Hey and welcome to the Mindful Balance Podcast, your guide to stop emotional eating and overeating and transform your relationship with food. I am Rachel, a nutrition and emotional eating coach, and I'm here to help women like you navigate through the complex world of eating habits, health, mindset, and emotional well-being. I hope that each episode here will be a step on your journey towards a healthier you by shedding light on different aspects of nutrition and emotional eating.
I am here to take out the need for quick fixes by showing you how it can be done differently. Whether you're just starting out or looking to deepen your understanding, you're in the right place. And if you're ready, let's dive in. Hey, and welcome to today's episode. I am so glad that you're here. Today, we're talking about a hot topic that gets lots of us really confused, and I would even say frustrated.
You have probably heard it many, many times that if you want to stop overeating, all you have to do is eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. Easy peasy. Well, not really. I'm just kidding. It sounds so simple, though, but when you come to implement it and practice it in your life, it's not that simple. So first off, let's acknowledge something that's really important here. It is totally normal to eat when you're not hungry sometimes. I want you to think about it for a second.
Think about desserts. Okay? You are not necessarily hungry when you want to have a dessert, but you still have room for that delicious slice of cake or cookie or whatever it is, and you can enjoy every bite of it, even if you were not physically hungry. That is part of the joy and the pleasure of eating. And I think that it's really important that we kind of pay attention to what our goal is.
For many of us, the goal is simply to become what we consider normal eaters, someone who eats when they're hungry, stop when they're full. And again, it may seem super straightforward, but if you don't trust your body's hunger and fullness signals, or if you don't even know what your specific signals are, then it can be really challenging.
Something that I've noticed with myself and also with my clients is that this lack of trust in your body's way of telling you how much or when you should be eating can really boil down to two main reasons. Now, there are probably many more than two reasons why eating intuitively is something that many women find to be super difficult, but these two are really consistently showing up for so many of you.
So the first one is that you are afraid that if you eat according to your body signals, you will gain weight, or you are afraid of completely losing control. Right, a lot of women tell me, I can't trust my body's signals, I can't listen to my hunger and fullness, because if I will do that, that will lead to me eating pizza or ice cream all day. So that's the first one. The second one is that you have likely ignored those signals for a long time. For me, it was over 10 years.
When you eat based on calories or macros, if you count those to tell you how much you need to eat, if you follow some strict meal plans, or a schedule that wasn't really yours, but someone else gave it to you, your body kind of eventually puts its signals on mute. Most women unfortunately believe to their core that calories are a more reliable tool for making food decisions and deciding how much you need to eat, when you need to eat, and what you need to eat.
People really were trained to think that calories are a much better tool to assess and track that. When you hold on to these two beliefs, it can feel very scary to go back to listening to your hunger and fullness cues. It feels, I would say, it feels almost too flexible or subjective and not specific enough to be used as a tool. A client told me a couple of weeks ago that she think about it in a way almost like if I told her to intuitively spend her money without looking into her bank account.
This is what she felt it was similar to, letting go of the calorie counts. So what I told her is that this is actually not a very good comparison because it isn't at all the same. But this is what it felt like for me, for other people, when we used to hear people talk about intuitive eating, which is for this conversation, just to kind of like define it, it means eating based on your body's signals. So how do we go past this way of thinking?
When I was deep in the years of dieting and emotional eating and binge eating, I was so focused on constantly losing weight that I had a very broken trust in myself. How can you have trust when you think that your body is fighting against you by constantly being always hungry? I thought I gained weight or that I ate too much because I didn't have a strict enough calorie guide or because I was weak or didn't have enough discipline.
But the truth was for me is that my body was giving me all the right signals. I just wasn't listening. I wasn't paying attention. I was eating when I wasn't hungry and I was definitely eating past fullness. And I was in the mindset that hunger on itself is a bad thing and it should be suppressed. Think about chewing gum or drinking coffee or just snacking on baby carrots all day just to be able to suppress my hunger. We all know those tricks.
What I didn't realize was that my body wasn't the problem. I ignored it for so long and I was relying on external measures like calorie counts or certain apps that that was the problem. My body on its own was not a problem. Me relying on external tools to tell me how much I need to eat. That was the problem. And I want you to really understand what's the problematic part of this. It causes a huge disconnect between you and your body.
For example, sometimes I would feel hungry and I would think that I shouldn't be. Other times I would feel completely full but get so frustrated with my body for not cooperating. And I felt that it wasn't cooperating because I was full but something in my brain kept telling me to eat more and more and more. So I used to argue with my body a lot because I wasn't giving it enough credit.
Just think about how your body heals itself from illnesses and injuries, how it is wise enough to literally grow humans if you're a mom and how it keeps you alive every day with so many systems working together in a beautiful way. Our bodies tell us to go to sleep. Our bodies tell us when it's time to wear a jacket because it's too cold. It knows how to cool down when we're too hot. And of course, it also tells us to eat and to stop eating.
These signals are really our body's way of asking us to take care of it. But for so many of us, what do we do when we kind of notice those signals? We have been taught basically to override these signals, especially if we are pursuing weight loss. In fact, ignoring it, ignoring those body cues, kind of like is almost glorified as having a strong willpower. And because this is so important, I want to give you a completely silly analogy for perspective. Okay?
Imagine if you treated your body's hunger and fullness signals the same way that you treated the signal to use the bathroom. When your body tells you that it needs to go, you don't typically argue with it. You don't say, "No, it's not the right time right now," or "I don't need to go yet," or "I shouldn't need to go to the bathroom because, let's say, I went to the bathroom an hour ago." You don't go because your body needs you to follow.
And ignoring it, let's say if you've ever been stuck in traffic and couldn't go to the bathroom, right, it doesn't feel good at all. Living in a culture that really teaches us to ignore hunger and fullness signals is just as silly. Your body knows what it needs. You just need to listen.
Now, one of the most common comments on my content on Instagram when I talk about hunger and fullness cues is something like, "Well, I am never full," or "I can go on nonstop," or "I never sense that feeling of discomfort that comes from overeating." So I want you to understand that your body needs aren't what causes overeating. When you eat more than your body needs, it never is about you not having fullness cues.
What causes overeating is our emotions, our thoughts, and our habits of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain with food is the only tool. We handle as human, we handle uncomfortable emotions by eating and seeking pleasure in food because it's just an easy and really a very immediate source of joy. It is way easier to, let's say, grab a few cookies when you feel overwhelmed or you are bored between meetings, let's say, than trying to solve the problem that caused it.
Food is this instant solution, but it is also highly temporary. And over time, turning to food is so automatic that you feel a complete lack of control over your eating decisions. Another thing that fuels the habit of overeating is being restrictive with your diet. When you are under eating or you do not allow yourself the foods that you love, your desire for these foods will intensify.
This leads to eating beyond your body's needs and also it leads to you not paying attention to your body signals, kind of creating this cycle that is very hard to break. If we want to start eating "normally" and stop feeling powerless, then ignoring, negotiating, and arguing with your body isn't the solution.
So here I want to give kind of like a little, almost like a disclaimer or just to address this and that is the topic of hormones because it's also a hot topic and it does influence this whole cycle of overeating. There is a lot of hype around it and I would even say lots of misinformation around this topic of hormones. But the truth is that hormones like ghrelin, leptin, and insulin really can affect hunger and fullness cues.
I know that for sure, when I am not sleeping well at night, let's say, I am more hungry. When I eat out and there is lots of salt and sugar in the meal, I will feel hungry soon after eating. Hormone science is a science that we have to consider when we tackle the topic of overeating. But this can be tricky. So before you jump into conclusions that you have a hormonal imbalance, I really want you to take a look at your overall health and habits and lifestyle.
For most of us, and I am not talking about any specific medical conditions, our hormones are just fine. They're fine and your hunger and fullness signals are accurate. It's so easy to blame our hormones, but for most of us, this is not the problem. Obviously, if you're concerned that you have an issue with hormones, this is something that you should discuss with your doctor. But for most people, I would say that the problem is not your hormones.
What is more likely is that your hunger and fullness cues are just not aligned with your expectations and your shoulds. And it may be time to give your body a chance to prove it. So how do you do that? This is like the million dollar question. How do you build trust that your body will actually know when you have reached enough or when it will tell you when it's time to eat? How do you know? How do you really, really know that your body is not just trying to destroy you or sabotage your goals?
At first, rebuilding this trust with your body might involve some experimentation. And I know that that sounds scary because we have to admit that the weight gain fear that I am not suggesting that it's not real and it's not valid, but there is that fear. But I think of it as a temporary part of the process. We have to kind of play scientist and figure out what does it feel in our bodies. As someone who is very much data driven, I like rules and I like structure.
And if you're someone like me, then know that this is not at all a framework of guessing. There are patterns. And once you find out how it feels to be hungry for you specifically, and how your body tells you when it's full, you have a tool in your belt that is with you no matter where you are or what foods are available to you.
You don't need an app and figuring out what your signals are, what it feels in your body really gives you the freedom to eat anything that you want, because you will know how much is enough and you know when to stop and when that stop is right for you. It's not a certain portion that someone gave you, or it's not something that you have to calculate. You just need to feel it and you will never feel like you need to rebel against it.
If you want to become a normal eater, you need to reconnect with and trust your body. And this might mean relearning your personal signals and working on your overeating. And I really want to leave you with this encouragement to start paying attention today. Pay attention to your body. What does hunger feel like to you? Take notes, like literally write it on your phone, in your notes. You are learning a new skill, so treat it like learning anything else.
Check in throughout the day and notice how does your body feel? What did hunger feel like in your body? How does it feel to be full? Be patient with yourself. And I want you to remember that recognizing these signals is something that you were born with. You were not broken. You just need to reconnect with those signals. And no matter what you choose to do next, I want you to stop arguing with your body. If it is hungry, it's hungry. If it's full, it's full.
Just like you don't argue when you need to pee, don't argue with your body about your hunger and fullness. Just eat and stop eating. It's a practice and I promise you that it will get easier with time. I promise you. All right, take care. Until next time. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to the Mindful Balance podcast today. I hope you enjoyed our conversation and found inspiration to find your unique balance and growth.
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The Mindful Balance is brought to you by the Mindful Mind. This podcast is brought to you by Rachel Emma Nutrition. Our editing and mixing engineers, Michael Plawner. Our theme song is Good Feelings by O'Gleason's. Information in this podcast does not substitute for medical or psychological advice and is intended for educational purposes only. Please consult a qualified health professional regarding health conditions or concerns before starting a new diet or health program.
Rachel Emma Nutrition LLC and accompanying websites and social media platforms are not responsible for adverse reactions, effects, or consequences resulting from the use of any suggestions herein or procedures undertaken herein. Please consult a qualified health professional regarding health conditions or concerns before starting a new diet or health program. Thank you for listening to the Mindful Balance. The Mindful Balance is brought to you by O'Gleason's.
Our editing and mixing engineers, Michael Pork. Our theme song is Good Feelings by O'Gleason's. Please consult a qualified health professional regarding health conditions or concerns before starting a new diet or health program. Rachel Emma Nutrition LLC and accompanying websites and social media platforms are not responsible for adverse reactions, effects, or consequences resulting from the use of any suggestions herein or procedures undertaken hereafter.