3 steps to Overcome the Mealtime Scaries

Do you trust yourself enough to let your body tell you when you need more or less food?

No?

I didn't either back in the day. Sure, I trusted my body to let me know when I needed to pee, get more water, heal my wounds, blink, pump blood through my veins, breathe faster or slower, and grow and support 2 healthy babies to full-term pregnancies among MANY other things. But to trust myself around food? Forget it...

Welcome to the Mealtime Scaries. A horrifying struggle that stems from food and body obsession.

I mean, it seems so simple, right? Eat any food, with a balance of nourishment and satisfaction, in an amount that feels good to you.

DASSIT... 🤷🏽‍♀️

Except, when you have an unhealthy relationship with food, spent your life chronically dieting, or grew up without knowing one adult who liked or even loved their body... then it's a whole new ballgame we talkin' here.

TRANSLATION: A healthy relationship with food = 

• the ability to be around any food without the intensity of having to eat it all
• having no or very little anxiety around food
• free from food and body obsession
• having a lack of guilt and/or shame while eating
• honoring your hunger and respecting your fullness
• experiencing life without food rules or restrictions getting in the way of social events

Do you ever notice that no matter how much you plan, meal prep, or crack the perfect-meal code, that something always comes up to knock down your prestigiously built house of health cards?

I once read a story about this tree someone had planted in the middle of the desert as an experiment to see if that tree could survive in a controlled area. 

Yes, they put this tree in a bubble in the middle of the desert and thought, "yup, we just rocked Mother Nature's world." (PS I have been watching an alarming amount of Drunk History on Hulu so I might be a little more decorative relaying my message to you.) And you know what that tree was actually growing and blossoming!

Except for one issue...

They couldn't figure out why the tree was falling down all the time. Yes, this tree was beautiful, green, and growing! But it stood up like your drunk friend at the bar that doesn't know what, "it's time TO GO!" means...

What they had eventually figured out was that the highly protective bubble was giving the tree no reason to grow strong roots into the ground and eventually support itself.

So the lack of wind, force, trauma, instability, struggle, hardship, or whatever the hell you want to call it, was actually making this tree weak and unable to plant its strong roots into the ground.

Because it simply had no need to. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Are you pickin' up what I'm throwin' down? Are you grillin' what I'm tenderizin'?

If we keep building our health-house of cards in our bubble just so the wind won't knock it down, (aka following "wellness" plans and workout programs that teach us nothing about our self-awareness), then when that wind does come again -illness, injury, events, parties, nights out, etc- then it will knock us down and we will never build those strong roots of consciousness that help anchor us into the ground.

Translation- The more we depend on outside sources to program our health, the less likely we are to handle the shit sandwiches life will eventually throw at us.

So, what if instead of fearing the wind (aka life happening causing us to miss a planned workout, insecurities about what's on our plate, and fear of what others will say if we take off our cover-up), what if instead, we learned how to strengthen our mindfulness, so we are finally able to stand on our own?

Instead of getting angry that the wind is here, plant yourself into your self-awareness, take ownership of who you are at this very moment, and understand that you can do hard things.

Here are 3 steps to finding your hunger cues again (and you can literally do all 3 steps at your next meal)

1. GROW STRONG IN THE WIND: You are not a binge eater; you have a HABIT of binge eating. Change your habit by implanting a kink in your habit loop and do something uncomfortable to jolt you into a new neuropathway. The problem isn't that you can't trust yourself around food, that’s only the symptom that stemmed from years (even decades!) of silencing your hunger cues from chronic dieting and counting. You know the ones... eat only at these times, eat only off this "approved" foods list, eat whatever you want but stay within these numbers!😒 In order to release this learned intensity we have around food, you must break these arbitrary rules you've been blindly following. Start by reintroducing your fear foods like sugar, carbs, bread, starchy vegetables, toppings, and oatmeal back into your day. This can be a slow process or an #allin one. What I like to tell my clients here is to eat how you normally would then ADD what's missing. 
   • FOR EXAMPLE: If you eat an egg-white veggie omelet in the morning with a cup of low-carb yogurt, then add in FULL EGGS, and replace the yogurt with a piece of toast and peanut butter. This is your first step in finding your hunger cues again. 

2. REFLECT & ADAPT FOR THE NEXT TIME GALE VISITS: Pullover into investigation station as my client, Marissa would say. (Ha! Freaking love her.) Over here in Investigation Station, there is no emotional caboose attached to the STRAIGHT FACTS locomotive. Meaning, take the emotional caboose (guilt, shame, comparison, and judgment) off the tracks so now you just have the straight facts. Maybe you overate and don't feel good after this meal. That is a fact. Without attaching the emotional caboose of, "Why did I do this AGAIN? I'll never get this right. I'm a lost cause. I feel so bad for eating so much!" Start getting used to the fact that the perfect meal doesn't exist. Your confidence and happiness that you want so bad will come when you start taking care of yourself, NOT when you hit that fleeting number on the scale. And just like a toddler, the more you say "no" to the foods and beverages you love, the more your mind is going to want what's scarce. Dieting and food rules are the LAST things you need right now to heal your relationship with food. My friend, you don't need more rules, you need to rebuild those hunger cues through mindful reps and practice at each meal. Instead of dreading each meal wondering if you're doing it "right" or if this means you're restricting or overeating, start instead by thinking about how each meal is a new mystery to be solved in a new room and with new clues! Because no one, no meal plan, and no calorie amount know you better than you know yourself... PROMISE! After you eat this meal, ask yourself a few questions.

• How did this make me feel after I ate it? More energy? Better mood? Etc.
• Do I need to add or take away anything in order to make this meal taste AND feel better?
• Did this make me feel satisfied (not thinking about food) longer than my original breakfast would have?
• How can I do this to my next meal?

3. RECONNECT TO YOUR ROOTS: In order to help find your hunger and fullness cues better, I wrote a bomb-ass blog post that will tickle your fancy. But here are some cues to look for during your day to begin reconnecting your brain and your tummy.
    

• Reconnect with your body- No shame in having to go back to the simple basics of finding WHERE you need to feel hunger because it may not come from a tummy growl, and it may not even come from a physical sensation! But to connect with your stomach and rekindle that bond, try this exercise that I learned from Evelyn Tribole, co-author of Intuitive Eating. Come into this exercise when you are not overly full. Get a glass of cold water (or hot water -tea level hot) and take a sip. Feel that liquid running down your throat and into your body. Trace a line with your finger as you feel it going down into your stomach and vanish. Connect and get familiar with THAT sensation from beginning to end. There. You just freaking connected with your body and became self-aware of a hunger/fullness sensation!

• To find what hungry feels like- In the morning before you eat breakfast, how does that feel? What are the physical and mental symptoms you have? Mentally- do you feel foggy, constantly thinking about food, irritable, lightheaded, dizzy, or not-quite-there? Physically- are you weak, shaky, do you have a headache, or like you're on a German Fat burner that Moira Rose gave you? Pinpoint that feeling, take it out to dinner, and get to know it better because that is your hunger!

• To find what fullness feels like-Remember that time when you ate too much (think Thanksgiving dinner) and found it hard to breathe, let alone move? Ok, now hold that feeling in your brain and make space for this feeling. Remember that egg-white veggie omelet you had with low-carb yogurt? How long did that last you until you were hungry again? Twenty minutes, maybe an hour? Now, capture those two feelings in bed, naked, and imagine if those two feelings had a night of passionate jungle sex and had a baby. (Yup, this is who I am in real life. -Welcome to my brain. 🥸 ) Well, this is probably what that baby would look like. -That one time you ate a decent amount of food, an amount you might have thought was too much for you but was actually just what you needed to stay full and satisfied until your next meal. So you thought about stopping, but you kept eating (and more ravenously at this point) because it just tasted so good, you felt out of control, and you don't get Grandma's homemade tamales and Mom's Tres Leches Cake that often so Screw it! You eat it all, chalk it up to a cheat day... and start again on Monday. Pleasantly full is that feeling right before you turned into the cookie monster on steroids in this memoir. I may have done this a couple... hundred times in my past.

You see my friend, it's not the food you struggle with, it's your thoughts AROUND the food that you struggle with. Become more mindful, give this venture the time and attention it and YOU deserve and you'll begin to grow roots strong enough to withstand even the heaviest of winds.

Written with love, hope, and some crazy jungle sex analogies

By Christi Brown, Founder, and Creator of Intuitively Strong

Your home for food and body obsession.

Need more help?

Download your FREE Am I Binge Eating flow chart to help free yourself from binge and emotional eating.

Schedule a free Discovery Call with me to see what binge-free plan of structure I would build for you.

Join my #EatToTheBeat Monthly Masterclass Series for $27/month to dip your toe into the pool of food freedom possibilities.