“Back on Track!”: F*ree Tele-seminar this Wednesday from 6pm-7pm PST July 25th —please hit REPLY and say “I’m in!” if you would like to be on the list to receive the call in number for this hour long coaching session to get you re-motivated and moving forward with weight release with hypnosis co-hosts—Rita Black and Mickey Marraffino—invite your friends to this free- phone weight support event.
Save 25% Shop Shift Plus FREE SHIPPING!---Right now everything is the Shift
Store Online is 25% off including 2 New CDs
(just a Bite or None at All and Show Up for Yourself) and
pre-loaded MP3 with hypnosis and coaching sessions NEW! Hurry the discount is
ending soon. Just write “Summer” into the coupon box in check out to receive your discount.
Shop Shift and Save Link Hi Shifters!
Finally! While I was away I got to see that movie The Hunger Games. Interesting movie, a bit hard to watch at times because of the content, but correct me if I am wrong…was anyone ever hungry in that film? No one ever appeared to be. They all looked fairly coiffed and healthy for being out in the wild. But the film got me thinking…about our relationship to hunger.
Every day I keep driving by this billboard
that is posted in my neighborhood that “says 1 out of 6 Americans will go to
bed hungry tonight”. Now this does make
me sad and it is a dismal reflection of where things are right now—but there is
another part of me that thinks “...and the other 5 of those 6 Americans will go
to bed feeling like they ate too much!”
For over a decade I have helped people with
their weight struggles every day and I see that there is a huge cultural fear
about hunger and “being hungry” and “going hungry”.
Most of us, even though we struggle
from too much food intake and not too little, do carry that unconscious panic
and fear around being hungry—or not getting enough. Some of this fear comes from years of dieting
and starving ourselves and truly experiencing self imposed hunger and sometimes
it just comes from not true hunger but the perceived expectation of being
hungry or not having enough.
Often our hunger is not even the need
for food but the need to take care of ourselves on a deeper level. Over the years of struggling with our weight
“self care” has come to equal “food” in our mind and so the fear of hunger
often triggers a deeper panic –“if I take away giving myself that comfort food—I
take away self care—which may jeopardize my survival”.
Over 2 weeks I want to explore HUNGER
and our relationship to it with the idea of creating a more powerful inner
dialog for your Inner Weight Coach to have with you—so that you can take back
your power from HUNGER fears and feed yourself effectively in a way that allows
for sustained weight release and maintenance.
First let’s just look at some
facts—here are some various stages of hunger—
Shift Kids: Want to contribute to Shift Kids—we now accepting tax
deductable goods and services for our Shift Kids bingo event on August 19th—email
us back and let us know please. Help us fight childhood obesity.
HUNGER-“Pre-hunger” – The first feelings of hunger you get when your stomach is empty or near empty. This may happen 20 to 30 minutes prior to regular meal times. This feeling may just tap you on the shoulder and then go away for a bit.
-“Hunger” – Usually starts about
a half-hour after pre-hunger started. In this phase it is harder to get useful
information about what specific foods your body needs. In fact, everything
starts to sound good. This phase starts as your body’s nutritional needs
transitions from specific nutrients to just needing calories—energy. Stomach
sensations also transition from being a gentle calling for specific foods to a
more intense pain accompanied with a slight weakening in larger muscle groups.
You may start to feel a little weak or shaky.
-“Amorphous Hunger” – This phase is
usually reached by eating the wrong foods. This is a signal that you get from
your body that says “My stomach is no longer empty, but I didn’t get the
nutrients I needed.” Have you ever been real really hungry and eaten a candy
bar? Or do you remember when you were a kid and you ate candy for breakfast one
holiday morning? And in either case your stomach no longer felt empty, but you
didn’t feel nutritionally satisfied either. This type of hunger usually
confuses the body and it has a hard time sending any useful signal like it can
in the pre hunger phase.
-“Thirsty” – Can start at any
time. This hunger feels a lot like pre-hunger, but without the specific
cravings. This hunger usually goes away five to 10 minutes after drinking a
glass of water. More advanced stages of thirst will usually include dry mouth
and throat.
-“Post-hunger” – This phase is well
under way when one or more meals have been completely skipped. This phase is
also quite varied. Quite often hunger goes away altogether for an hour or two.
At other times it brings a feeling of weakness, lightheadedness or headaches. -“False or Emotional Hunger” – There are many other conditions that can feel like hunger. These include, but are not limited to ulcers, acid stomach, worry, loneliness, need to fill a void, boredom, need for a break etc. We will explore this emotional hunger next week.
Okay
so now that we have established some hunger stages-- let’s look at some habits
and beliefs around hunger that work against us when we try to release weight
and some Shift Inner Weight Coach Strategies to fix them.
We ignore early hunger
signals: If I had 5 dollars for
every client who typically allows themselves to get too hungry by just plowing
through their feelings of hunger because they are doing something else and then
too late find that they have little to no healthy food choices available to
them and then wind up eating too much crappy fast food or quick fix gakky
choice—I would be able to feed the other 1 out of 6 Americans that go to bed
hungry!!
STRATEGY: Think ahead—have
quality food (almonds, apples, cheese sticks, packets of tuna etc) available
for yourself at all times just to tide you over until you can feed yourself
effectively.
We hoard calories during
the day for the night: This move is weight gain 101—deprive and starve yourself all day
in order to have more calories at night—but then you are sooooooo hungry and
your blood sugar levels are so depleted that once you do start eating you make
bad choices and can’t stop eating.
STRATEGY: If you want to eat more
at night that is fine but allow for small snacks of quality calories throughout
the day to keep your blood sugar stabilized: hard boiled eggs, celery and
peanut butter, TJ egg salad and carrots, Greek yogurt. Choose some low calorie high protein and
fiber snacks about three times through your day and then have your bigger
splurge at night—but keep yourself fed!!!
We ignore getting full
signals: Okay
so the opposite of too hungry—too full.
But often it’s the chicken after the egg. If you do not starve yourself or get too
hungry (I call this hitting zero) and keep your blood sugar levels
stabilized—chances are you will not go too over board.
When
I run my Shift Weight Mastery Seminars we discuss a natural physiological breath
that everybody reflexively takes when they are just full—this is where most
thin people push the plate away—this is where weight strugglers keep right on
eating!!! STRATEGY: Never let yourself hit “0” or too hungry. Next take a mindful Shift breath as you settle down to eat and get conscious of where your mind and body both are at and then begin eating mindfully. Focus also on only havin as much as you need calorically on your plate so that you do not over eat. If you are still hungry get seconds on vegetables. And watch for that “I’m full” breath!”
We eat crappy food and
always feel a bit “hungry”: I was guilty of this one a lot when I struggled with
weight. I ate a lot of what I thought
were healthy “bars” and snacks that said they were “healthy” but were really
fairly refined carbs. I always felt
hungry! I thought what is wrong with
me—I just ate and I still feel hungry.
What was going on is I was not truly nourishing myself with foods my
body needed and with protein that would stabilize my blood sugar and allow me
to feel satisfied.
STRATEGY: Eat 20 grams of protein
at meals and keep refined carbohydrate portions to a minimum. Over time your sugar sensitivity that causes
“false hunger” will lessen and finally diminish with eating consistently in
this way.
Okay
I hope this Hungry game has served you--next week we will work on emotional hunger! If you want additional help with this the
hypnosis sessions “Mastering your Relationship with Sugar” and “Mastery Over
Portions” as well as the NEW “Just one Bite or None at All” are on sale for 25%
off in the Shift Shop. Just type “Summer” into coupon box at checkout to receive your discount.Shop Shift and Save Link
Oxox Rita
PS Remember!!!
“Back on Track!”: Free tele-seminar this Wednesday from 6pm-7pm PST July 25th —please hit REPLY and say “I’m in!” if you would like to be on the list to receive the call in number for this hour long coaching session with hypnosis co-hosts—Rita Black and Mickey Marrafino—invite your friends.
Shop Shift and save Plus FREE SHIPPING!--Right now everything is the Shift Store Online is 25%
off including 2 New CDs (just a Bite or
None at All and Show Up for Yourself) and pre-loaded MP3 with hypnosis and
coaching sessions NEW! Hurry the discount is ending soon. Just type “Summer” into coupon box at checkout to receive your discount.
Shop Shift and SaveLINK
Next week rita story about the chicken
