Making Peace With Feeling Hungry

I have avoided feeling hungry all my life

I have avoided feeling hungry my entire life. I have been scared of it and how it makes me feel. It is truly symbolic of the emptiness I can feel and can trigger my feeling that life might not be going so well. That is until a friend of mine said something very meaningful to me: “Hunger is just a state of being. You can control how you feel about it.” Somehow I had always believed that the “state of being” and how I felt about it were one in the same. By separating those two things I realized I actually could exert a control over my reactions in a way I never thought possible.

Here are some tips on how you can help yourself move through your hunger

• Be ready with a plan on how to address your hunger
•     Have planned, health snacks ready
•     Think about when you want to schedule what you eat during the day…this will help you in communication with yourself about managing your hunger
• Acknowledge when you feel hungry
•     Think about how long ago it was when you last ate
•     Is it time to eat your snack or do you want to wait awhile?
• If it is not time to eat, lean into your hunger
•     Think about why feeling hungry is a good thing…believe it or not hunger makes your body healthier and it helps you think better!         
•     Take a number of deep breaths…and smile…
•     Next let go of thinking about it…move on to thinking about other things
• Introduce new habits that help you move on from feeling negatively about your hunger
•     Stand up and stretch when you are feeling hungry
•     Take a brief break and walk around your home or office
•     Move on to a necessary task at hand
•     Drink a tall glass of water or make a soothing cup of tea…sip and enjoy

Hunger may never become my close friend but I can certainly can work with it. I no longer need to be afraid of hunger. I can acknowledge it, lean into it and learn to co-exist with it. I no longer need to stuff myself with food in order to try and kill it. Remember, hunger is just another message your body is sending to you. You can control how you respond to that message.

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