Identify Real Hungers

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Have you ever wondered how to identify real hungers?

You can’t eat or spend your way out of loneliness, fear, boredom or lack of meaning. Find healthy ways to honor and shift them, instead.

Day 45 of 101 days of blogging makes us dig deep.

Identifying real hungers goes hand-in-hand with artificial hungers.

I’d guess it’s safe to say that we all struggle with a form of these daily.

The key is to understand hunger vs. cravings.

Both hunger and cravings play into the mindset. The mind is your most powerful tool in identifying whether or not what you are feeling is a physical need or a physical desire.

6 Factors that Play into What We Eat, When We Eat It and How We Eat It

1. emotion: loneliness, fear, happiness, sadness, stress, anxiety,
2. state: boredom, lack of meaning
3. physical: “So if your serotonin level is functioning poorly and your life becomes stressful, you can get some relief by eating sugar. We all learn pain relief very quickly. When something stops pain we repeat it. If sugar stops pain for you, you will eat it again.”
4. addiction
5. hormones: sugar. carbs. salt. “that time of the month.”
6. true hunger

So you’re thinking: That’s great, but how do I overcome these?

Simple. With one key question: Why?

Identify Real Hungers

When your brain tells your stomach that you want something to eat, ask yourself “why?”

Answer the question.

Repeat.

Repeat again until you get to the root. (Why? But why? Why? But why? -> starting to sound like my 2-year-old!)

Then, take the actions that are your optimal remedy.

The best part of the “why-series” questions is that, if in the end, the true reason you want chocolate is because you have a craving so intense for it that you can literally feel it melt in your mouth as the “why’s” are filling up your noggin’, then perhaps you need to listen to your body.

Indulge in chocolate.

Indulge in the best chocolate you can find.

And then move on.

Stop over thinking it.

Maybe you just want the damn chocolate.

Life isn’t about 100% deprivation (unless of course, you have an allergy or intolerance that forbids a food).

Life is about knowing what’s real and what’s not real, listening to and respecting our bodies, then taking that information and using it the best way possible.

{If you enjoy my posts on the gut and/or healing + true wellness with food and lifestyle click HERE to subscribe to my e-newsletter.If you enjoy my posts on life, inspiration, passion, entrepreneurship, adoption, love, thoughts, faith and living in a way that gives us purpose, daily click HERE to subscribe to my e-newsletter (a different one). To follow the blog in general, be sure to place it in your feed.}

Xox,
SKH