2023 - 3:15 FB Live Audio Podcast
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the concierge weight loss podcast. My name is Kara Hackleman, and I'm a certified life and weight loss coach. I help people just like you lose weight for the last time. Are you a little people pleasing, a little procrastinating, and maybe a little perfectionistic? Do you eat when you are not even necessarily hungry?
I can help you overcome that so you can finish losing weight and get out of your own way. Join me each week to get a little motivation and a lot of inspiration. Good morning. I am Kara Hackleman. I am a certified life and weight loss coach and the owner of concierge weight loss. Uh, today I want to talk about hunger.
Specifically the topic has been that, uh, I want to talk about learning to trust your hunger for your weight loss. All right. Okay. I'm just gonna have to switch this. I normally have one thing on one side of my [00:01:00] screen and something else on the other. And I don't know why I did it different today, but we are going to have to switch it because that was not working for me.
There we go. All right. I kept feeling like I was looking in the wrong places. So now we're back on track here.
I want to start with the hunger talking to you about learning to trust it. I think though. As a person who has lost and gained weight more times than I can remember, and I figure this out. I help other people. I think that there is a fear of hunger. I think that hunger can be used as an excuse to eat and overeat.
I think that sometimes hunger is an excuse to settle down and slow down. We are in a society that goes, goes, goes, and we value our busyness. [00:02:00] So sometimes the only time to stop the busyness is to go to the bathroom or to eat. So I think eating has become, um, an excuse for a lot of things and hunger is our alert to be able to excuse it.
So that is something to start with there, knowing that and just being aware of it from the beginning, it will set you to be able to overcome that. So with that, I want to start here with diet culture. And so I feel all cringy every time I say diet culture, because dieting is what you're eating. Your diet is what you eat.
Dieting is paying attention to what you eat for whatever reason. The diet culture has turned into such a negative stigma and the part of it today that I want to mention is how diet culture really tells you that for [00:03:00] you to lose weight, what you need to do is you need to count calories, you need to count macros, and you need to count points.
One or the other, right? Some of it, some form of counting things. And so, what I want to remind you is that your body was built to automatically know when it's hungry. You have this huge, wonderful, complex system that your hormones They gauge everything in your body and there's leptin and ghrelin and all of that kind of stuff.
And one tells your body how that it's hungry and it needs to eat and the other one tells your body it doesn't need anymore. Those hormones work very well. When they're allowed to and so why I say it that way is because insulin Confuses those hormones it blocks the signals and it confuses it So it's not going to give the signals to the body when it needs it.[00:04:00]
It's designed to do that, but Sometimes we're overeating sugars which create or carbohydrates that create more insulin in our body and the insulin Improportionately will create confusion with the other hormones Coaching helps you learn the signals and the differences between physical hunger, urges and cravings, emotional eating, and just like habit eating.
There's lots of reasons why we eat. With your hunger, as I teach you, to trust your hunger, which sounds crazy because we have, we have made this hunger stand out as super scary. We've made hunger be like, stop everything. The loudest alert that we listened to, right? Besides maybe pain. And with that, we're not trusting it.
We're almost so afraid of it that [00:05:00] we indulge in hunger. Um, overindulge in hunger. So as you're learning how to trust your hunger, you're going to learn that it's a super useful thing, right? So what I teach is to eat what you love when you are hungry. And as I said last week, you're going to listen for your body's responses.
for feedback. If it liked what you gave it, if it didn't, if it liked how much or how little, right? And hunger is just another response. Some more feedback that your body's giving you. Your body may need more or less depending on activity. So that right there is going to tell you why just across the board, counting calories is not going to be perfect.
What happens is a lot of nutritionists will tell you like, if you're counting calories, Most of the time you're going to fit within this calorie range. But if you are really stressed or sick or have done [00:06:00] more activity than normal, your body may need a small amount more, a couple of bites maybe. If you are really listening to your hunger, then you can learn to trust your body.
to yourself and you don't need somebody outside of you telling you how many calories, how many points, how many macros you need. It's interesting, of course, as we're starting to like hear and kind of get an idea how to gauge it since we have stopped trusting our body and our hunger. But as you learn to trust that hunger again, trust your body's responses to know what it's what it's trying to tell you.
You'll realize that some days you need just a smidgen more, some days a little bit less, but if you're always trying to find how to better listen and acknowledge your hunger signals, you will always be right there on top of it. Your body was designed since infancy to send you alert signals. Those alert signals, if you watch a child, they're going to cry, right?
They don't know how to [00:07:00] say words yet, but they know that they're hungry. And so they get irritable. They, that's a big hunger signal for them. Maybe, um, a small baby will start trying to like suck on mama's cheek or her arm or anything close, right? To the right area. Um, they'll have that lip smacking, even if it's not trying to attach to anything.
And so your body was designed from infancy to be able to tell you when you're hungry and when you're not. So. Let's see. You, oh, the other thing with babies, um, when you've, when they've had enough, have you seen a baby who just, ugh, and they try to back away from the spoon? Mom's trying to feed them or they, they're done with the bottle and like they are distracted and want to play and be moving on to the next thing.
We do that too. So I have, there's, there's so many podcasts already on the hunger cues of the body. And if you're not [00:08:00] quite sure of what a hunger cue is or what your hunger cues sound like, those would be something to go find in my podcast series. But babies, especially, already know when they've had enough.
And so they're ready to move on. Many times I noticed for myself that one of my biggest hunger cues that I noticed when I've had enough is I start thinking about other things. I'm looking at like being ready to get up, especially if you practice eating at the table. When you eat at the table, everything is so much more exciting than sitting at a table when you're no longer hungry.
You're ready to move on to the next thing. Look at your phone or watch TV or get up and go do something or get back to something. Your mind gets distracted from the food on everything else. That is a huge noticing that your hunger is not there anymore. Stop eating, right? So we stopped listening to those hunger signals for [00:09:00] a variety of reasons.
Um, and we start eating for reasons beyond fuel. Our body was designed to eat for fuel and we were given these really great, um, taste buds to help us know what was good or bad. We're not really eating foods that are poisonous anymore. We're not looking at the berries and trying to decide if they're good or bad anymore.
We're eating foods for fuel. Now we've switched to do we like it or do we not like it? What is our preference? And so that is more, um, more of what we're doing. We're eating for hunger and we're eating picking the foods when we're hungry that we prefer. Um, gosh, there are so many reasons people eat beyond hunger, right?
So urges and cravings. And so some of those come from, um, when you've deprived and you're just, you can't think of anything else. Sometimes urges and cravings come from when you have been having quite a bit [00:10:00] more. So like, if I, have sugar in just small amounts from time to time. And then I just have a huge amount of sugar.
I'm going to want more and more and more of it. And that's your body's response. It's quick, easy fuel. It's not a complex fuel. It's not going to give you a ton of nutrients, but it does give you, you know, caloric fuel. And so, and it's easy to process for the body. It does mess a lot of stuff up, but like, if I'm having a lot of sugar, my body's going to say, give me more of that.
It's quick and easy to process. So I might get more urges and cravings for more of it. Um, sometimes we eat out of habit. You know, um, my favorite was always like you got off the bus and mom had a snack ready for you or their sitter or whoever. Um, if it was a party, you had this, after a great, you know, a report card or a, um, ball game.
Everybody went out for ice cream. And so, and there's so many more, um, um, habits, you know, that you maybe have [00:11:00] developed as an adult. Those are childhood habits, but we just develop habits. Anytime you've done something more than one time, it has the potential to become a habit. Anything you've done more than one time, you have set the, the groove for it to be habitual, for it to be happening again and again.
So. Um, sometimes you come home from work and you're cooking dinner and eating at the same time. You know you're getting ready to eat dinner, but you're eating. So, sometimes it's that kind of a habit. Sometimes it's emotions. Um, many times we are stressed. As we're stressed, we want to be distracted from that stress or from whatever the emotion is that we're feeling.
And we've learned that, When we eat, we get a little dopamine hit. We might not realize that's what's happening in our body, but we know we feel good. And so what's happening is your body gets a little dopamine hit because probably even you're choosing something that encourages even more dopamine hits, right?
And then you [00:12:00] are distracted. from what you were feeling or thinking. It doesn't mean that those feelings go away or that those thoughts are gone. It just means that you're distracted from them. And so with your emotional eating, you have developed this coping mechanism to be able to cope with whatever's going on with food.
And sometimes Depending on what's going on, like that's the most loving act for you. I love working with my clients to teach them how to cope with their, with their emotions and their life so that they're not turning to food for, um, anything other than hunger. And so really loving the food when they are eating, um, choosing foods that they enjoy, but not eating for emotions.
Sometimes social, right? I have a couple more on my list. I was having fun writing these down, like, why else do people eat? Trying to remember everything I did, trying to remember everything my clients tell me, and so sometimes it's [00:13:00] social, right? We all get together, and there's chips and queso on the table, and everybody's having some, and we want to dive in.
Someone's ordered a bunch of appetizers for the table, and we want to have some of everything. We want to eat together. Yeah, they're gonna drink together or, um, a big buffet spread or someone's done a pitch in whatever it is, donuts in the break room. It could be so many things and we noticed that we eat socially too.
So it's just another reason. Nothing's wrong with eating in a social environment. when you're hungry. Sometimes it's celebrating. So I talked about the ice cream after a great grade or a ball game or something. Sometimes it's a birthday or an anniversary or a new job or an engagement. Anything is celebratory.
We have food around it and I don't think that that's a bad thing. I don't want to tell you you can't do that by any means, but Like your reasons. Are you having a bite or two to [00:14:00] celebrate and you're okay with that? Are you wanting to be like just across the board? I only eat when I'm hungry. I'll be there and I'll party with you and we will celebrate, but I'm not going to eat if I'm not hungry.
You decide where it is that you want to fall on that scale, like your reasons for sure. And then sometimes people just eat because it's offered. Um, I know that it used to be taught that it was good manners to finish your plate. It was, um, rude to the host if you did it. Um, also like. If someone offered you something, my mother, oh my goodness, bless her soul.
She would chase after you like anytime I say here try this my husband teases me because my mom was so much About offering up food all the time. She was what you would call a food pusher for sure And so she would offer it and offer it and offer it to you And if you didn't eat it, she would just keep trying to stick it in your mouth Not everybody's quite as [00:15:00] aggressive as that, but offering a food is another reason why some people eat.
They're offered it and they don't know how to say no. They don't want to hurt someone's feelings. They think that that would hurt their feelings and that they don't want to be responsible for that. So they eat it, or they think it's good manners, or they just, It's an urge like they were offered and now it turns into an urge or a craving like yes I want that and so just remembering there's lots of reasons that you have previously eaten that were nothing to do with hunger and We're not doing that anymore.
We're just going to eat when we're hungry. We're going to love what we're having But we're going to only eat it when we're hungry Sometimes there's guilt if you're eating what you love and trying to lose weight people think it has to be Depriving or it has to be Uh a certain kind of food. I always joke that like chicken and broccoli people say oh salads chicken and broccoli That's what I can have when i'm losing weight And if it's that If it's a burger and fries or some chocolate cake or pizza or ice cream, [00:16:00] they're like, oh, no, no, no, I can't have that.
And so our brain puts this whole good bad thing in there. And so I teach my clients like the good, better, best. I teach my clients how to have some of all the foods and like really listen to their body's responses to decide how much, how often kind of thing. Um, And so you truly can have anything. Uh, there are no bad foods and there is a place for all of them.
Let's see here. So I brought this to you today because as you learn to trust your hunger, you're going to use your hunger as signals to know when to eat and when not to eat. You're going to gauge that to prevent overeating. And so with weight loss, And I'm the same way here. I went to my coach. So, you know, I'm a person who gets coached [00:17:00] also.
And when I started losing weight, uh, in 20, well, for the last time, when I started losing weight for the last time in 2019, I went to my coach and I was like, I just need you to tell me what to eat. How much am I supposed to eat? And I needed someone else to tell me. I did not feel powerful. I did not feel empowered to make these decisions for myself.
And so I. Wanted her to tell me what to eat and she wouldn't it was a blessing that she would not it got me able to be able to uh able to be able to Um decide for myself and just try to figure it out as I tried to figure it out It was that I was able to Make those decisions for myself so So, with, with that being said, as you learn to trust your hunger, you learn to trust your body, you learn to trust yourself, you'll be making excellent decisions for yourself, for your body, for your hunger, for your weight loss.
[00:18:00] You'll be able, capable, completely empowered to do all of it. I love that it's that simple and yet it's complex enough that it's it, it works so much better with a coach. The coach helps you through all of it. Um, remembering how simple it is and yet it still feels so hard to do. That's what a coach is for.
I help you figure out why it's hard. I help you figure out why you want to do it. I help keep you motivated and encouraged. Um, we look at what are you thinking and feeling, and we really break that down so that it's no longer sabotaging your weight loss. So if you like what you've heard today, Maybe you're curious if weight loss coaching is what you've been missing.
Take the free next step quiz. It's at, uh, it's on my website. It's on all of my links and bio, um, coaching, Kara. com forward slash next step quiz, and get a peek at what coaching could look [00:19:00] like for you. Join me live every Wednesday, 9am Eastern Standard Time on Facebook or Instagram, where I present and record a live podcast.
You can join and get all of your questions answered, get to interact with other listeners. I'll see you then. Thank you for listening to the Concierge Weight Loss podcast, like what you heard today. Leave a review or share with a friend and check out the next step quiz where you'll find what has held you back from lasting weight loss and what to do next.
You will find the link to this and many other helpful podcasts and videos in the show notes. I can't wait to see you there.
