WHAT THE ENTIRE DIET AND FITNESS INDUSTRY MISSES
Losing weight is about eating less than your body requires.
No one argues with that.
How you do this is pivotal to your ability to not lose weight, but how to keep it off.
So how does Healthy Thin Mentality (HTM) thinking differ from all the other, "Here is how you should eat," messages out there?
Here, hunger is not the enemy. Hunger is your best friend. This is not because you want to stay hungry, it is because when you are in tune with your hunger, when you know what your hunger feels like, when you know how to satisfy it, when you can feel what foods nourish you the best, when you know your body's unique rhythms, everything changes.
Why?
Because when you take the time and effort to familiarize yourself with your body's voice, expressed as hunger and cravings, you have the most powerful tools there are to guide you to what, when and how much to eat.
And when you team up with your hunger and cravings, instead of squashing them, you no longer eat as much because you aren't afraid of hunger, you aren't derailed by hunger, and you don't live your life avoiding hunger or demonizing foods.
Instead, you welcome hunger and your cravings.
And when you are trying to lose weight with our Healthy Thin Mentality message, you learn how ride that edge of hunger. And that is where weight loss is.
What do I mean?
With your HTM, you divide hunger into three stages:
STAGE 1. You notice hunger. It is not interfering with your life - you just feel that "edge."
STAGE 2. Hunger is bothering you, it is interfering with your ability to live your life and do your tasks, routine etc.
STAGE 3. Your are "Hangry." You feel frustrated and unhappy. You would eat just about anything available instead of being willing to wait a few more minutes for something that you really like.
The space between Stage 1 and Stage 2 is where our message lives.
Stage 2 is the time to eat. But many of us eat at Stage 1. Stage one is just your body saying, "Hey, I am going to need food soon." It is not an emergency, and it would not take much food at all to completely quell Stage 1 hunger.
But we treat Stage 1 as Stage 2.
Instead, learn to appreciate Stage 1. Stage 1, if I can use a strange metaphor, is like foreplay. It is an anticipation. It is joyful. It is fun. I use this metaphor because it is also a biological drive and I am trying to give you ways to understand how this feels.
Then, we you get to Stage 2, and you feel that green light from your body saying, "Yes, I need food now," you will enjoy eating very much. You have "hunger sauce," but you aren't in any way suffering, like STAGE 3 hangry feels. As you eat in STAGE 2, stay acutely aware of how quickly you get back to STAGE1 and through STAGE 1 back to the complete absence of hunger.
Friends, learn this. Notice how food changes in your mouth from "AMAZING" when you are in Stage 2, to "SO SO," when you get back to Stage 1, to not joyful at all when you are without hunger
Our workbook will help you get through this and help teach you these steps.
And, you will learn how pushing off hunger- being "hangry," will absolutely backfire. You are not being "good," when you ignore Stage 2 hunger and you get to Stage 3: You are setting yourself up to actually eat more.
So, to wrap this up.
1. Acknowledge to yourself that you are going to eat less because you want to lose weight.
2. Acknowledge to yourself that you will do this by working with your body's hunger instead of by ignoring it.
3. Acknowledge that the beauty, pleasure and joy of satisfying hunger, WHEN YOU CAN AFFORD FOOD, is something to be grateful for every day.
So, stop wishing you could eat more. And appreciate that when you pair eating with hunger, you are realigning yourself with Mother Nature.
And, no scientist will ever know better for you than the wisdom you were born with to know what, when and how much to eat. Connect with it. Connect with Mother Nature, which is expressed through your body's voice.