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New Mexico.
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Tuesday, June 28
Listening to the Body
Slugging down coffee this AM in the absence of a desire to eat. I seem to forget so easily the 12-24 hour deflation of hunger and inflation of belly that occurs after I go a little nuts on the ice cream.
But that's how it balances out - you eat a little (or a lot) more one day, and less the next. If you are in touch with your hunger signals, it usually works out just fine.
How to know when you are hungry: It doesn't take too much time to learn this skill, but it takes constant practice to hone it and keep it useful. And you'll have to get really, really hungry a few times to learn what that feels like. The easiest way to do this is to eat a hearty breakfast immediately upon rising for about a week - things that stick with you like a big bowl of oatmeal or granola with yogurt - and then, one day don't have breakfast. Have coffee if necessary, but don't eat food until late morning or even noon. You will likely be ravenous by that point. Monitor those sensations. I find they go like this:
1. After waking up you will already feel slightly hungry, a little hollowness in your gut.
2. Having coffee will quell that for a short amount of time, but think about your stomach - visualize what is in it - is it empty, hastily processing that coffee, or starting to growl already?
3. About mid-morning growling might have begun, and the hollowness should be noticeable. Your stomach itself may not be "hollow" as in concave, but it will feel like there is a void, just below your heart - not in your lower belly. This will be exacerbated if the coffee consumption causes you to have a morning bathroom break.
4. Later in the morning, approaching noon.... Food may be the prime thought in your brain, and feeling a little woozy is possible. That's low blood sugar, which has a much higher likelihood of happening if your usual breakfast was more sugary (like cereal instead of oatmeal). You may even start to get a headache. Observe all of these sensations, make mental notes, and ideally make actual notes - write down how it feels to be hungry, what your thoughts are, how long it has been since having food.
5. You can take this experiment as long as you want, but when you are actively observing your hunger, it will grow more quickly than if you hadn't even noticed the hunger due to distraction or an engaging project. But take it a full day, if you dare, even 24 hours. Just don't go completely nuts on the coffee - you are now in fasting mode and a far better thing to be drinking is water or tea.
Good luck with your hunger project. Once you can recognize true hunger, it is so much more pleasurable to eat in line with that hunger. You can ask yourself, 'what am I really hungry for?' and play out the possible answers in your head. Salty? Something crunchy and salty? Warm? Cool and sweet? Bitter? Tangy or spicy? Acidic? Meaty? Items that your body is actually craving will sound positively luscious, and things that are not really needed at this time will conversely just not appeal to your tastebuds. How much your body is able to tell you what it wants is truly fascinating.
Time posted: 08:58 [permalink]
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CONTACT ME: tenacity -at- gmail.com
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