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If you have problems with eating, you may
have lost touch with your body’s signals. You may be making choices about when
to eat or not based on emotions, ideas, or habit. To get back on track, you need to get
re-acquainted with your body’s cues. It takes time to re-connect after many years of
living "above the neck," but remember that this capacity is something you can
observe even in the youngest infants. It’s "hard-wired" into our bodies
because motivating ourselves to eat is a matter of survival.
0 Weak with hunger.
You
are so hungry that you may not even feel it, but rather be head-achy and faint.
1 Famished.
Too
hungry. This is the fist-banging stage when you’ll eat anything.
2 Hungry.
The perfect time to eat, when the
food tastes delicious, but you’re not so hungry that you’re indiscriminate.
3 Mildly hungry.
Something light would
suffice, or you could stand to wait another hour for the desire to develop more fully.
4 On the way to being satisfied.
During a
meal, you are in the pleasant stage of enjoying the food but you are not yet satisfied.
5 Satisfied.
The perfect time (according to
your stomach) to stop eating. You are sated.
6 A little fuller than "satisfied."
A few bites past "5," due to the momentum of eating. The food seems
less delicious, more plastic.
7 Very full.
Beginning to be uncomfortable.
8 Painfully full.
9 And so on.
Your ultimate aim is to most of the
time eat when your body tells you (at "2") and stop when your body tells
you (at "5"). You might have some fears about trusting your body to tell you
what it needs. Take some time to write about your feelings. Over time, the practice you
get checking in with yourself will make this process easier.
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