Why Do People Get Insecurity Around Food?

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to cure food anxiety you must honor your hunger picture of man holding his belly in agony

Good hunger, as opposed to bad hunger, is the key to healing food insecurity.

Best of all, when you decide to tackle food insecurity …

Specifically by learning to overcome food struggles with the power of your hunger, here are some of the benefits:

  • Learning how to naturally NOT overeat
  • Learning how to naturally NOT let yourself get depleted (and then binge eat)
  • Being able to trust your body and not constantly worrying about whether you are over your limit

As you’ll see below, especially if you have food fears, the key is changing how you perceive your hunger and then relating to your body in a new way.

ways to calm down when stressed

Now … how to start healing food insecurity with hunger?

The 1st step you can take is listening your hunger...

(This step is also a critical step of intuitive eating)

This could mean listening to the inner signals like:

  • 1—Starving, weak, dizzy
  • 2—Very hungry, cranky, low energy, lots of stomach growling
  • 3—Pretty hungry, stomach is growling a little
  • 4—Starting to feel a little hungry
  • 5—Satisfied, neither hungry nor full
  • 6—A little full, pleasantly full
  • 7—A little uncomfortable
  • 8—Feeling stuffed
  • 9—Very uncomfortable, stomach hurts
  • 10—So full you feel sick

This rating of 1-10 can be useful to help. For more information on hunger scales, you may read this article here by University of Wisconsin.

Please note you may also want to check out an Overeaters Anonymous meeting, a group that teaches practical skills in the 12 step tradition for food addicts.

But to really heal food insecurity you must use these sensations to understand your ‘unique hunger voice’

The key is to realize you have a unique inner hunger voice, that gives increasingly coherent messages, as you learn to decipher the language of your stomach.

For example, your hunger voice might be saying, “Please Stop!” when you are feeling the signals that you are eating too much – like feeling bloated, stretch, too full and so forth.

The key is to realize your belly has a voice and it’s speaking to you!

Trust me, I know this sounds silly, but in Weight Loss Enlightenment we realize that the ‘traditional’ way of seeing things just is too simple! And we need to wake up!

We need to get some insight into the nature of our belly’s!

One man’s journey to heal food insecurity

I’ve been working with a guy who has struggled with food his entire life.

From binge eating, to feeling hopeless, to countless diets, to doctors, to family struggles due to health, to …

You name it, he’s experienced it. Ouch.

And the beautiful thing, the absolutely beautiful thing to see and witness …

Is this man is learning how to listen to his hunger. And as he listens to his hunger, he gains more confidence that he can understand his hunger.

Forget for a moment weight loss. This guy and I have agreed that his journey will go like this:

  1. Listen to hunger
  2. Learn what hunger is saying
  3. Then focus on listening to the subtle messages of hunger, the messages that tell you to eat healthy
  4. Weight loss results naturally, as a byproduct

For now this man is just concentrating and learning to listen to his hunger. He’s not rushing the process.

Every time he eats, he has a chance to learn the language of his body.

Instead of seeing hunger as some demonic force controlling you, please make this shift, even though it might be scary:

Your hunger is more like a foreign language than a demonic disorder.

hunger training
There are many different noises out there. Just like learning to listen to a foreign language. As you practice however, you will grow to learn the true voice.

However, …

If you have dieted many times and have food insecurity, you may not hear your hunger’s voice in the beginning

This is honestly really sad to me.

This one hits me hard. For some reason it just hits me hard.

I know some people who can’t feel when they are hungry.

Only when they are RAVENOUS are they able to notice they are hungry.

My friend’s Mom I’ve talked have talked this. She openly admits to not knowing her hunger cues.

I don’t know. For some reason this makes me sad.

Something so primal, like breathing or seeing, not being able to do that …

Now it’s okay if you can’t hear your hunger.

You can learn.

If you can’t hear your hunger …

One guideline to start out is to eat every 3-4 hours.

That way you have a baseline to know when you should eat food.

So instead of trying to guess but feeling incredibly frustrated because you can’t feel your signals …

Just go every 3-5 hours and be sure to practice listening in between meals.

Now go listen to your hunger

Also … don’t think hunger is the bad guy, that will only increase food insecurity!

If you think hunger is the bad guy …

Then you will buy:

  • Caffeine pills that supposedly energize you and reduce your hunger
  • Various meal programs like Jenny Craig (where they send all the food to you)

But mainly …

If you think hunger is the bad guy …

You don’t trust you and you’ll never heal food insecurity

Because hunger is your inner guide to health.

Over the past few days we have been talking about protein.

And particularly …

How much is too much versus enough?

And we concluded … (or at least I concluded, I don’t know about you 😉

That the right amount of protein depends on you.

Like instead of looking for the right amount of grams, macros, and getting the perfect ratio …

What if you started learning to deeply listen to your body’s cues?

Particularly your hunger cues.

See…

The Just Do It Diet Industry …

They want you to fear your hunger (so they can make a quick buck off you)

But in Weight Loss Enlightenment we realize:

Hunger our inner guide to health and we must take action with hunger.

Your hunger is something that’s evolved over billions of years.

And guess, what too? Your hunger is what makes food satisfying.

You see … your hunger is constantly giving you wisdom (rumble … rumble .. gurgle …)

And your hunger is not only the key to protein …

It’s key to health.

Your hunger is your direct link to your body’s wisdom.

And in Weight Loss Enlightenment we realize …

Our body is intrinsically wise.

Your body is intrinsically wise.

Hunger is Fundamental Truth.

Besides, you can’t ignore hunger.

You don’t have to think about hunger in order to feel it.

It’s right there. All the time. And your hunger is the key to losing weight.

Trust me, I know this might sound crazy …

But afraid of your hunger, that’s not good either.

Let’s embrace hunger and learn to listen to it’s language!

Embrace your body and don’t fat shame. In essence, learn health at every size principles.

About the Author

Jared Levenson is a former binge eating wrestler turned Zen Buddhist Monk, Internal Family Systems counselor and nutrition wellness coach. He's helped hundreds of people through universal meal principles and internal family systems to make peace with food, stop binge eating, and find true health and wholeness.

@jared_levenson

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