Bites & Body Love (v)
Welcome to "Bites and Body Love (v)," the podcast where your journey to full body image and food freedom begins! I'm your host, Jamie (she/her), a passionate registered dietitian nutritionist, specialist in body image and disordered eating and body image recovery, owner of an outpatient practice specializing in disordered eating recovery, and creator of the True Food and Body Image (™) Program. I'm here to provide you with a safe and inspiring space, right on your device, where we navigate towards full recovery, food freedom, positive body image, and true well-being. Together we will navigate topics that include all things body image healing, intuitive eating, food freedom, eating disorder recovery, and more! 🌟
As someone who's walked the path of disordered eating and battled through body image struggles, I intimately understand the challenges you might be facing. No matter where you are in your journey, whether you're just starting out or making strides toward recovery, this podcast is designed for you to be your companion and confidante and get to FULL recovery. So if you want to get to that finish line and put disordered eating and negative body image fully behind you to thrive not only in your relationship with food and body but in life.
Connect with me: www.jamiethedietitian.com 💕
Bites & Body Love (v)
I’m Not Hungry…Why Am I Eating? | Understanding Hunger & Intuitive Eating
Ever find yourself eating even when you’re not hungry? Today, we’re breaking down hunger - We’ll cover:
Different types of hunger: physical, sensory, and emotional
How honoring hunger supports intuitive eating and prevents overeating
The consequences of ignoring your body’s signals
Learn how to trust your body, reduce food obsession, and create peace around eating ... because hunger isn’t your enemy, it’s your guide.
My website: https://www.jamiethedietitian.com/
My Instagram: @jamieRD_
✅ Apply to work with me: https://www.jamiethedietitian.com/application-page
✅ Join my free FB community where we share regular daily advice on silencing food noise and healing from dieting, bingeing, and obsessing:
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I'm not hungry, but I'm eating, and it's important that I'm eating. Let's chat why. So I get this super often from my clients, and that is this fear of if they aren't hungry, they should not be eating. Like if they aren't physically hungry. But there are different types of hunger, and they're all equally important to listen to and honor. If you want a relationship with food and body that doesn't feel chaotic or obsessive, it's actually extremely important to honor all of these hunger, hungers, different types of hungers. So let's talk about what those are and how to honor them so that you can get to a place where you don't have all that food noise. So that type of hunger that most of you are familiar with is going to be that physical hunger. So the physical hunger is, you know, those cues, those hunger cues that we're familiar familiar with. And they could be subtle hunger cues and they could be not so subtle hunger cues. So if we're talking not so subtle hunger cues, that is like that feeling in your stomach, like you have to eat now. Uh extreme nausea, um, migraines, you know, feeling so so out of it, like those extreme. And then you have those not so subtle hunger cues that we need to listen to that are those initial hunger cues saying, hey, I need it, I need to eat so I don't get overly hungry, and so that I have energy and all the things, all the good things. And those hunger cues are going to be, you know, like uh just thinking of food. That's a hunger cue, lack of energy, um, a dip in energy, uh, your mood being off, um, brain fog, all those little cues, and they're so different for everyone. And so it's really important to listen to the physical hunger cues because that is your body sending these signals to you that it needs food in order to function at its optimal level. And it needs that energy to thrive, and that is why it's sending you those signals to feed it. That's super smart. That's super, that's something that's really good that we have just like those cues to sleep or rest or uh go pee, right? Those things that we, you know, trust a lot more than we trust with our hunger cues due to diet culture. But it's really important to listen to those because we want to give our body enough new nutrition and nutrients to be able to thrive. And so that is going, listening to that hunger cue is going to allow you to not be uh deprived and not um and for your body to function optimally. And if you're not meeting those, your body's gonna start to slow down, it's gonna slow down metabolism, it's gonna wreak havoc on your hormones, you're just not gonna be able to get through the day in in the best way. You're totally gonna feel it and your body is going to feel that over time and be impacted in many ways over time. And so we wanna make sure we're providing it enough energy. If you don't have those hunger cues, or if you're not familiar with them, most likely that's due to the fact that you are not, you haven't been listening to them for a long time. And if you don't listen to your hunger cues for uh long enough, um, they're gonna shut off because you are not listening to them, so they can stop sending them. And it's different for everyone. Some people may lose those hunger cues really quickly, and some it it they might be, you know, their body might be more forceful to get that message across. It's gonna be different for everyone. So if you are not getting those physical hunger cues to get them back, you need to start eating consistently and enough, and then those will start being sent to you. Okay, the next hunger, hunger that I want to talk about is that sensory or taste hunger. Now, this is something that people, that diet culture says you do not need to listen to that, you should not listen to that. But let me tell you why not listening to the sensory and taste hunger is going to make you way more out of control with food, feel way more guilty around food, make you feel super deprived, make you the food noise extremely loud and actually pull you further away from control with food and freedom with food and intuitive eating and flexibility with food. The people that I know and I that I've worked with, and myself included from before and after, when I have started listening to that taste cue or that taste hunger, um, that sensory hunger, I was not binging on foods anymore. I was not hyper focused on, you know, those off-limit foods and off-limit desserts. Um, and food wasn't always on my mind. So I was so much more at ease with food, and um I just didn't think about food much, and I definitely wasn't finishing a gallon of ice cream after not being able to consume it for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks at a time and shaming it. And so it's if you want to gain control around food, you need to start allowing those foods. Um and you need to make sure you have that taste hunger or allow that taste hunger regularly. So what I say is this is the satisfaction factor. And you want to have that satisfaction factor with as many meals and snacks as as you can. Um and so when you're making maybe that nutrient-dense lunch that you're you're craving and you're wanting and get it gonna give you enough calories and the energy, make sure that that is something that is enjoyable or making make sure you're adding something that's going to like fully satisfy you. And an example I like to use, um, and you know, something I just personally like to do is when I'm having, you know, for if I'm having a nutrient-dense lunch lunch of a lot of different colors, lots of different veggies and grains, and let's just say I get a grain bowl somewhere, that's gonna be enjoyable, but I'm not gonna feel totally satisfied until I have something sweet as well. Um, and if I put that sweet off limits, or if my clients put that sweet sweet treat off limits, um, and and say, hey, no, I I had the grain bowl, I shouldn't need something else. You what's gonna happen is you're gonna consistently be thinking of that treat. That food noise is gonna be so loud. Um, it's gonna be very hard to concentrate on other things because your body still wants to be satisfied. And um so if you get that practice in, it's going to quiet that food noise. It's also gonna not make you feel out of control with treats. Um, and so making making sure you're not only satiated, like have enough food, but also satisfied is gonna allow you to move on and not think about food until the next time you need to eat or the next time you're hungry. But a lot of people fear this. They think it's overindulgent and they think it's gonna make them feel out of control, but it's actually it actually does the opposite. And the next hunger I want to talk about, and the last hunger I'm gonna talk about today, that hunger, that hunger is emotional hunger. This gets such a bad reputation. Uh emotional hunger is shamed so constantly. Um, but the thing is, is coping with food is bad if you're doing it all of the time. Coping with walking, if you do it all the time and that's your only way of coping, that is also bad. Um, we need lots of coping skills. There's no, you know, we we we need a variety of coping skills. It's when it overtakes is the only way you cope is with food, is when it becomes bad. But emotional eating, let's say through coping, as one example of emotional eating, um, is absolutely something you can do that can really take care of your emotions, you know. So for example, like there's sometimes if I'm not feeling good, I want it to, I want to get like a colorful, nutrient-in dense meal and um, you know, really knock out a good workout, and that that's gonna make me feel better, right? It's just gonna, it's something that I'm craving. But then there's times when emotionally I'm feeling overwhelmed um and I don't want that one, that option. I want the second option. And what's really gonna feel good is to grab my favorite ice cream or my favorite candy and lay on the couch and let my body rest and watch something on TV that I I really have been wanting to watch and let myself do that. And both are good, and both are good. Um, and and we shouldn't shame them. They can both be used in harmful ways, right? If we're coping with through eating perfectly and through um excessive exercise or exercising to reduce anxiety, if you're only doing that, that's gonna be bad. If you're only eating candy on the uh watching a movie, that's gonna be bad. Those are both, those are both bad if we're only doing those. Um, also emotional hunger and emotional eating and eating for emotional reasons is also eating to celebrate and eating to connect with people and eating for joy and eating. I mean, that's what we do as humans. That's such a nice way and not such a nice thing for our emotional and mental well-being, right? Uh, it would be very upsetting and and sad and and we would be taking away from our life if we can't celebrate someone's birthday with some celebratory treats or that they made or that they they gave for us or that we look forward to, or if we weren't able to sit around a table and you know, order our favorite appetizers out with our friends because we weren't like physically hungry. So we didn't allow ourselves to enjoy that. Um, it's such a human thing to do to emotionally use food. Um, and it's just so demonized. I mean, all three of these hungers are demonized and shamed in diet culture and and toxic thin culture. Um, but what happens, if you really think about is think about it, if you demonize those things, if you uh uh shame those hungers, if any of those hungers are not allowed, it's going to take away from your life and it's gonna make you feel more out of control and more deprived. And what happens when you do that is your relationship with food and body just gets more chaotic and more confusing. So I highly recommend you practice honoring all of those hungers and learning to listen to all of those hungers and work with all of those hungers to learn more about them and build them into your relationship with food and see where they get you. And I know saying all of this for those of you watching who really struggle with honoring even just one of those, just the physical hunger, this could be really hard. Um, and it could be really scary because if we're so used to not honoring our hunger, we can very much swing to the other side where we are, you know, feeling really out of control with food and overeating and feeling shameful and all the things. We can swing from deprivation to like overeating. But that's actually a necessary thing in order to swing to the middle of normalcy and balance and just where it feels easy. Um, but oftentimes people quit because they swing to this other side and they don't stay there for a little bit to then stay in the middle for a long bit. They just freak out and move in the other direction. And I get it. And that's why I do recommend specialized support because there's a lot of things to work on in addition to just honoring hunger. There's a lot of body image work, there's a lot of root work, there's a lot of learning about nutrition and and uh the weight science and the history and the um triggers for you and where they come from and a lot of healing. And I don't say that to make this overwhelming. I'm I'm and saying there's like just so much work to be done. I'm I'm saying this because um I don't want you watching this video and then trying to do this on your own, seeing that it might be a little too overwhelming or too hard to do on your own and and um know that that's not because it's not meant for you. It's just because you might need more support. And you also might need to, you you do need to make sure it's integrated into all the rest of the work. It's it's not simply just honoring all those hungers. It's it's doing all the other things that come with healing and creating that relationship with food and body that is intuitive and and freeing and and easy.