By Samantha Taylor, Samantha Taylor Fitness
It can be a valuable habit of asking yourself before you eat, “Are you really hungry or do you just want to eat?” Many times, our hunger “cues” are triggered by other things than actually needing to eat calories for nutrition. Our hunger can be triggered by emotional situations or even by previous food that we ate that spiked our blood sugar, causing more hunger when the blood sugar drops.
We do eat food to give our body the nutrients that it needs to function every day and they say that our brain uses over 20% of our calories that we consume daily. Yes, our body needs food to survive and function optimally. But in a society full of food triggers everywhere we look, it can sometimes trigger false cues for hunger just by seeing or smelling food, even if we’re not hungry.
It’s more of an issue of course, if you are trying to lose weight. The amount of calories you eat compared to how much your body can use can be a key factor to be able to lose weight. The challenge is, if you find yourself snacking with mindless eating or eating when you’re not even hungry but your brain wants to eat.
Do you know what that’s like? Where your stomach’s not hungry but your brain wants to eat and is thinking about food? That’s when it’s good to start challenging our mind when we have the thought that we need to eat. Learn the skill of stopping and asking yourself, “Do I really NEED to eat that or do I just WANT to eat it?”
Sure, we need to feed our body, but those that want to lose weight might be overfeeding their body more then their body can use, and those excess calories get stored as fat.
Even just eating sweet-tasting things can sometimes trigger false hunger and cause us to think about food more often. When I do eat sweet-tasting foods even when they have no sugar in them, that can trigger me to think about food more throughout the day. That is frustrating because it’s very distracting and a waste of valuable brain power!
I can also say that when I eat carbohydrates and especially refined carbs, I get hungry way more often. And not just hungry but I’m talking about that “starving hunger” that I feel like I’m about to pass out if I don’t eat right now!
Practice working on being more aware of when you think about eating and think about this, “Is it time to eat or am I experiencing false hunger cues?” Or if you’re not actually physically hungry but your brain keeps thinking about food, then start to analyze the food you ate in a previous meal that could be causing that. Or do you have something stressing you out that could be contributing to wanting to emotionally eat?
Starting to analyze your behavior can impact your relationship with food so you learn not to just react on impulse whenever you see or smell food. I used to live my life by my food cravings and I literally had no self-control. When I would read Galatians 5:22 where it talks about a fruit of the Spirit is self-control, I really thought that I somehow missed out on that one!
The Bible says when we walk in the ways of the Spirit, we will want those ways. I then realized I had to develop over time the fruit of the Spirit. And not just reading that scripture but also actually applying it when situations would arise. So, I encourage you to stop and think about your hunger cues to see if you actually are hungry.
I have seen this learned skill help me many times in my life and in helping the thousands of people that we’ve worked with. We’ve discovered that the type of food that you eat can definitely affect feeling hungry more often and more intensely. And leave you craving and wanting food when you’re not even physically hungry.
By starting to apply this learned skill in your own life, you will find that you’re not led around by false hunger cues to want to eat when you don’t even need to. If you would like our help with these skills, check out my ad in this paper. Hope to see you soon.
www.SamanthaTaylorFitness.com
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*Matthew 22:36-40
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