Are you hungry? How hungry? Can you tell how hungry you are? By using the Rate Your Hunger Chart, you'll be able to distinguish between true physical hunger and head hunger. You'll be able to tune into your own body to nourish it to physical satiety. You'll be able to identify for yourself when you should begin eating and when you should stop. Weight loss and maintenance will naturally occur. Tune in rather than tune out to your hunger.
Are you hungry? Physically hungry? How do you know? People that have issues with weight find it difficult to tell the difference between physical hunger and head hunger. Many times the head hunger is so convincing by its persistence and intensity that we think it is physical hunger. Does this sound loike you? If so, you need a strategy to be able to tell the difference. By using the chart below, you'll be able to nourish your body when it needs it and to the level that maximizes your weight loss and maintenance.
Physical hunger starts to occur about two to four hours after your last meal. Symptoms include an empty or rumbling feeling in your stomach. If you ignore this signal you body sends you a stronger physical signals in the form of a headache, dizziness or lightheadedness. This type of hunger is your body's way of telling you it is time to nourish it. The physical hunger gives you true physical cues.
Head hunger occurs at any time and has no physical symptoms. They may seem like physical cues but if you pay attention, they really aren't. Thinking compulsively about food, emotional situations, specific personal triggers, or food cravings may cause you to think that you are hungry when you're really not. Watching television, being bored and wanting to eat is head hunger. Grazing is head hunger. You almost feel as though you're feeding an empty hole and can't eat enough to feel satisfied.
Think of your stomach as a fuel tank. You wouldn't overfill your own vehicle's fuel tank? No! The same applies to your body too. Visualize a food gauge similar to your fuel gauge.
To help you to identify which type of hunger you're feeling and what action you should take, the Rate Your Hunger chart is helpful. Again, by using this chart regularly, consider your stomach as your fuel tank with its very own gauge.
RATE YOUR HUNGER CHART:
1: Extremely uncomfortable, feel "starving" physically, dizzy, irritable, headache.
2: Very hungry, empty or rumbling in your stomach, feeling lightheaded.
3: Hungry and need to eat.
4: Signals of true hunger are starting to occur.
5: Content and satisfied, neither full or hungry sensations.
6: Knowing that you have eaten and feel satisfied.
7: You don't need to eat any more food as you feel satisfied physically.
8: Uncomfortably full, you are overly full.
9: Very uncomfortable, you need to loosen your clothes.
10: Stuffed to the point of feeling sick (similar to the full feeling at Thanksgiving).
You can use this chart to rate your hunger. Check in with yourself every time you want to eat. Is it head hunger or true physical hunger? Listen to your body and it will tell you. As dieters, we're not used to listen to our body. Some of us don't trust our bodies. We're so used to a diet telling us what to eat and when to eat it that we've turned off the physical cues. When you're aware of your body and use the Hunger Chart, you'll get back in tune with it. You'll be able to distinguish the various levels in the chart.
On the chart, if you're at number 6 or 7, you have satiety. You're comfortable and feel physically nourished. If you're above this number on the chart you have overeaten. If you are at number 5, you are neutral, nether hungry or full. If you are at a number 4, then you are beginning to get hungry and need to consider eating soon. If you let your hunger go for a while you will start to feel the physical signs of hunger of number 3. To avoid overeating because you're overly hungry, set a goal to eat at the number 3 level. You will tend to eat too fast and eat beyond a comfortable feeling of satiety or fullness to get rid of those bad physical feelings. Pay attention and tune into your body. Begin eating when you are at a number 3. Stop eating when you are comfortably satisfied at a number 6 or, at a maximum, of a number 7.
Keep a log of your feelings of hunger using the Hunger Chart. This will assist you to become more familiar with your body's physical cues. You can identify if you are waiting too long to eat or eating beyond a comfortable, satisfied level. Also note what and how much you're eating and the hunger rating when you started eating and the level you at to and stopped.
Just as with your vehicle's fuel tank you are in charge of how much you put into it, you're in control of your own body's fuel tank too. Weight loss and maintenance will occur naturally by eating when you're truly hungry and stopping when you're satisfied.
Being Perfect On Your Diet As Set Up For Failure
It's very important that you begin your healthier lifestyle with an understanding that there will be days when you will stray from healthy eating and exercising. You will not be perfect in your diet and exercise program, nor should you be. Success doesn't come from being perfect. Success comes to you from a balance and moderation of healthy habits.
It Is About Why You Eat, Not What You Eat
Your weight and body issues don't have anything to do with food. It isn't what you eat but why you eat. One of the problems with weight loss surgery and diet programs is our belief that they hold the answer. If only we can follow them, they will work for us. Unfortunately for many of us, we didn't experience long-term weight loss success. Did we fail? No. Absolutely not! The diets failed because they are not the answer.
Commitment List versus Wish List
Do you want to lose weight? Are you hoping for a way of life that includes losing weight, feeling good in your body, wearing a smaller size, and have strong sense of confidence? You can have it. To reach any goal, you need to be committed. To lose weight requires persistence and consistency. It requires saying no to food choices when you'd rather indulge. It requires a commitment to your diet and along with a promise to yourself.
