Trusting Your Hunger
Do you trust your body when it tells you you're hungry? Do you even know what hungry actually feels like? Do you suppress hunger signals thinking there is something wrong with you? I was so goddamn confused by being hungry I was going to go to the doctors to ask to be fixed! Check out this video where I talk about my experiences and tell you how you can build trust with your body.
Hi, it's Victoria here from Bam Pow Life and in this video I'm going to talk about trusting your body.
I have a story to tell you. So a few years ago, maybe five years ago, I was complaining to my then boyfriend and saying to him, "I think I need to go the doctor's. There's something wrong with me. I have this feeling in my stomach and I get it every day in the afternoon and it's like this emptiness and I don't know, maybe I'm sick."
And my boyfriend said, "Could you be hungry?" And I was like, "No, no, I'm not hungry. I can't be hungry. I ate a salad for lunch." He was like, "Perhaps try eating something next time you get this feeling."
I was like, "Bitch, you crazy, but okay." Because clearly, I ate three quarters of a tomato at lunch so how can I be hungry? I tried this and guess what? It was that I was fucking hungry but I was so out of touch with that feeling that I thought that my body was broken and I was going to go to the doctor's to say, "Help me. Help me. This feeling won't go away."
And so it's a great illustration of how out of touch diet culture and dieting can make us feel from our bodies, right? So we don't trust our bodies actually do know what's best for us. We don't trust our bodies to know how to eat.
I remember taking this course at the end of when I was in the dieting mind set and saying to the person, "I just don't know how to eat. I just don't know what to eat. I don't know how much to eat. I just don't know."
I did know. My body was like "Hello, Victoria. I'm telling you what I want but you've been ignoring me for dozens of years" and I'm like "Body, shut up. No, I need to listen to what Weight Watchers tells me to eat, because they know what's best for me."
No, they don't. Dieting really does infantalize us. It makes us into these people who are like, "I don't know. Tell me what to do. You know what's best for me, Diet Company." And Diet Company knows what's best in regards to helping you starve yourself and consume their products. And the more that we get into that, the less we listen to our bodies.
And so that can be a really hard thing to get out of and as I experienced, very confusing. And sometimes you need someone to say, "No, yep, that's pretty normal to need to eat food to sustain your body." And especially if you've been a chronic dieter, you're probably used to eating hardly anything. I know I was. Eating an average, a normal amount, of food seemed like this outrageous thing and I felt so greedy and out of control, but my body was doing everything it could to try and help me and get out of this cycle.
I encourage you to try and listen to what your body is telling you. So the way that I do this, practically, is if I'm unsure about what I want to eat, I'm just like, "Body, what do you fancy today?" And I'll get a vision in my mind of the options, say, from a restaurant. Mmm, chickpea falafel. Chickpeas, is that what you want? Mmm. Tofu salad. Is that what you want? Mmm. How about some fries with that? Salad and fries. Mmm, yeah, they're crispy. Oh yeah, that's what my body wants is a salad and fries with some tofu. Done. And I'm like, "Okay, thanks, Body. Thanks for keeping me informed." Because your body is going to be like, "Hey I'm missing some of this today" or "I fancy some of this today" and you can really trust it. And especially if your body says, "Hey, I want some dessert."
Maybe you've been denying yourself dessert and your body's like "Give me some fucking dessert, bitch. Jesus." Just let yourself have dessert. If your body says I'm really fucking tired, guess what? It ain't punking you. You're tired. Right?
That's another thing. I used feel like "I'm so tired. Why are you tricking me, Body?" I'm not tired, but my body's like, "Bitch, I'm telling you, you're tired." And now, I am a napper. I'm not guilty about doing it. So if I'm tired, I'll take a nap because that's what my body wants, right?
So give it a go. Listen to your body see what is going on. Just sit with yourself and be like, "Body, what do you want? Do you want to rest today? Do you want to go run a marathon today? Do you want to eat some pizza? Do you want to drink some water? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want?"
And your body's going "Thank you, thank you. You're listening to me." And it takes a while to build up that trust, right, because your body has been pleading with you for so long to do certain things and you've been ignoring it and so your body ... You have to heal that relationship with your body and so to begin with your body's going to be like, "Oh, she gave me that thing that I wanted." And next time it's going to go "Give me some water. Give me some water. Get whatever it is." And the next time you give it what it wants, it's going to be like, "Oh, it's happened again." And soon your body doesn't need to overreact in certain situations because it trusts that you're going to take care of it and listen to its needs.
So if you would like some more body love and confidence all up in your brain, and why wouldn't you, then head on over to the link below where I have my free e-course Extreme Confidence Makeover. You're going to love it. Goodbye.
Get Victoria's FREE eCourse: Extreme Confidence Makeover here: http://www.bampowlife.com/extremeconfidencemakeover/
Join the Confidence Warrior Club, a private membership site for FREE: http://www.bampowlife.com/confidencewarriorclub/
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