of beauty, or even health, remind yourself that this is your life.

Don’t measure your self-worth. Getting on the scale is meaningless and even harmful if you allow it to define your worth and determine your mood for the day. The numbers don’t say anything about who you are and how you feel as you make changes.

Don’t be weightist. Like racism and sexism, “weightism” is bias and discrimination based on certain external attributes. Unfortunately, weightism is a form of prejudice that is still tolerated in our society. You can decrease weightism in two ways:

First, rid yourself of your own weightist thoughts. You may not even be aware that you’re having them until you notice that you feel shame about your body. Stop hurting yourself! Because these thoughts can be so damaging, work on replacing them with more realistic and compassionate messages. Substitute positive statements about body diversity. Examples of such messages include:

Bodies come in all shapes and sizes.

Health comes in all shapes and sizes.

Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.

I accept and appreciate my body.

Second, don’t buy into the weightist messages of others. Use positive self-talk and set boundaries.

If someone judges me by my weight, it says more about them than me.

Weightism is no better than racism or sexism.

My self-esteem does not depend on the opinion of others.

Keep your comments to yourself.

Accept your genetic blueprint. Our culture often promotes unrealistic and unhealthy expectations about what bodies should look like. With every disparaging glance in the mirror comes the promise of “just one more diet.” As long as you are at war with your body, it will be difficult to find peace with yourself and food. While it is important to eat a balanced diet and be physically active, genetics are a strong determinant of body size and shape.

Don’t compare yourself. For all you know, the person that you envy is naturally thin, spends an unrealistic amount of time at the gym, or perhaps even suffers from an eating disorder. Instead of trying to measure up to someone else, learn to focus on your own strengths and appreciate your own uniqueness.

Focus on function. Your body is intricately designed, capable of performing complex tasks, doing great work, getting you where you want to be, and experiencing physical pleasure. In turn, you have the ability to appreciate it and care for it so it can function optimally.

Respect your body. In place of body loathing, develop “body respect.” You don’t have to like every part of your body to respect it. Respecting your body means treating yourself with dignity, caring for your well-being, and listening to your body’s needs. Respectful body messages include:

My body deserves to be fed and taken care of.

My body deserves to be groomed and dressed nicely.

My body deserves to be touched affectionately.

My body deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

Nurture your body. Do nice things for your body such as getting a massage, using luxurious lotions, taking bubble baths, and updating your hairstyle. Treating yourself this way demonstrates that you are cared for and allows you to experience your body in more positive ways.

Dress in the here and now. Too often people continue to wear old, worn out, or outdated clothes because they are waiting for their body to reach a certain size before they buy new ones. Avoid wearing clothes that don’t fit because they will make you feel uncomfortable and overly body conscious. Try new looks and experiment with new colors and styles of clothing that flatter your present body. Don’t wait another day to develop your own personal style in clothing—and attitude.

Expect respect. Hold your head high and your shoulders back, speak in an assertive tone, and expect the respect you deserve. This body language encourages others to treat you with more respect, which in turn will help you learn to respect yourself!

If you are unable to accept and love yourself as you are now, it is unlikely that you will ever be satisfied with yourself no matter what changes you make. Instead of waiting for the body you’ve always wanted, learn to love the body you have.

(Note: Some people communicate through body size. For example, it may be used to tell other people that you are powerful and strong, or that you don’t want to be noticed or approached. This is a fairly complicated issue and one that should be explored with a counselor or therapist with the goal of learning to communicate your needs, wants, and boundaries in the most effective ways possible. Other individuals have had traumatic experiences such that they disconnected from their bodies as a way of coping, surviving, or protecting themselves from further pain or abuse. If this might be the case for you, please seek help from a therapist who is a trained trauma specialist to safely address these issues.)

HOW HUNGRY AM I?

The Hunger and Fullness Scale is a useful tool for assessing your hunger and fullness levels before, during, and after eating. It will help you identify hunger cues, observe how different types and amounts of food affect you, and recognize when the urge to eat has been triggered by something other than hunger. This scale is not intended to set strict guidelines about when you should eat; rather, it is to help you develop a greater awareness of your body’s subtle signals.

The Hunger and Fullness Scale ranges from 1 to 10. A level 1 represents ravenous—you’re so hungry you could eat this book. A level 10 means you’re so full that you’re in pain and feel sick. Remember, smaller numbers, smaller stomach; larger numbers, larger stomach.

In the middle of the scale is a level 5, which equates to being satisfied and comfortable. At a 5, you cannot feel your stomach at all. It’s neither empty nor full; it isn’t growling or feeling stretched. This may be how your stomach feels after you’ve eaten breakfast. Most people don’t want to feel sluggish in the morning, so they tend to eat light, which results in a comfortable level of satiety.

It may be challenging at first to label your hunger and fullness levels with numbers, but as you practice, it becomes second nature. Here are some descriptions to help you learn what the numbers mean.

1 Ravenous: Too hungry to care what you eat. This is a high-risk time for overeating.

2 Starving: You feel you must eat NOW!

3 Hungry: Eating would be pleasurable, but you can wait longer.

4 Hunger pangs: You’re slightly hungry; you notice your first thoughts of food.

5 Satisfied: You’re content and comfortable. You’re neither hungry nor full; you can’t feel your stomach at all.

6 Full: You can feel the food in your stomach.

7 Very full: Your stomach feels stretched and you feel sleepy and sluggish.

8 Uncomfortable: Your stomach is too full, and you wish you hadn’t eaten so much.

9 Stuffed: Your clothes feel very tight and you’re very uncomfortable.

10 Sick: You feel sick and/or you’re in pain.

It helps to develop a good mental picture of what’s happening to your stomach at these different levels of hunger and fullness.

Make a fist with your right hand. When your stomach is completely empty, it’s about that size—a level 1. Since your stomach is only about the size of your fist, it only takes a handful or two of food to fill it comfortably to a level 5.

Another way to picture your stomach is to think of a balloon. When it’s empty you’re at a 1. When you blow that first puff of air into the balloon, it fills out gently and takes its shape. That’s a 5.

As you take a deep breath and force more air into a balloon, its elastic walls begin to stretch and expand. These are levels 6 through 10. Your stomach is able to stretch to a 10 in order to hold excess food; therefore, the numbers over 5 indicate how stretched or uncomfortable your stomach feels.

MINDFUL MOMENT: Your stomach is only about the size of your fist so it only takes a handful or two of food to fill it.

If you blow in too much air, a balloon will continue to stretch and eventually pop. Fortunately stomachs rarely rupture, but most of us have eaten so much at one time or another that we’ve said, “If I eat one more bite, I will explode!” When you feel this way, you’re at a 10.

Of course, changes in blood sugar levels, energy levels, moods, and substances in the bloodstream resulting from the digestive process also signal hunger and fullness. These other clues help tell you how hungry or full you are. Kurt found the concept of hunger and fullness to be really helpful.

I used to pay more attention to fueling my car than I did my body. I wouldn’t get on the freeway for a long trip without checking to see if I needed to fill up. And I wouldn’t pull off the freeway every time I saw a gas station without looking at my fuel gauge first. The Hunger and Fullness Scale is like my own personal fuel gauge.

When Is the Best Time to Eat?

Once you’re aware of your signals, you can use the Hunger and Fullness Scale to begin to fine-tune your eating patterns. Starting in the middle, let’s work our way down the scale.

5 or higher: If you’re at a 5 or above and you want to eat or keep eating, you know something other than hunger triggered it. This is an opportunity to learn more about yourself and how you respond to your environment and your emotions. Chapters 3 and 4 cover that in more detail.

4: When your hunger level is at a 4, you’re slightly hungry and starting to think about eating. You can begin to plan for it by making sure time and food will be available when you’re ready to eat. There will be times when you’ll want to eat even though you’re only slightly hungry—for example, at a mealtime or when you won’t have another opportunity to eat later. Just keep in mind that if you’re only a little bit hungry, you need only a little bit of food.

3 or 2: The ideal time to begin eating is when you reach a 3 or 2. At this point you’re significantly hungry, so food will be pleasurable and satisfying.

1: If you put off eating or don’t notice that you’re hungry until you’re famished, you may not think as clearly or make mindful decisions about what you want to eat. You’re more likely to eat anything you can get your hands on and eat too quickly to notice when you’ve had enough. That’s why you can easily go from starving to stuffed.

Now that you’re aware of what can happen when you’re at a 1, you can slow down and think about your choices. Have a few bites of food then wait a few moments to take the edge off your hunger so you are less likely to overeat. And remember, being really hungry doesn’t mean you need a lot of food; it means you need to eat soon.

HUNGER RHYTHMS

As you begin to reconnect with hunger and satiety, you can learn to understand your personal hunger rhythms.

Hunger doesn’t follow a clock.

If you tell yourself, “I should be hungry; it’s dinnertime” or “I shouldn’t be hungry yet,” you may not be listening to your body. While it may be more convenient—or necessary—for you to eat meals at conventional times, those mealtimes don’t always coincide with your internal clock or natural hunger rhythms. Although it can be challenging, you are in charge of either adapting your meals to fit your hunger rhythms or adapting your hunger rhythms to fit your schedule. Using an awareness journal can help you figure out what works best for you.

If you find that you’re hungry between meals, you can experiment with keeping a snack on hand, moving your mealtime up, or eating more protein at the meal before. For instance, if you’re usually hungry at four in the afternoon but you want to be hungry for dinner with your family, plan a light afternoon snack so you won’t be ravenous. Since it’s not always convenient to eat when hunger tells you to, you may need to retrain yourself to be hungry around a particular time. For instance, if aren’t usually very hungry during your lunch hour, you could try eating a little more protein at breakfast so you can skip your mid-morning snack or eat less at lunch and be prepared to have a mid-afternoon snack.

Another example is breakfast. Everyone knows that breakfast is an important meal to spark your internal thermostat and give you energy. If you drink several cups of coffee and rush around all morning getting ready, your hunger signals may be suppressed or ignored. If you aren’t hungry when you first wake up, check your hunger level an hour or two later. You could also try getting up a little earlier so you can slow down to eat. Some people aren’t hungry in the morning because they eat a large or late dinner—or binge—at night. You can retrain yourself to be hungry in the morning by addressing late night eating.

Hunger may seem erratic.

Hunger comes and goes according to your body’s needs. You may feel hungry frequently one day and rarely the next. For example, many women experience wide fluctuations in their hunger throughout their menstrual cycles due to changing hormone levels. Because of your activity levels and many other factors, you simply don’t need the same type or amount of food at the same time each day.

This is contrary to the way most diets are structured and yet another reason why they usually fail. You were more likely to “cheat” when your hunger levels didn’t match the rules of whatever diet you were following. This time be your own expert by learning to understand and trust your body’s signals.

Eating small meals satisfies hunger best.

When you don’t overfill your stomach, you’ll feel light and comfortable after eating. For a visual reminder, gently make a fist then open your hand. A handful or two is about how much food it takes for your stomach to go from a level 1 or 2 to a level 5. Surprising, isn’t it, when you think about how large most serving sizes are?

Of course, when you eat a small amount of food, you’re likely to become hungry more often throughout the day. That is why so many people who eat instinctively seem to be eating all the time. This is the origin of common diet rules: “Eat six small meals a day” and “Eat every three hours.” Some experts presume that you’ll lose control of your eating if you get hungry. But now you know that exactly the opposite occurs; you’re more likely to eat in a satisfying way when you’re hungry—as long as you’re not too hungry.

Instead of using an arbitrary schedule designed by someone else, listen to your body. Observe your natural hunger rhythms and establish a consistent meal pattern that matches them. The instinctive pattern of eating smaller, more frequent meals rather than a large meal once or twice a day will level out your blood sugar and supply a consistent fuel source. As a result, you’ll experience fewer mood and energy swings.

Hunger is affected by what you eat, not just how much.

The types of nutrients and the amount of energy food contains all affect your hunger levels. Macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) are digested at different rates and cause the release of certain biochemicals. For example, protein-containing foods lead to the greatest level of satiety; foods high in fiber slow down digestion. That’s why whole grain crackers with peanut butter literally stick with you longer than plain crackers and why a palm full of broccoli affects you differently from a palm full of chocolate candy. When you’re really listening to your body, you can adjust what you eat to regulate your hunger patterns.

Hunger can’t be satisfied before it occurs.

Eating to avoid feeling hungry later at an inconvenient time is called preventive eating. Think of it this way. If you’re comfortable in a room but you put on a heavy coat because you might get cold in an hour, you’ll probably get hot and uncomfortable in the meantime. Instead, if you wait until you feel cold, the coat will do what it’s supposed to do—make you warm and keep you comfortable. Hunger works the same way. If you eat now because you might get hungry in an hour, you’ll feel full and uncomfortable. If you wait until you’re hungry to eat, you’ll feel comfortable and satisfied.

Preventive eating is sometimes a response to a fear of hunger. Perhaps there was a time in your life when you were insecure about having enough food. Or perhaps you perceive your natural feelings of hunger as unpleasant and try to avoid them. To combat this fear, assure yourself that you’ll usually be able to eat when you’re hungry and then be prepared by keeping food on hand. You’ll probably find that it works better to have a healthy, satisfying choice rather than a food that will call to you even when you’re not hungry.

Hunger can be postponed.

If food isn’t available or it’s not convenient to eat when you get hungry, your hunger may disappear and return in an hour or two. That’s because your body will turn to other fuel sources—an important survival mechanism. Keep in mind though, that if you take advantage of this and ignore hunger too often, it may backfire and cause your metabolism to slow down in order to conserve energy. Also remember that when hunger comes back, it’ll probably be even stronger.

Every urge to eat is an opportunity to become more mindful of your body’s signals and to begin to use that information to care for yourself. Kurt talked about how this shift happened for him.

I like thinking of my body like a high-performance vehicle; I wouldn’t expect my car to run on empty and my body can’t either. I’ve also become aware of how poorly I function when I over fuel my body at night. It sets off a chain reaction that is hard to break out of. But my biggest lesson is that bingeing is just another symptom of the way I’ve been running my whole life these days, and that’s got to change. I fully intend to make this high-performance vehicle last a full lifetime!