The first association we all have with losing weight is hunger. Hunger is scary for most people, exactly like death. I know people who even say, “Kill me and I won’t do it” or “if I couldn’t eat this, I would die”.
The reason we associate dieting or working on our weight as scary as dying is because we are wired to think like that.
When we are born, we are totally dependent on others to give us food. We use the only tool we have to survive – Crying. Without crying, without mummy to give us food, we would literally die. Connecting not eating to dying is carved in us from the moment we are born. No wonder we’ll do anything just not to be hungry.
At the same time, we connect food with comfort. We cry, boob appears, we are comforted, we are happy. The challenge is that we become addicted to this comfort and whenever we are upset, though we might not cry like babies, we just change the way it sounds to complaining, anger, aggression, being critical, judgmental, domineering, controlling, sarcasm… when we don’t get what we want, and we seek food as a comfort. We all do that. We have been practicing it since the moment they were born, and we have become masters of emotional eating – Eating for comfort.
I’m sure everyone in the world has experienced emotional eating – eating for comfort. Emotional eating happens when you are in a small panic attack and you “have to…” put something in your mouth or else… you’ll die.
Physically, the primitive brain was activated, and comfort is no longer food we consume to feel good but required for your survival.
You are inside the hunger games, hunted by your tormenting mind, convinced you are walking towards the abyss and there is no other way out of it.
There is a way out!
The feeling we have to eat or else… is what sends us into the primitive brain. When we are in this primitive function, we can’t think, relate, learn, or be creative but only do the three F’s – Fight, flight, freeze. Primitive brain function and food have a very dysfunctional relationship. When we think we are in danger, we automatically search for more energy. Sugar and Carbs are the best to use when in danger but the more we use it, the faster the primitive mechanism is activated and then we need to consume more sugars and carbs. Catch 22.
This is the nature of all addictions. Something creates a sense of danger, which makes us consume something and the more we consume it, the more we need to survive.
Danger leads to fear of death, which leads to seeking energy in a form of food, which leads to seeking easy energy in the form of sugar and carbs and that activates the primitive function of thinking we are in danger if we don’t have it. Can you see the cycle?
Most people have been in this cycle over and over again throughout their life. Danger makes us feel hungry, and hunger means we are in danger. In both of them we use food to seek comfort but the more we depend on food for comfort, the hungrier we are and the more danger we feel, which leads us to eat even more…
Experiencing this cycle of hunger and danger creates a connection in our mind that no food = death, food = comfort and we need comfort to survive or else…
It is very simple to understand: The more sugar you consume, the more sugar you need to survive. We are not talking thriving, we are talking simple survival. Live or die, eat, or die!
Every person who has ever tried to lose weight knows what it feels to be hungry.
Hunger is a message your body sends you that it is lacking fuel. The same feeling we have at birth that turns on the crying, is activated immediately to make sure you survive.
Think of hunger as the red warning light in your car, which turns on when you are out of petrol. The one that warns you to hurry to the petrol station soon, or the car will just stop running. (Die on you)
What happens when this red warning light is constantly on?
Our body works exactly the same. We are the car and food is our petrol. When we put clean petrol, that cleans the engine while running, we can have long enough space between fueling. When we consume too much sugar and carbs, our red warning light – hunger is constantly on so we have to go to the petrol station (our fridge) very often. Some people literally fueling constantly. They are hungry all the time and eat 10 to 20 times a day. The more they eat, the more fuel they need.
If we are a small car, the fact our mind thinks we are out of petrol, makes it send us hunger messages to top up and we keep fueling and the body reserves it as fat, in case you run out of petrol and suddenly we look in the mirror and look more like a… truck because we have enormous extra fuel tanks.
The biggest problem we have with this warning light in our body – hunger, is that with the high consumption of sugar and carbs, we damage the light switch, and it is constantly on. We have plenty of petrol, (just count how much extra Kg you have on your body – the extra weight you wish to get rid of) but we keep getting a message we are out of petrol, and we will… die if we won’t top up and immediately and preferably with something that will start the engine running, fast – sugar!
In every health plan involving food, hunger is an obstacle therefore it can’t succeed if the warning light is constantly on. This is the main reason most diets never succeed. People think it has something to do with willpower, but willpower is not part of the primitive brain, therefore you can’t use it to overcome a primitive function like emotional eating.
Some say to me that all we have to do is get used to hunger, but we can’t. It was programed in us to make sure we won’t starve to death. Our body thinks that eating too much, having extra fuel tanks (fat storages) is better for us than starving so we can’t simply get used to hunger. Every dieter will tell you that the smallest stress experienced, sends him/her into the primitive brain and he/ she seek comfort straight away.
The stress response
Our life is full of stress. As a response to stress, our body produces more cortisol. The more cortisol we have, the hungrier we get. It has nothing to do with how much fuel we have but to the level of cortisol in our body. This cycle speeds up when we are stressed about what we eat!
If we want to stop this cycle, if we want to lose weight, any healthy weight plan cannot include hunger. Health with hunger is an oxymoron. Hunger is a message to top up… fast! We can’t top up, we must find a plan to use the reserve fuel and stop topping up.
When I share this with my clients, they tell me that a healthy eating plan not including hunger is a unicorn. It is an imaginary, beautiful, magical idea that is not real. Lucky me, over the years, I found several of those unicorns, changing what I eat, when hunger was not part of the plan. I am out of the hunger game!
Remember, Success cannot be experienced when we are in the primitive brain. Success cannot be experienced when we are hungry. Whatever eating plan you choose in order to lose the extra fuel you have in your body, pick one that does not involve hunger and success will follow.
Good luck on your journey towards healthy weight
Remember, happiness is a choice. Health is also a choice
Choose well!
Make your day a great day!
Ronit Baras
Whole Food Revolution
Happiness coach
https://www.behappyinlife.com
