If you have dieted for years and years, of course you have completely lost touch with your hunger signals.
Not only that, once you start eating, you probably don’t know when you have had enough.
The first stage of building your healthy thin mentality is to do a little research on yourself.
Take notice of how much food you eat, and how it makes you feel not only right away, but 20 minutes later. If you eat fast (as I do) you may need to learn stop eating when you still think you could eat more because you know, from experience, that if you give your body and brain a chance to connect, your brain will get the signal that you have had enough.
For example, when I first started eating with a healthy thin mentality, I purposefully ate a bit slower until I learned approximately how much food I usually needed to satisfy hunger. This does NOT mean that I ate out of routine or in an amount that was just a habit.
It means that as I ditched my diet mentality, I paid very close attention to my eating and my hunger and satiety. This is normal, healthy “getting to know yourself” kind of learning. We should have all done this when we were younger, but, especially as teenage girls, many of us (most??) were taught to eat according to some plan or prescribed amount of food instead of learning about our own specific unique hunger patterns and taking care of them.
But it isn’t too late!!
Learn from your eating experiences. For example, I know that I rarely finish an entire restaurant size hamburger. So, I usually cut it in half right from the start so it is nicer to take home. But, if I am particularly hungry that day, no problem, no guilt, I would definitely eat it. It is just, 13 years into my healthy thin mentality, I know myself. So I can plan ahead a bit, without being caught eating out of routine.
You can get here too. Again, your first “job” with your thin mentality is to re-acquaint yourself with your unique hunger patterns. We are all different so our hunger will be different too. Our food requirements will differ too. Don’t let others’ choices determine yours.
Stay in touch with YOU. You are the only one who can do this, right? So if you don’t, then your unappreciated body will go to waste…
