Allowing Hunger

One of the strategies I share with my clients who want to lose weight permanently and get healthy is allowing hunger.

For some people, they never feel much hunger because they eat or snack all the time.

They eat all day and associate a lot of joy with everything they eat.

Learning to use hunger as a tool to fuel our body is a great way to lose weight and feel in control around food.

I share how to do this and what to expect when you allow yourself to get hungry before eating.

Interested in talking to me about losing weight permanently?  I work 1:1 with women privately to lose weight in an exciting, empowering, and sustainable way.

Book a consultation HERE

Courtney

I have 2 bits of Exciting News! I have a NEW podcast called Modern Body Modern Life....here is the link to Listen...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/welcome-to-the-first-episode/id1720478442?i=1000637985103

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Courtney

Transcript

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Welcome to the Courtney Gray podcast the show for women who are ready to lose weight permanently, and love their body love the way they feel. And look, I'm going to teach you how to stop overeating and obsessing about food and your weight. So you can be more confident and empowered to then create an even bigger life. I'm life and body coach Courtney Gray. And each week, I'm going to be teaching you how losing and maintaining your ideal weight can be so much easier than it's been in the past. And by taking care of you and achieving your health goals, you will live in even more amazing life than the one you have lived so far. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast 89 allowing hunger, I cannot believe it is the last week in September next week the podcast is coming out and it's going to be October 2, I feel like this year is flying by if you are interested in working with me, I have space for a few more clients, to take them through the end of the year into the beginning of next year. Imagine where you will be in six months, if you decide to invest in yourself and in your health and in your body. And in your future. Please reach out to me if I can help you lose weight permanently in a beautiful way in a way that will really transform your whole life. It is definitely more than a diet we work on basically everything I talk to you here on the podcast about but you and I work one on one privately. And the first step would be scheduling a free consultation with me there is a link in the show notes. There's a link everywhere. There's a link on my website. And if you follow me on Instagram, there's also a link there. So reach out. I would love to meet with you over zoom and talk about how I can help you and answer any questions you might have. So today we're talking about allowing hunger. I'm laughing already. I was out to dinner with a girlfriend of mine. And she said okay, Courtney, tell me how I can lose weight permanently. But I want it to be easy. And we both just heard him laughing. I'm like, Of course you do. We all do. And she said she goes okay, like if I just did one thing, just tell me one thing to do. And so she was kind of being funny. But I was like, Okay, let's do this. And so I said, Do you feel hungry? And she's like, What are you talking about? I go do you go through your days? And do you feel hunger very often. And she at first like it was like I don't really know and had to think about it was so I said so that's probably a node we were just dying, laughing. And I said, Okay, don't eat until you're hungry. And I said, in fact, you know how hunger comes in waves. You might not know this wonderful listener, but like hunger comes in waves. And I said, allow a few waves before you eat. And she just looked at me. She goes, Oh, okay. And so do you find yourself eating often. And you don't experience hunger. A great strategy for losing weight is getting yourself to experience hunger, allowing yourself to experience hunger. And you know, I'm always talking about strategy and mindset. So we're going to dive into the mindset a little bit later in the podcast. But before I did dive in, I want to be clear about a few things. I don't believe any of us should be living in a constant state of hunger. I don't think losing weight and maintaining it means you have to be hungry all the time. I know that there's I was even watching one funny real on Instagram where these moms are talking about, you know how skinny girls are hungry all the time. I just I just disagree. And we shouldn't, we shouldn't be striving for that it isn't necessary. I don't want this podcast to send the wrong message to the wrong person. But for a lot of people, they're kind of eating all the time. They're not ever experiencing hunger. So this strategy I'm talking about might not be for you. So who is this for this strategy. This podcast really is for people who find themselves never really experiencing hunger, because they eat very often. Or when they do feel hunger. Oftentimes, they feel like it's an emergency, they feel like they have to get out of hunger very quickly. These people are usually always popping something into their mouth even like just a bite like the hair a little bit here a little bit there. I call it like hand to mouth. This podcast for is for you. If you feel like you're grazing most of the day, and you feel like you can't go very long without something even a drink unless we're talking about water. But as a society we have normalized over eating and eating constantly because food is so accessible to us. You know, it's the three meals a day and now that's been the standard For many years, and now it's three meals a day, with snacks with drinks, coffee drinks, all the drinks mixed in. And we've been conditioned to really eat all the time for every reason, grief, stress, excitement, celebration, festivity, I know, I always get the urge to eat when it's something festive. boredom, people eat their three meals a day, and then their snacks. And then there's an after meal in the evening while they're watching TV. Oh, they eat because it's breakfast time, because it's lunchtime, because it's dinnertime. Part of the problem for so many people is that their whole day revolves around the next thing they're going to put in their mouth. So if this is true for you, if you hear this and you feel like gosh, I kind of I resonate with that. It's okay. That's why you're here. And I want to offer up another way for you, I certainly don't want you to feel like if I have kind of described what you're going through that there's any shame in that, because that's really what our society caters to. It's totally normal for a lot of people. The other way that I want to offer to you is getting comfortable allowing your body to get hungry in a healthy way. So take a look at your habits, and your daily routines and be really honest with yourself, are you allowing hunger to cue you to eat. And so when we look at hunger, when we look hunger up in the dictionary, I thought this was interesting. The first thing wasn't interesting. It says a compelling need or desire for food. Like that makes sense. But then the second thing I thought was interesting. The second definition of hunger is the painful sensation caused by the need for food. I thought that was so fascinating that they called it a painful sensation, I would definitely call it uncomfortable, it doesn't feel good. Have you ever been like in a work meeting that went longer than you would have liked and you're sitting there and you feel the hunger and it doesn't feel good. But I don't know that I would call that painful. Hunger is a sensation in your body. It's your body telling you it wants fuel, your body is designed to get hungry. The human body was not designed to eat constantly. This is why we experience hunger. So our body can tell us, hey, I need some fuel. So if you're not experiencing hunger, you have the opportunity to take a break from eating and wait for hunger to come. And for a lot of people for my clients when they do this one simple, not always easy, but one simple tweak to the way they're living, they actually start losing weight right away, because they're just used to eating so often when they take that away. They're consuming less food. So now it's a simple strategy. And my hope is you will implement it today. But I want to talk about what to expect. So hunger, like I said before, and you know, I'm sure that hunk, well, I think you will know this. So like I said before hunger comes in waves, you'll feel the sensation in your stomach. But did you know if you're the kind of person that doesn't really sit with it very often, did you know that it will subside. So you'll have a wave of hunger, and it will go away after a little bit. And this is what you want. You want to let it subside. And then it will come back again. Your body's like, Hey, girl, especially if you have not been allowing hunger, you will start to feel hunger. It's like this is what I consider my body going, Hey, girl, you forgot something. Where's the food, you've been hand to Michael at hand to mouth, eating snacking all the time, where's my food. But if you just kind of say I see you, and we're going to let that roll through it will subside. And that will come again. And you will feel that it's almost kind of like a rising in your stomach. The wave will come up. Hey, girl. And so that's what they want you to do is if you're going to do this, I want you to think of it going Hey, girl, and when I say Hey, girl, it's not an emergency. It's just a reminder, hey, you're doing something different, which is a good thing, right? We're trying to do things differently. So when your hunger says, Hey, girl, you're gonna go hey, I see you. We're doing things a little differently. And we're going to allow it and you'll find that it rolls away. And when it rolls or waves away, just notice it go that is fascinating. I'm not hungry anymore. And then it'll come up again and let it just play out a little bit see if you can go longer than you would normally go before eating. So for some people, when I explained this to my clients, you they might they sometimes they hear it they Oh god you know what? It sounds so stupid. I've literally had a client say this to me. It sounds so stupid, but I never actually considered stopping the snacking and allowing myself to get hungry. I just I've just been in such a habit for whatever reason of eating often so often. Usually it's because of the way we were raised or maybe you're in an office where there's food constantly. Eat, or when you're at your house, it's just you just have gotten in the habit of constantly eating. So when I say this to you, it might not have occurred to you to allow yourself to get hungry. And so maybe you're like, Oh, this is kind of an easy tweak for me beautiful. Thanks for the tip great for others. When you decide to allow yourself to feel the hunger, it might feel like an emergency, it might feel kind of horrible. And when I say feel horrible, I don't mean painful, like the physical feeling of pain or horror, it might be more of a mental thing. The human body was designed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Allowing yourself to get hungry goes against this. So you might not only feel like it's actual pain or an actual sensation, but there might be emotions that come up. I had a client long ago that had a fear come up. Whenever she felt hunger, she would, I would say to her, how's it going, and she goes, every time I allow myself to get hungry, I actually feel scared. And I'm like, like, and I actually questioned her scared, yes, scared. And she was over eating, she was eating all the time, because she would get really anxious when she got hungry. And so we uncovered that this was tied to the fact that she didn't always have access to food growing up. She was hungry very often. And as an adult, this is why she overrate, she wanted to feel full because feeling for men safety to her. I'm taking a moment to tell you that I work privately one on one with women to help them lose weight permanently, and create a body they love. This is not a diet program. This is a customized program to teach you how to eat the way you want to eat forever. No more restriction, no more willpower, no more losing weight only to sabotage and then gain it back again. The problem is not you, we women are so hard on ourselves. And we think if we could just get motivated or more determined if we could find the right diet plan or cut out certain foods, we will lose weight and be happy. But the answer is changing your brain and how you think and feel, changing your self image and how you talk to yourself. Learning how to trust yourself. This is how you lose weight permanently. It sounds too good to be true. But I promise you it's not. The work I do with my clients is powerful, exciting and loving. And it's hard work to but the result is change forever. The women I work with are smart and successful in so many areas of their life, they just haven't been able to figure out their body. This is where I come in, head to my website to schedule a consultation. And we can talk about all the details back to the podcast. And so this was a really interesting exercise. All this came up because she was allowing herself to feel this hunger and then we coached on it. And so she said, Okay, now I'm an adult, I know I'm safe. I have an abundance of food. But I'm overweight. And I'm actually the opposite of safe because I'm now pre diabetic and she wasn't moving as well as she wanted to move. And she when she went and got bloodwork done, the numbers were not where she wanted them to be. And so she realized that wow, in trying to keep myself safe, because I didn't feel safe as a child. Now I'm actually putting myself in danger. So that's why there's so much that happens when you allow yourself to get hungry and you figure out why you're over eating in the first place. Why you're snacking all the time in the first place. You might think in the beginning, well, it's just tastes good, maybe. But when you really go deeper when you take the food away, what comes up for you. In that moment, what happens? How do you feel and why you'll uncover so much about why you eat more than what your body needs when you take the food away. So make sure when you do this, you are really curious. And you say hi, how do I feel? God? I feel like I might have a little fear coming up. Why is that? Why do I feel fear? And really start to question what's coming up for you. I had another client who started allowing herself to get hungry and she realized she felt like she was really missing out. And by taking the food away even though even though the she knew that was going to help her get to her health goals and her weight goals. She felt a little depressed and so she came to the coaching calls that I feel a little bit of depression. She had so much joy wrapped around food and when she took all the snacking away, she felt empty. Like on both levels she felt physically empty and mentally kind of void. But what she realized was she didn't want to give so much power and joy over to food. So much joy placed on eating throughout her day. She was spending so much time thinking about food and loving it on food, she felt like she even said she was I feel like I'm in love, I have a relationship with food, and it was taking the place of other things. And so I told her, I said, you're gonna have to be willing to give up a little bit of that joy and love, on food in order to love on other things and create a bigger life for yourself. And I felt this way at 1.2. I used to think about foods so much for me, it wasn't eating all the time, it was more of the eating, and then the shaming. And I would just think about what to eat what not to eat. It was I was spending so much mental space on food, I literally right now, as I'm talking to you, I have my hands on my face. Because I'm like, Oh my God, it was such a horrible place to be in. So this strategy is allowing hunger, it's very simple. You eat your meal, whatever meal you eat, and then you might as well make it a healthy one, right? Get your protein, make sure it's a healthy meal. So it's going to really satisfy and, and love your body, right. But then don't eat again until you allow yourself to get hungry. And when I say get hungry, don't just wait for that first wave of hunger. Let a few waves go by, I Googled when I was preparing for this podcast, I Googled like how long a person can go for living without eating. And it says like before your body really starts breaking down. It's like 30 days. Now I have no idea that was a literal, that was a top thing that came up in Google. But if it's 30 days, you can allow yourself to roll through some hunger for an hour or two. So remember, it comes in waves, give it a few waves, you are going to be safe, even if in that moment. What comes up for you is you don't feel safe. Remind yourself hunger is not an emergency. I'm doing something different. Why do I feel this way? Whether it's not safe, or whether it's depressed? Like why do I feel this way? And really, I would suggest journaling it out and really getting curious. I was recently at a business meeting, I think it was when I was in Nashville this year. And it was an all day meeting and the day before. So it was like four days, the day before they had in the hallway. They had a bunch of tea and coffee and all that. And then they had apples and bananas with all the different other snacks. And so I plan on like, okay, good, that's, that's what I'll eat if I get hungry. And then on the second day, there were there was no bananas and apples, there were only granola bars. And I really couldn't take time I was kind of working this meeting, so I couldn't really take time to go, you know, down to the coffee shop and find something else. And I remember being of course, bummed like where's my banana, dammit. But I thought, Okay, let's get hungry. It's totally not a problem. I can go for hours and drink some tea, and allow the rolling of hunger. And this is something that has really helped me in my life. I would rather personally I would rather allow the rolling sensation of hunger in my body than eat a granola bar. Not that the granola bar is going to do much of anything in terms of calories, but my body is not going to love a granola bar because I don't eat granola bars. So I would rather allow the rolling waves of hunger and you can too. So what happens when you decide to allow yourself to get a little hungry? really dive into what your feeling is? Do you feel panicky? Why? Why do you feel panicky? What comes up? Do you feel anxious? Why? Uncovering the why from like a loving curiosity is so powerful and be willing to do it differently for the sake of your health. And to be able to enjoy your body more and feel sexy in your body and feel like you move better. And you're going to live longer. And when you come up with that why? I feel a little panicky why? Well, I feel like I'm worried about when am I going to eat next and then you realize, well, that's a stupid thought. Of course I have food around me. I know I'm going to eat next. Why do you think you feel that way? And then you think, oh, maybe it has something to do with our childhood, you will be amazed. I know. It's kind of a joke. When it comes to therapy. It's always like, Oh, what did your mom or dad do to you know, when you think about going to a therapist, all the jokes they have about going to therapy, but it is amazing. You'll be surprised with a lot of the reasons we eat. The way we eat is based on our childhood is based on how maybe our partner eats. It's based on how we were taught to eat. So when you identify how am I feeling right now? Okay, I'm feeling a little bit anxious. I'm feeling a little panicky what comes up for you? Why do you think you feel that way? What thought Is it and it's going to be a thought like, I don't I shouldn't have to do this or Oh, this feels like I'm spending too much time thinking about food. It's funny, a lot of times people will come to me and they'll say, I don't want to think about food so much. And then when I say, okay, one of the things I want you to do is start allowing hunger. And they're like, now I'm thinking about it all the time. Yeah, we need to dive in in order to dive out. So when you come up with your why, why do you feel the way you feel? And you uncover that? Do you want to stay in the body you're at right now, because of that? Why is that? Why a good enough reason for you to stay where you're at right now? That's a great question to ask yourself. And so if you're saying, Hmm, I'm feeling a little bit anxious, like, my client did this. I'm feeling anxious. And I'm feeling I think she actually said she felt fear because she had some food insecurity growing up. She's like, okay, it makes sense. But now I don't have food insecurity, I have enough food, I am safe, I have enough money, I feel secure. Do I want to continue over eating and go down this path of not being the healthy person I want to be? Because of this insecurity from my childhood? No, her answer was no. And she could make that decision from such a clean space. That's such a powerful, aware space. And so then what happens is the next time she the hunger came up again, the next time, she went to experience hunger, and it came up again, and she goes, Oh, that's here it is, again, I'm feeling this way. Because when I was a child, I didn't always have food and that felt very scary to me. And the only time I really felt safe was when I had a full belly. And so I am trying to get myself a full belly right now. When you figure this stuff out the mindset behind why you do what you do. It is so much easier for you to move forward and make changes in your life. So do you want to stay where you are right now because of your why such a great question to ask yourself. I hope you love this podcast. I hope it was helpful to you. I know it was helpful to my friend when we were out to dinner and we talked about this. If you would like to schedule a consult with me the link is in the show notes and I can't wait to dive into all of this with you have a great Tuesday. If you are ready to lose weight and keep it off permanently, if you have tried diets and you know they don't work and you are ready for real change. I would love to have a conversation with you. I coach women privately one on one, and I'm currently offering consultations to talk about working together. click my link in the show notes or head to Courtney Gray coaching.com Or you can find me on Instagram at Courtney Gray coaching